Category Archive

Surprising no one, the Democrats in the Senate caved on the FISA warrantless wiretapping and telecom immunity measure today. They pretty much gave Bush everything he had been asking for.

All the usual suspects have been writing about it, but I can’t right now. You see, I have to go pound my head against this brick wall, here. Maybe if I do it hard enough, I’ll effectively lobotomize myself. That way, when we finally cross the line completely to become a totalitarian fascist regime, I will neither understand nor care anymore.

-jane doe

Okay, this is too funny. Some genius named Kathryn Jean Lopez over at the National Review Online (which I don’t ordinarily read because I wouldn’t want to damage my computer monitor by spewing coffee or orange juice all over it in response to some of the ridiculous things they publish) had the brilliant idea that our alleged president could while away his post-White House years teaching high school civics classes:

Wouldn’t George W. Bush make an awesome high-school government teacher? Wouldn’t it be something if his post-presidential life would up being that kind of post-service service? How’s that for a model? Who needs Harvard visiting chairs and high-end lectures? How about Crawford High? (Or wherever?) Reach out and touch the young before they are jaded, or break them of the cynicism pop culture and possibly their parents have passed down to them. Whatever you think of President Bush, he’s a likable guy in love with his country with some history and experience to share.

I hardly even know where to start with this one. It’s just too easy. I mean, first of all, hasn’t George Bush done enough damage to our public schools, what with No Child Left Behind (which is really just a first step in the neocon plan to privatize public education anyway)? Haven’t the poor kids suffered enough already?

Plus, I’m sorry, but that man is in no way qualified to teach. Teachers have to be able to speak in complete sentences, for one thing, and his ability to garble his native language is legendary. And what would he use as a textbook? I’m pretty sure Cliff’s Notes doesn’t publish a guide to U.S. government.

More importantly, he is not tempramentally suited for the job. We’re talking about high school students here, not House Speakers - they’d eat him for breakfast! Throw a smart-ass honors student or someone from the school debate team into the mix, and they’d have him reduced to a quivering mound of inarticulate green Jell-O before he got through roll call.

No, I’m sorry, but Bush should stick to the things he knows best: running healthy, functioning organizations into the ground.

Maybe he can land a job at Halliburton. I’m sure Dick Cheney would put in a good word for him…

-jane doe

At any given moment, I am probably part-way through a half dozen books or so. I tend to fill many of the hours that I don’t spend working or writing with reading, and always have.

Lately there is one book that I keep going back to, though. It’s called Defying Hitler. It’s a memoir by Sebastian Haffner, who was a boy in Germany during World War I and the chaos that followed in that country, and who grew to manhood over the time period when Hitler was rising to power.

The book, or at least large portions of it, was actually written during just prior to the start of World War II. It starts with a look back over the Germany of the author’s childhood and young adulthood, focusing on the conditions in German society and the German psyche that ultimately allowed a madman like Hitler to come to the fore. It’s a fascinating read, and I highly recommend it.

It’s been said that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Reading through this book and others, one cannot help but be struck by the parallels that exist between our world here today in the United States and pre-World War II Germany. Certainly, some aspects of it are different, but the similarities are there for those who would see them:

• The increasingly authoritarian central executive who keeps stealing away our civil liberties in the name of protecting our “freedom”.

• The demonization of liberals by pundits and in the press.

• The mindless nationalism and bigotry, in which the immigrants who made this country what it is today are shunned as dangerous outsiders, and in which true patriotism and loyalty to the founding principles and laws of our nation are replaced by mindless loyalty to the flag and the president.

I could go on, but it’s late and I’m tired.

The point is, that the parallels are there for those who wish to see them. Oh, they take a slightly different flavor here in America - certainly the positive emphasis on Christianity, particularly of the evangelical variety, rather than the more blatant negative emphasis on hatred of Jews and other minority groups that was seen in Germany, is one example (though one cannot help but infer at times that the fanatic proclamation of one’s love for Jesus is really a thinly - or even not so thinly - veiled expression of disdain for those of other faiths, or of no faith).

All of it has me wondering, as I look at current events, is it fascism yet?

I’m not alone in raising this possibility. In Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here, he famously suggested that, “When fascism came to America, it will be wrapped in the flag, carrying a cross.” More recently, Joe Conason’s It Can Happen Here (another book I am halfway through) points out the troubling rise in an authoritarianism that is based in corporate power and and religion. Chris Hedges makes a similar case in American Fasicists: The Christian RIght and the War on America (yet another book on the partially read list). And earlier this year, Keith Olbermann called our alleged president a fascist, subject-verb-object.

Is it fascism yet?

I don’t know the answer to this question. Part of the trouble is coming up with a good working definition of what constitutes fascism, what its defining characteristics are. There seem to be as many definitions as there are authors writing on the subject - witness the laughable Liberal Fascists by Jonah Goldberg if you doubt me on this. Perhaps this is the inevitable result of too many years of labeling one’s opponents as fascists or Nazis in arguments and debates: the terms have lost any real concrete meaning.

Is it fascism yet? Will we recognize it when it is?

Perhaps I will explore the subject a little more fully another day, or at least at a more reasonable hour. For now, I will leave you with this troubling thought:

Regardless of whether we have yet crossed the line into fascism yet, it cannot be doubted that our government, particularly the central executive, has become increasingly authoritarian. We have a president who does not feel bound to enforce or obey the laws passed by Congress or the decisions handed down by the Supreme Court. And we have two candidates who are running to succed him: one who seems determined to continue the current president’s failed policies, and one who has built a grass-roots movement centered around change, hope, and the power of the American people.

There will be a period of nearly two months between election night in November and Inauguration Day in January.

A lot can happen in two months.

Are we certain that, if the voters do not choose McCain to succeed him, Bush will step down on the appointed day? That he will not find some pretext, some emergency, that requires him to stay in control in order to ensure “continuity” in government policy? In the name of protecting us from terrorists, and preserving our ever-dwindling liberties?

And if he does not step down, will we step up and say that this is not our way? Or will we keep our heads down, not make waves, and assume that someone else will put a stop to the madness?

I don’t know the answer to these questions, and, as it is now approaching 4:00 AM here in Redstatesville, I am frankly too tired to delve into the matter at the moment.

But I still think Bush and Cheney ought to be impeached now, rather than taking a chance.

-jane doe

A storm’s moving in here in Redstatesville. The wind doesn’t seem to know quite which direction it wants to be blowing, and there will be lighting and thunder for certain before I go to bed tonight.

I look at the news - the war in Iraq, the reviving war in Afghanistan, the potential war in Iran (if Dick Cheney gets his way), elections, White House scandals, the economic mess, the cost of oil (both in dollars and in human terms), the insanity of our Middle East policy, religious extremism (Christian as well as Islamic), the environment and global warming, our eroding civil liberties and loss of privacy, and the constant, deafening efforts of right-wing politicians and pundits and priests trying to paint scientists, liberals, artists, academics, and anyone else who objects to all this insanity as anti-American and in league with the terrorists - and it’s hard not to think something similar is going on on a national scale, building toward some serious thunder and lighting, and maybe a bit of destruction before the year is through.

It’s all got me feeling a bit twitchy.

It’s not any one thing in particular that has me so nervous. Rather, it is an aggregation of things. Stories glimpsed briefly, often in the non-mainstream news and the blogosphere, that individually would qualify one for a lifetime membership in the Tinfoil Hat Brigade if one were to make a big deal out of them, but when looked at together, begin to seem more than a little ominous, like storm clouds building.

Like this story in the Denver Post about how “hundreds of police, firefighters, paramedics and even utility workers have been trained and recently dispatched as ‘Terrorism Liaison Officers’ in Colorado and a handful of other states to hunt for ’suspicious activity’ — and are reporting their findings into secret government databases.”

Or this one, from May 2007, about the Bush administration contracting with Halliburton to build “detention camps” within the continental United States for use in the event of a “national emergency.”

Or this presidential directive, also from May 2007, granting the president extensive, extra-constitutional authority over the operations of the government in the event of a “catastrophic emergency.”

Or this story about a plan prepared by the Pentagon for “massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in three days.”

Twitch, twitch.

It’s like we’re building toward some big, possibly transformational event, and I can’t help feeling that it all comes down to who wins the presidential race in November. The candidate who promises change, or the one who promises only more of the same.

And I’m very much afraid of what may happen if we end up with the latter option.

-jane doe

I have a bad headache this evening, of the sort one gets after a prolonged period of pounding one’s head against a brick wall.

I’ve been reading Seymour Hersch’s article from the July 7th edition of The New Yorker, in which he describes certain ongoing covert operations currently taking place in Iran, where our alleged president and his buddies are apparently trying to start World War III.

I guess they’re just not satisfied with wrecking our economy, our civil rights, our public schools, our health care system, our military, our infrastructure, our court system, our Department of Justice, most of the other departments in the executive branch, and our reputation in the world community, or with causing the deaths of thousands of American soldiers and tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of Iraqis, along with life-altering injuries and loss for countless thousands (more likely millions) more.

No, apparently their new motto is, “Armageddon or bust!”

Will someone please impeach these bastards?

-jane doe

…if they really are out to get us?

It’s a question I’ve been pondering today, as I contemplate the current state of things in American politics.

There is a phenomenon in psychology known as habituation, in which an organism - human or animal - begins to ignore some stimulus in its environment that has been repeated over and over. After a certain point, the brain just tunes it out, and stops reacting even at the neurological level. Our nervous systems are set up to notice changes in the environment. Changes represent potential threats, or risks, or food sources, and they draw our attention quickly, while unchanging things are quickly filed and forgotten.

Say you bring home a new clock and put it on your mantle. When you first start it up, you notice the ticking sound made by the second hand as it moves in its circular route. But very quickly you become unaware of the noise unless you are deliberately attending to it.

Here’s another example: I live in the flight path of the Redstatesville airport. There are relatively few flights in and out of the airport each day, and once I had been living here for a while, I rarely noticed the planes anymore unless one passed by particularly low directly overhead. In the last few days, however, a helicopter has been flying around my neighborhood frequently, presumably because of its proximity to the airport. That, I notice. But if it becomes routine over the next few weeks, I’ll probably stop noticing it, as well.

People who live along train tracks experience a similar phenomenon, and wonder why their house guests never seem to get a good night’s sleep.

It kind of works the same way with warnings. Call it Boy Who Cried Wolf Syndrome: when a warning is repeated endlessly, and the event warned of never happens, the warning itself becomes meaningless chatter that gets filtered out as we go about our business.

When’s the last time you really listened to a flight attendant give the pre-flight safety speech? Do you actually look around the cabin to find the nearest exit before takeoff? I’m betting that for frequent travelers, the answer to those questions are, “Um, jeez, I don’t know,” and “No,” respectively.

Where am I going with this?

Well, as I’ve said elsewhere in this blog, I believe that the current administration has been using terror management theory to manipulate public opinion. Keith Olbermann has ably chronicled this in the series of reports he has done about the nexus of politics and terror, in which he recalls for us all the times that bad news affecting the Bush administration was followed, usually within a day or so, by press releases from the White House or the Department of Homeland Security about the terrorist threat. Increases in the threat level, the sudden reporting of uncovered and averted plots, that sort of thing.

And of course, the Republican Party’s beating of the 9/11 drum in the run-up to the 2004 presidential election was plain for all to see.

In the 2006 elections, they tried this strategy again, but it didn’t work for them so well that time. Partly because people were fed up with the ongoing Iraq war, and likely partly because of habituation.

People have simply heard the politicians talk about 9/11 so much that most people (though of course not all) now sort of tune them out and focus on other issues. Like the war, or the economy, or the huge laundry list of scandals perpetrated by this administration.

What does all this mean?

It means, quite frankly, that if the Republicans (and those interests that support them or benefit from their policies) want to continue to use fear successfully as a tool of political manipulation, they probably actually need another terrorist attack, preferably one on US soil. Something that makes a big boom, figuratively or literally.

This thought has been keeping me awake at night lately.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t believe that this is a Republican party campaign strategy. I am not accusing anyone of treason. There has been no attack yet, and I have know knowledge of actual facts about any plot.

What I’m saying is, that it would only take a few people with knowledge of terror management theory’s implications to see what “needed” to be done and to arrange for it to happen.

You may, at this point, be thinking, “Wait a minute. This is all well and good, but so far I haven’t heard anything that would suggest that people high up in the current administration or the Republican party are even aware of terror management theory. Isn’t this just something a bunch of ivory-tower social psychologists like to jawjack about? Where’s your evidence that any of the people you are talking about know anything at all about this?”

Here’s the thing:

Since 9/11, there has been a major increase in government funding for terror management research. Much if not all of that funding comes through the Department of Homeland Security, and various military officers and DHS officials have been briefed on the findings by the very university professors who are conducting the research.

How do I know this? Ah, that would be telling. But some of it, at least, can probably be confirmed through public sources - particularly information about research grants that have been made to fund the research. As for the briefings claim, well…let’s just say I have my sources, and leave it at that for now.

You can see why I am losing sleep at night: I don’t think the terrorists are the only ones we have to fear.

Hell, I don’t even think the terrorists are the most dangerous threat at the moment.

What might motivate otherwise loyal Americans to orchestrate a “terrorist” attack on their own country?

Money. Power.

Both of these are at stake, in huge amounts, at the moment.

My original mental doomsday scenario called for the attack to be a few weeks before the November election. Say, late September or early October.

But last night I got to thinking, what if manipulating the election results to ensure a favorable outcome weren’t your only goal?

What if you were trying to force measures further eroding our privacy and civil liberties through Congress?

What if you wanted an excuse to start bombing Iran?

Am I being paranoid?

We’re heading into a three-day weekend, a time when people will be pumped up with patriotic fervor. The day when we celebrate our country’s founding and the battle for our independence.

There will be all sorts of big events drawing thousands of people, all across the country. Baseball games, outdoor concerts, fireworks displays.

And large gatherings of people make really good targets for a terrorist attack.

Am I being paranoid?

I really, really hope so. Believe me when I say that nothing would make me happier than to be wrong on this.

I just hope that, if the worst does happen, if another attack does occur, that things will be a little different than they were after 9/11. That Congress won’t rush to sell out our remaining civil liberties, or allow us to be bulldozed into a war with Iran before the investigation into the attack is even finished. That the media will question the information being fed to them by those in power, instead of just mindlessly reporting it as truth. That whoever conducts the investigation looks not just at the Middle East, but also closer to home, when trying to establish the list of suspects and their motivations.

I think I’ll end on that cheerful note. Again, I really hope to be proven wrong in all of this. I’ll be really happy if on January 21, 2009, I’m writing a post about how I got all worked up over nothing.

As for this weekend, well, I don’t think I’ll be going to any baseball games, or large concerts, or fireworks shows. Maybe I’ll go for a drive out into the farmland surrounding us here in Redstatesville. See how the corn’s coming up. Get away from the city lights and lie on the hood of my car staring up at the sky, counting stars and dreaming of a world where I don’t feel the need to engage in the kind of paranoid speculation I’ve been doing here today.

-jane doe

Addendum: A new CNN poll out today (July 2) reports that “Americans’ concerns about terrorism have hit an all-time low for the post-September 11 era,” and goes on to say:

According to a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released Wednesday, 35 percent of Americans believe a terrorist attack somewhere in the United States is likely over the next several weeks.

The figure is the lowest in a CNN poll since the September 11, 2001, al Qaeda attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people.

All of which ties in with my comment above about Boy Who Cried Wolf Syndrome. If Americans have become less concerned with the threat of another attack, then repeated comments about 9/11 and the threat of future attacks are less likely to have the kind of impact at the polls that they did in 2004.

I’m just saying…

U.S. News and World Report reported today about the large number of international travelers who have been having their laptops and/or USB drives “temporarily” seized by US customs officials when entering or leaving the country. According to the article:

The extent of the program to confiscate electronics at customs points is unclear. A hearing Wednesday before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary’s Subcommittee on the Constitution hopes to learn more about the extent of the program and safeguards to traveler’s privacy. Lawsuits have also been filed, challenging how the program selects travelers for inspection. Citing those lawsuits, Customs and Border Protection, a division of the Department of Homeland Security, refuses to say exactly how common the practice is, how many computers, portable storage drives, and BlackBerries have been inspected and confiscated, or what happens to the devices once they are seized. Congressional investigators and plaintiffs involved in lawsuits believe that digital copies—so-called “mirror images” of drives—are sometimes made of materials after they are seized by customs.

…

The security value of the program is unclear, critics say, while the threats to business and privacy are substantial. If drives are being copied, customs officials are potentially duplicating corporate secrets, legal records, financial data, medical files, and personal E-mails and photographs as well as stored passwords for accounts from Netflix to Bank of America. DHS contends that travelers’ computers can also contain child pornography, intellectual property offenses, or terrorist secrets.

Excuse me, but what ever happened to probable cause? I agree that it makes sense to check electronic equipment before boarding a plane to prevent explosives from being smuggled onboard the aircraft. This is an entirely different level of intrusion, however, and one that I find difficult to justify.

When customs officials open a suitcase chosen at random from a group of incoming travelers, the intrusion is over within minutes if no contraband is found, and the person is free to go on their merry way.

But confiscating someone’s laptop for a few weeks? That can disrupt someone’s travel plans or completely defeat the purpose of taking the trip. And making a mirror image of the hard drive? That’s the general equivalent of making photocopies of every single page in a person’s planner. Think about all the personal information someone might have jotted down in the typical Franklin-Covey binder: credit card numbers, medical information, bank account PIN numbers, computer passwords. They can also find all your internet search history, so give a thought when you Google in foreign lands. Mirror imaging the drive can even give them copies of documents you think you deleted that haven’t been overwritten on the disc yet.

The good news, I guess, is that Congress is apparently holding hearings about all of this. The bad news? That doesn’t mean things will change any time soon. The Democrats have been showing a rather distressing lack of spinal material when it comes to standing up to the executive branch.

I’ve written before about disturbing things the government is doing in connection with our ability to travel freely to other countries. Things seem to be getting worse.

And I just don’t understand the relative lack of outcry over all this.

Actually, I do understand: people are scared of making themselves targets for this sort of treatment if they make waves. Just keep your head down, don’t make noise, and everything will be fine.

Too bad that’s a lesson I never learned. I wonder how thick my folder at the Department of Homeland Security is?

I find this all very troubling. Especially since I’ve got this real yearning to go elsewhere. See the world a bit, you know, before it’s all destroyed by global warming, war, and corporate exploitation.

Oh, well. It’s not like I can afford to travel, anyway, what with increasing fuel prices, the decreasing value of the dollar, and my mountain of student loan debt. Ah, the glamorous life of a grad student!

Just add it all to my list of reasons why Bush and Cheney really ought to be impeached.

-jane doe

I went to Congressman Dennis Kucinich’s web page today, hoping to find a copy of the articles of impeachment he has submitted to Congress. Instead, I found this, from today:

“WE WENT TO WAR FOR THE OIL COMPANIES” Kucinich Tells Congress
Demands Bush Administration and Oil Company Execs be Held Accountable

Washington, Jun 26 - US Representative Dennis J. Kucinich, in a speech to the House of Representatives today, tied the secret meetings of the Cheney Energy Task Force to the recent award of non-competitive oil contracts in Iraq and said that both the Bush Administration and the oil company executives who participated in those meetings in 2001 should be held criminally liable for an illegal war and extortion of Iraq’s oil.

“In March of 2001, when the Bush Administration began to have secret meetings with oil company executives from Exxon, Shell and BP, spreading maps of Iraq oil fields before them, the price of oil was $23.96 per barrel. Then there were 63 companies in 30 countries, other than the US, competing for oil contracts with Iraq.

“Today the price of oil is $135.59 per barrel, the US Army is occupying Iraq and the first Iraq oil contracts will go, without competitive bidding to, surprise, (among a very few others) Exxon, Shell and BP.

“Iraq has between 200 – 300 billion barrels of oil with a market value in the tens of trillions of dollars.  And our government is trying to force Iraq not only to privatize its oil, but to accept a long-term US military presence to guard the oil and protect the profits of the oil companies while Americans pay between $4 and $5 a gallon for gas, while our troops continue dying.

“We attacked a nation that did not attack us.  Over 4000 of our troops are dead.  Over 1,000,000 innocent Iraqis have perished. The war will cost US taxpayers between $2 - $3 trillion dollars. Our nation’s soul is stained because we went to war for the oil companies and their profits.  There must be accountability not only with this Administration for its secret meetings and its open illegal warfare but also for the oil company executives who were willing participants in a criminal enterprise of illegal war, the deaths of our soldiers and innocent Iraqis and the extortion of the national resources of Iraq.

“We have found the weapon of mass destruction in Iraq.  It is oil.  As long as the oil companies control our government Americans will continue to pay and pay, with our lives, our fortunes our sacred honor,” he concluded.

I have nothing to add right now, except (a) if you haven’t already done so, you should check out Naomi Klein’s book, The Shock Doctrine, which has just come out in paperback, and (b) I really, really think it’s time Bush and Cheney were impeached.

-jane doe

I was reading back over what I posted last night - something I really shouldn’t do because I always find things I would like to change - when I realized I left out something rather important in my review of War, Inc.

That is, the film’s impact on me.

Because, like all good satires, it did have an impact that lasted after I walked out of the theater. In spite of being absolutely hilarious at times, War, Inc. is, overall, a rather disquieting movie. This may account for some of the negative reviews, because at times you kind of feel like you’re laughing at a funeral. Gallows humor, I think it’s called.

I mean, here are all these absolutely absurd things happening up on the screen, and you can’t help but laugh, but in the pause after the laugh, you also can’t help but think, “Wait, this isn’t all that far removed from the shit that’s actually happening over in Iraq right now.”

It is a very disturbing feeling.

But that’s not entirely a bad thing. Because we should be disturbed by what is happening in Iraq.

It’s easy for a lot of people to ignore the war, the atrocities that are being committed in our names. Aside from our troops and their friends and families, most of us haven’t had to sacrifice much of anything because of the war. Yeah, we’re paying an obscene amount for gasoline at the moment, but that’s not because of the war. Gas is expensive because Congress hasn’t closed the Enron loophole that lets corporate executives game the system at our expense.

People slap magnetic ribbons on their SUVs and think they’re supporting the troops. Neocons say we can’t leave until we’ve secured “victory” (whatever that means this week), and think they’re being patriotic.

And all the while, people are dying in the name of the bottom line.

I saw Iraq for Sale when it came out on DVD, and it left me so angry I was literally shaking. The effect of War, Inc. was not as severe - probably because I got to release a lot of tension by laughing - but it left me with a definite feeling of needing to do something - march in protest, sign petitions calling for impeachment and war crimes trials for our alleged president, lead an angry mob waving torches and pitchforks up Pennsylvania Avenue, whatever - just something, anything to make this nonsense stop.

It’s a good feeling, I think, and one that more people need to experience.

So if you’re living in one of the cities where War, Inc., is showing, grab a bunch of friends and go see it. Heck, plan a road trip around it if you don’t live in one of those cities.

And then do something.

-jane doe

Finally got to see War, Inc., last weekend when I was in Chicago. The showing I saw was on Sunday afternoon, and at that hour, unfortunately, the theater was more empty than full. Still, a fine time was had by all, I think.

Looking around on the net, one sees that War, Inc., has gotten rather mixed reviews from mainstream sources, and I can only conclude that those people don’t get it.

Me? I loved it.

War, Inc. is subversive, rebellious, twisted, and, most importantly, funny. The filmmakers made their political and social points without being heavy-handed, and clearly had fun doing so. This is what a good satire should be like.

The film stars John Cusack (who also co-wrote and co-produced it) as hitman Brand Hauser. Hauser is hired by Tamerlane, a US-based corporation run by a former Vice President (Dan Aykroyd) which has just successfully invaded a country called Turaquistan in the first-ever entirely corporate-fought war, to kill a competitor who has the temerity to build an oil pipeline in his own country in competition with Tamerlane.

Whew. That was a lot of info to fit in one sentence.

Tamerlane is a rather deliberate hybrid of Halliburton and Blackwater, and any resemblance between Iraq and Turaqistan (or between Aykroyd’s character and Dick Cheney) is purely intentional, I’m sure.

Hauser’s cover on this assignment is that he has to act as the trade show host for Tamerlane, which is showcasing all the wonderful products the company makes to help rebuild the country…sort of…most of the products seem to be things like inflatable prisons, weapons, security devices, and artificial limbs. Does any of this sound familiar?

While on assignment, Hauser is aided by his super-efficient assistant, Marsha Dillon (played by sister Joan Cusack). The relationship between these two characters seems very reminiscent of the roles the two Cusacks portrayed in Grosse Pointe Blank, but it works in this movie, too.

Hauser also finds himself interacting with lefty reporter Natalie Hegalhuzen (Marisa Tomei), an about-to-be-married 18-year-old Middle East pop star named Yonica Babyyeah (Hilary Duff), her piggish husband-to-be, Ooq-Mi-Fay (I’ll leave it to you to figure out the piglatin translation), their entourage, and the voice of an OnStar-like guidance system (Montel Williams).

Mayhem ensues.

I’ll refrain from detailing the storyline more than I already have, because I don’t want to spoil it for anyone. Suffice it to say, there is sufficient plot excitement to keep the film moving along at a good pace, but probably no huge surprises as the story unfolds.

The performances from all the major actors are great. Cusack is again wonderful in the conflicted hitman/everyman role. Marisa Tomei, Ben Kingsley, and Dan Aykroyd all nailed their parts. And much to my surprise, Hilary Duff was great as Yonica, the Middle East’s Britney Spears. I’m not familiar with her earlier work, and I’d kind of assumed that her acting talent would be about on par with Britney Spears, as well, but she showed a great ability to disappear into the character - I really wouldn’t have recognized her if I hadn’t already known she was playing the role.

There’s a lot going on in this movie at any point in time, beyond the main focus of the scenes. The advertising signs scattered all over the place in Turaquistan were hilarious, and there was a lot of funny stuff that you would miss if you blinked. I’m really looking forward to getting this movie on DVD, so I can figure out some of the things that went by too fast on the screen to be appreciated.

The soundtrack is good, which is no surprise since Cusack has shown a real talent for pulling together nice soundtracks in earlier movies where he’s been involved in the production (e.g., the Grosse Pointe Blank soundtrack, which is awesome). A fitting selection of tunes for the big scenes, plus some original songs written by Paul Hipp for Yonica’s performances in the film, like her trade show number, I Want to Blow You…Up, which, as you might expect from its title, is heavy on the innuendo, hold the subtlety.

My overall recommendation on this movie is this:

If you are a neo-conservative, don’t bother. Either you won’t get it, or it will piss you off. Of course, from the absence of badly-spelled troll-like comments I receive on this blog, I assume not many neocons are reading this, anyway.

For everyone else: If you are sick of the Iraq war, if you are tired of the way the Bush White House is running this country for the benefit of its corporations instead of its citizens, go see this movie.

Make a little noise.

Get rowdy.

And don’t forget to VOTE in November.

-jane doe

This evening, I had originally planned to post a nice review of War, Inc., which I finally got to see when I was in Chicago last weekend. It really is wickedly funny, and all the more topical given yesterday’s announcement about certain American and British oil companies going back to work in Iraq on no-bid contracts (read about that here). I’ll have to write that review tomorrow, though. Sorry.

The simple fact of the matter is, I’m too angry at the moment to write a good review.

The House Democrats sold us out today, folks. There’s no other way to describe it. And in doing so, they’ve pushed us a bit closer to that blurry, indistinct line that separates our democracy from fascism.

That’s assuming we haven’t crossed that line already. I’m really not completely sure, since it’s never been precisely clear to me what the defining characteristics of fascism are. There certainly seems to be a lot of debate about that on the internet. And it’s not like any modern government or political party will announce that it is hoping to institute a fascist form of government anymore, not since World War II. Still, we’ve seen the Bush White House use a lot of tactics that seem to come out of the Hitler playbook. Yes, I know that remark is likely to bring comments about Godwin’s Law — or it would if any of you, my dear non-existent readers, ever left comments, anyway. I don’t care. Sometimes, the Hitler analogy is appropriate from a historical perspective, and it has been increasingly so as this administration’s tenure has progressed.

But I digress.

The Democrats have a controlling majority in the House of Representatives. It’s not like the Senate, where they can only claim to have a majority because Joe Lieberman is still caucusing with them (even if he doesn’t vote with them on anything). So they didn’t have to cave.

They didn’t have to give in on the so-called compromise FISA measure. which grants the president expansive powers to spy on us without warrants — our phone calls, our e-mails, our internet surfing habits.

They certainly didn’t have to give the telecoms immunity. How the fuck does that make us any more secure, I ask you?

Yet this is precisely what they have done today. In doing this, they are giving us government not of the people, by the people, and for the people, but of, by, and for the major corporations. And for Big Brother.

In doing this, they betrayed us. The American people.

And it’s leaving me wondering what to do now?

See, here’s the thing. I used to be this corporate attorney. Big law firm, big business deals, big money. Well, big money for the number of years I was out of law school, anyway — lots of people were making a lot more money than me. I wore designer suits, I ate in nice restaurants, and I had a lovely office in…well, you don’t need to know which city, and I don’t want to make it too easy to identify me, for reasons I’ve already discussed elsewhere in this blog.

At first, the work was real easy to rationalize. Most of the clients I did work for were non-profit corporations performing essential services. So there I was, on the side of the angels, right? But the reality was, they were in competition with for-profit corporations, and in order to continue their operations, they had to engage in some of the same practices that the for-profits did just to remain financially viable.

This was very disturbing to me.

I tried going in-house at an organization that I believed then and still believe now to be very ethically run, but the business aspects were still getting to me. And when I have trouble believing in what I’m doing, I do not perform at my best.

Seven years out of law school, I was completely burnt-out.

I decided to go back to grad school to re-tool for a new career. I figured I would get my PhD, and then I could start working with certain organizations to educate legislators at the state and federal level about what scientific research was telling us about the field, and what the implications of that were for making policy applicable to that field.

Seems like a good fit, right? See, I already speak lawyerspeak, and politicianspeak and bureaucratspeak are both really just dialects of that language. So I thought I could help translate the scientific research (another language of its own) for the people making the policy, so that we don’t end up with policy that is so at odds with what all the research is telling us about certain things. (And yes, I’m dancing around the field I’m studying in, as well as the field I concentrated on in law. I’m trying to remain anonymous, remember.)

But then I watch things like what happened today, with the Democrats caving in to the President and the telecoms, instead of upholding the constitution. And I think about how the Democratic leadership has made it clear that impeachment is off the table. And I look at all the ways that the Democrats could have stood up for us since the 2006 election — on the Iraq war, on the economy, on our civil rights, on health issues, on torture and habeas corpus and corruption and no-bid contracts and the use of the Department of Justice for political ends and… the list just goes on and on and on.

And I wonder, am I fighting the wrong fight?

Should I be working within the system to bring about change?

Or should I be trying to change the fucking system?

I just don’t know anymore.

Any suggestions?

-jane doe

No, wait. They’re all connected. I promise.

See, I was checking out the blogs this morning, and I came across a couple stories in rapid succession that seemed to me closely related.

The first was this story in the Denver Post about someone who claims to have video of a space alien peering into the windows of his home. The story includes a copy of the video — dark and somewhat grainy, but seeming to show a face with enormous eyes peering into a window, which the story helpfully tells us is eight feet off the ground. The story also informs us that the homeowner had set up a security camera because he suspected peeping Toms of looking in the windows at his teenage daughters, and instead caught footage of a space alien.

The second was this story on Politico.com (h/t to HuffPo) about Bill Clinton’s “enemies list”:

With Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign on the verge of defeat, Bill Clinton has been placing blame on enemies including a brazenly biased media that tried to suppress blue-collar votes, a powerful anti-war group that endorsed rival Barack Obama and weak-willed party leaders unable to stand up to either of these nefarious forces.

Now, I know what you’re saying, my dear, non-existent readers. “How can these two stories possibly be related?” But trust me — there is a connection in my warped little brain.

Let’s start with the space alien story, shall we? As you read the story, you find out that the guy who got the video was trying to see if there were peeping Toms looking into his house (thus explaining the videocamera pointed at a window). And you might think, “Okay, this seems unlikely, but the video isn’t obviously faked, so I’ll reserve judgment for the moment.”

But then, if you read a bit further into the article, you find out that the homeowner who captured the video images also “claims to have had more than 100 encounters with aliens” and asserts that he was abducted by extraterrestrials.

Suddenly you find yourself thinking, “Maybe this guy didn’t see any aliens. Maybe he’s just a complete nut[1].”

Because one chance unexplained occurrence from someone with no history of such claims might be legitimate, or at least worth exploring. But when you see someone who claims repeated encounters with aliens — when no one else of your acquaintance can make similar claims — you have to think that it’s a bit improbable, and that there is likely some other explanation, probably involving psychotropic meds.

It’s like the stranger you meet in a bar, who is ranting and raving about his ex-wife who (according to him) was a psychotic bitch-monster from hell.

Now, if you talk to this stranger for a while longer, he may provide evidence to support his claim. Maybe she really was a psychotic bitch-monster from hell. It happens.

On the other hand, a longer conversation may reveal that not only was his ex-wife a psychotic bitch-monster from hell, but so was the girl he was dating before he met his wife. And the girlfriend before her. And his mom. And his sister. And his secretary. And his boss. And his third, fourth, seventh, and tenth grade teachers. And…well, you get the idea.

You kind of have to start thinking, “It’s not the women who are the problem. It’s you, buddy.”

Which brings me back to the Clintons.

Throughout the race, they seem to have done nothing but blame and complain. It’s the media. It’s MoveOn.org. It’s black voters. It’s white males. It’s young voters. It’s sexism. It’s the caucus states. It’s the right-wingers. It’s the talking heads. And did I mention the media?

And I can’t help thinking, “Bill, Hillary, maybe it’s not the media. It’s not MoveOn.org. It’s not the Obama supporters. It’s not even the vast right-wing conspiracy.”

Hillary started out as the media-anointed candidate, considered all but a sure thing to win the Democratic nomination. For a long time, all the other candidates, Obama included, were being covered by the press as “also-rans”. Because who could possibly conquer the Mighty Clinton Fundraising Machine(tm)?

But at the end of the day, there were just more people backing Obama where they were needed, netting him more votes, more delegates, and more donations. And those people had a lot of different (and legitimate) reasons for backing Obama. Reasons that may have had little or nothing to do with the media, or MoveOn.org, or whatever.

Game over for Bill and Hillary.

If Bill and Hillary are smart and willing to be honest with themselves (if not anyone else), maybe, just maybe, they’ll take a long look in the mirror, and think, “What could we have done differently, that would have turned the nomination our way?”

But I doubt it. It’s much easier, after all, to blame everyone else than to admit that maybe you could have done something differently to win more voters.

On an only marginally related note, I still think Bush and Cheney ought to be impeached.

-jane doe

[1]“Complete nut” being the technical, psychological term, of course.

This is an open letter to any friends of Hillary Clinton out there.

It may be time to stage an intervention.

Clearly, the woman needs help to overcome her denial and see that her obsession with winning the presidency has become a problem not only for her, but also for her friends and family. And by “friends and family” I mostly mean the Democratic party – though I would imagine that Chelsea, at least, is getting rather tired of the whole dog and pony show by now, as well.

Yes, okay, fine, she had a strong showing in West Virginia last night. So what? West Virginia has, what, 28 delegates at the national convention later this summer? That’s not enough to change the race.

And she didn’t even win all of those delegates. Obama got 8. At this point, she would need to win, like, 90 percent of all remaining pledged delegates just to pull even with Obama. And that’s not even counting all the superdelegates who are now jumping onto the Obama bandwagon because they want to be seen as backing the winner while their vote still matters. Or the Edwards pledged delegates, who are likely to switch to the Obama column given the Edwards endorsement today.

At this point, all Hillary can hope to accomplish is to weaken the Democratic Party at a time when the party can least afford it.

And that’s why Hillary’s friends need to come together and gently, lovingly tell her to knock it the fuck off before she causes even more harm to her friends and family.

-jane doe

Paging George Orwell!

Wired blog Danger Room is reporting that Donald Rumsfeld is proposing creating an agency within the government for the purpose of promulgating propaganda. Sharon Weinberger, the author of the article, quotes Rummy as follows:

“We need someone in the United States government, some entity, not like the old USIA . . . I think this agency, a new agency has to be something that would take advantage of the wonderful opportunities that exist today. There are multiple channels for information . . . The Internet is there, pods are there, talk radio is there, e-mails are there. There are all kinds of opportunities. We do not with any systematic organized way attempt to engage the battle of ideas and talk about the idea of beheading, and what’s it’s about and what it means. And talk about the fact that people are killing more Muslims than they are non-Muslims, these extremists. They’re doing it with suicide bombs and the like. We need to engage and not simply be passive and allow that battle of competition of ideas.”

* * *

In Rumsfeld’s view, the free press can co-exist with government sponsored/produced/paid news. “It doesn’t mean we have to infringe on the role of the free press, they can go do what they do, and that’s fine,” says Rumsfeld. “Well, it’s not fine, but it’s what it is, let’s put it that way.”

Frankly, I am astounded that anyone who has ever been associated with the Orwellian nightmare that is our current administration would have the nerve to suggest a plan so blatantly ripped from the pages of Nineteen Eighty-Four. It screams to be called Minitrue, and should probably be referred to as such should this plan ever go anywhere.

Now I know, some of you are saying, “Well, shouldn’t the government be able to get its message out there to the masses?” And of course, the government has numerous ways of doing so: White House press briefings, photo ops, appearances by representatives of the administration on the Sunday morning talk shows, et cetera. That is kind of the point: if the government wants to get its side of the story out there, it has numerous legitimate means of doing so. Planting stories in the media — including alternative media like blogs and podcasts — without making clear that the story was written by some government agency instead of an at least nominally neutral reporter is just disturbing.

Hey, I know! The administration could start its own newspaper and blog, in order to get its unfiltered story out to the people. They could call it The Truth. Better yet, they could use that phrase’s Russian equivalent:

Pravda.

- jane doe

Okay, this should have gone up on Friday, but I was laughing too hard to type when I saw it. Apparently, the Bush apologists over at Faux News dislike the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Al Gore (along with a some other people at the UN) for their work to raise awareness about global warming. And really, did we expect anything else from the Faux News people? Of course not. But that’s not why I’ve been laughing so hard I won’t have to do ab exercises for a week.

No, the funny part is who the Faux Brain Trust people proposed as a more appropriate recipient…Gen. David Petraeus!

Strictly speaking, it was apparently NY Sun editor Seth Lipsky who made that suggestion to Faux’s Neil Cavuto, but still…the Nobel Peace Prize? To a general who is leading U.S. troops in a war that has gained nearly universal condemnation, both here at home and among our erstwhile allies? What are they putting in the water cooler over at the Faux Newsroom?

Of course, this is really more a reflection of Faux’s knee-jerk response to anything favorable reported about Al Gore, the man who should have been sworn in as our President back in 2001.

And for those keeping track, Gore has now won an Oscar, an Emmy, and a Nobel Peace Prize, in addition to the 2000 presidential election. Makes you wonder where we would be right now as a nation if he had been allowed to take office by the Supremes, doesn’t it?

And yes, for the record, I still think Bush and Cheney really ought to be impeached.

-jane doe

Okay, someone needs to take Bush aside and explain to him that he can’t start a new war until he’s finished the one he’s already got going. According to the Times in London (h/t to QuakerDave), the Pentagon has plans for “massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in three days.” The article further notes:

Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center, said last week that US military planners were not preparing for “pinprick strikes” against Iran’s nuclear facilities. “They’re about taking out the entire Iranian military,” he said.

Now, I realize that the Pentagon has all sorts of plans, for all sorts of possible scenarios. That is what they do. They try to develop plans for every plausible “what if” scenario so that if the worst happens and we need to mount some sort of military operation somewhere in the world, we’re not just doing it by the seat of our pants.

But this is really disturbing (as if Bush’s saber rattling with respect to Iran weren’t bad enough in itself). If the Pentagon has these plans to basically wipe out Iran’s entire military with airstrikes in a three day timeframe, and if people who are in a position to know about it are actually talking to the press about it, it suggests to me that this might well be our brilliant president’s plan — just have a massive bombing attack to wipe out their military and nuclear capabilities, and say, “Okay, that was fun. Have fun rebuilding your military and infrastructure for the next decade, Iran. We’ve got to get back to Iraq now. See ya!”

And hey, by the way, exactly how do they think they can accomplish all this in three days, with our military already stretched too thin? I know our Air Force can do some pretty amazing things, but Iran is several times the size of Iraq, with almost three times the population, a bigger military, and more resources. I really don’t see us taking out their entire military, along with their nuclear program, in three days using conventional weapons.

That suggests that the Pentagon plans — assuming they really do exist, of course — involve the use of nuclear weapons.

I really don’t want to contemplate the possibility of using nuclear weapons in a preemptive attack, particularly since the last preemptive war initiated by our president was sold to the American public (and the rest of the world) using manipulated intelligence of dubious provenance. Frankly, at this point, the president has no real credibility left. There is quite simply no way for me or anyone else not actually working in the intelligence field to know whether the magnitude of the threat posed by Iran is as great as the president claims. Therefore, the idea of using nuclear weapons in an attack against Iran, based upon any statement by this president about the threat that country poses, does not bear serious consideration by any thinking person.

Unfortunately, we don’t have a thinking person making the final decision on this matter. We just have Dubya.

Neither do I like to contemplate the likely reaction of other nations of the world if Bush were to launch such an attack. Bush has already done more to alienate our allies than any president in recent history, destroying international goodwill built up over decades by preceding administrations. Any first strike against an enemy that is not literally threatening to overrun us in the immediate near future using nuclear weapons would likely be viewed by other nations of the world as sufficient justification to launch a war - possibly a nuclear war - against us, here, on our own soil.

And I really, really don’t want to contemplate that.

Thus I will simply close by saying once again that I really think that Bush and Cheney ought to be impeached.

-jane doe

I’ve said it before, and I say it again. Keith Olbermann is a god. Once again tonight he hit one out of the park with one of his special comments.

Keith was reacting to two things in this special comment: (a) the alleged president’s recent surprise trip to Iraq, during which he admitted to now being willing to (and I swear that I am not making this up) “speculate on the hypothetical” of removing some (not all, just some) of our troops from Iraq, and (b) this article in the New York Times (h/t to Nicole Belle at Crooks and Liars) which includes excerpts from a Dead Certain, a new book by biographer Robert Draper, who managed to get half a dozen one-on-one interviews with the chimp in chief by casting the book he was writing as essentially the first draft of how history would interpret Bush’s legacy.

I have not read the book yet (just ordered it from Amazon — I’ll post a review later), but judging from some of the excerpts in the Times article, Bush is every bit as appalling in person in unguarded moments as I had previously suspected. Speaking about the ongoing debate about troop levels in Iraq, he actually told the biographer, “I’m playing for October-November…To get us in a position where the presidential candidates will be comfortable about sustaining a presence.” Playing, as if this were some sort of game and not hundreds of soldiers and civilians dying and suffering life-altering trauma.

Keith did an admirable job of ripping Bush a new one this evening, as he has so often with his special comments in the past. Tonight’s was particularly scathing. Crooks and Liars already has the video posted. Here are a few particularly choice remarks, transcribed as always by yours truly:

“And so he is back from his annual surprise gratuitous photo op in Iraq, and what a sorry spectacle it was. But it was nothing compared to the spectacle of one unfiltered, unguarded, horrifying quotation in the new biography to which Mr. Bush has consented.”

* * *

“And there it is, sir, we’ve caught you. Your goal is not to bring some troops home, maybe, if we let you have your way now. Your goal is not to set the stage for eventual withdrawal. You are, to use your own disrespectful, tone-deaf word, playing at getting the next Republican nominee to agree to jump into this bottomless pit with you, and take us into it with him, as we stay in Iraq for another year, and another, and anon.”

* * *

“Everything you said about Iraq yesterday, and everything you will say, is a deception for the purpose of this one cynical, unacceptable, brutal goal: perpetuating this war indefinitely. War today, war tomorrow, war forever! And you are playing at it. Playing! A man with any self-respect, having inadvertently revealed such an evil secret would have already resigned and fled the country. You have no remaining credibility about Iraq, sir.”

* * *

“Just over five hundred days remain in this presidency. Consider the dead who have piled up on the battlefield in the last five hundred days.

“Consider the singular fraudulence of this president’s trip to Iraq yesterday, and the singular fraudulence of the selling of the Petreus Petraeus report in these last five hundred days.

“Consider how this president has torn away at the fabric of this nation, in a manner of which terrorists can only dream in these last five hundred days.

“And consider again how this president has spoken to that biographer, that he is playing for October-November, that the goal in Iraq is, to get us in a position where the presidential candidates will be comfortable about sustaining a presence. And consider how this revelation contradicts every other rationale he has offered in these last five hundred days.

“In the context of all that, now consider these next five hundred days.

“Mr. Bush, our presence in Iraq must end. Even if it means your resignation. Even if it means your impeachment. Even if it means a different Republican to serve out your term. Even if it means a Democratic Congress, and those true patriots among the Republicans, standing up and denying you another penny for Iraq, other than for the safety and safe conduct home of our troops. This country cannot run the risk of what you can still do to this country in the next five hundred days, not while you, sir, are playing.”

Keith already said it, but just so there’s no doubt, allow me to state once again that I truly believe, based upon all the evidence to date of their various high crimes and misdemeanors against this country, that both Bush and Cheney ought to be impeached.

-jane doe

Addendum: There is a nifty extension that puts a countdown clock reflecting the number of days left in the Bush presidency (barring impeachment) right in that little status bar at the bottom of the browser window. It’s reassuring to see that number go down each day, I can tell you, though it is distressing to think how much more trouble Bush might cause in the time he has left in office. You can download the extension here.

A Florida paper (h/t to Wonkette) is reporting that one of its local battalions was “deployed” to Washington, D.C. to protect the capital against any air threat. Families are not going along with them, and are apparently only allowed limited opportunity to visit them, so this is not like a routine relocation of a unit. It reads more like they are being sent on a combat assignment.

I find this somewhat puzzling. I would have assumed we had troops routinely stationed at bases around D.C. for this sort of purpose and wouldn’t need to “deploy” a whole unit there in addition to those forces. Does anyone out there know whether this sort of thing is routine military procedure? I know our troops are stretched thin at the moment, but this still seems really weird, and I am just paranoid enough about the current administration to smell a rather large and odoriferous rat here…

At any rate, this does not change the fact that I really think that Bush and Cheney ought to be impeached.

-jane doe

Anonymous Liberal has a great discussion of the petitioners’ brief for the Supreme Court hearing on whether the detainees in Guantanamo are entitled to the protection of habeas corpus and due process under the constitution. Go read it!

-jane doe

Am I the only person who finds it really alarming when a former Reaganite warns that the current administration is perhaps months away from instituting a full-on police state? Much of what this guy is saying is consistent with some of my posts on terror management theory from last month. Nice to know I’m not the only person venturing into Paranoid Conspiracy Theory Land.

Can we please, please impeach Bush and Cheney now?

-jane doe

So it seems Alberto Gonzales has vowed to stay at the Justice Department to “repair its broken image.” Can someone please take the poor, deluded man aside and explain to him that the fastest and most effective way for him to repair the image of the Department of Justice would be to leave it? Pretty please?

And as you know, I really think that Bush and Cheney ought to be impeached.

-jane doe

Something in a comment I got last night made me fear that one of my major concerns/points in my previous posts on the subject of terror management theory was not coming across clearly, so I thought I’d take another stab at it.

My hope, in writing about terror management theory and its implications, is that by educating others about it I can help reduce its effectiveness as a tool of manipulation. I do not mean to imply that the threat of terrorist attack is not a legitimate one, nor am I deluded enough to believe that awareness of the theory will insulate people against its effects if, heaven forbid, another event of the magnitude of 9/11 were to occur at some time in the future. Rather, I seek to ameliorate its effects as a tool of political manipulation by our own leaders and voices in the media and blogosphere.

I fear some may also misinterpret my intent in making certain named and unnamed Republicans the villains of the piece. I do not believe that all, or even many, Republicans are evil. I know and respect many people who have been lifelong Republicans, even though I frequently disagree with them.

I have two main reasons for making Republicans the villains of the piece when I ventured into Paranoid Conspiracy Theory Land in yesterday’s posts. The first is that, as I already indicated, I believe that Bush, Cheney, Rove, and their ilk are already using the principles of terror management theory consciously and deliberately to manipulate the public, and that it would therefore be a much shorter trip for them to make the jump from merely hammering on 9/11 and the terrorist threat in speeches to manufacturing a situation that looked like a real terrorist threat of far more serious magnitude than pizza delivery guys attacking Fort Dix or a plot by intermitently homeless immigrants to blow up JFK airport by igniting jet fuel storage tanks miles away from the airport – particularly when something as serious as the next major national elections were at stake.

The second reason I chose to make the Republicans the villains of the piece is because, given the current political situation, I believe that they are the party most likely to benefit from such an attempt. The general public is very annoyed with our beloved president at that moment, and that annoyance has been transformed into much stronger support for Democratic Party candidates – we already saw some of this last November. By the time the next federal election rolls around, we will in all likelihood be another two years into the catastrofuck that Iraq has become, and may be at war on other fronts if Bush follows through on his saber rattling. (And by the way, has anyone else wondered how exactly he plans to back up those threats, given the current, over-extended state of our military? I can think of only two options: reinstituting the draft about six months ago, or using at least “tactical” nukes (if not the really big ones) to bomb Tehran into the stone age – a move that would probably be the kiss of death for our country on an international scale, completely alienating our few remaining allies and uniting everyone in the Middle East against us. But I digress.) The point being, the Republicans are the ones who would most need some sort of major attack on U.S. soil to turn public opinion their way in time to change the outcome of the election.

I also want to point out that even when I ventured into Paranoid Conspiracy Theory Land, I did not go so far as to think that Rove and Cheney, or any other members of my hypothetical evil back room cabal would actually plot a real attack against U.S. civilians. I frankly do not believe that they would do that – I cannot believe that, because if it were true, the implications for our democracy would be unthinkable. In my second scenario (the one where a nuclear weapon was actually detonated in downtown Los Angeles), they just made the mistake of seeking help in carrying out their attempt to scare voters from individuals with a hidden agenda who did want to kill a lot of innocents. Big difference.

Although there have been studies showing that mortality salience tends to make people in the aggregate (though not in all individual cases) more likely to support more charismatic and/or authoritarian candidates and policies, such politicians could theoretically arise in either party – though I tend to believe authoritarianism is more compatible with a Republican worldview than a Democratic one, at least as the two parties seem to be expressing their views through policies of late. [Addendum: I will acknowledge that this belief could be a side effect of my own biases, which are decidedly on the liberal end of the political spectrum. Except that I really don't think that's the case.]

And here is a big news flash for those who think that I am so blinded by my own political views that I would continue to follow a Democratic candidate using fear tactics to sway voters: if such a candidate did exist, and I became aware of him or her using such tactics the way certain Republican politicians and commentators are at present, I would call him or her to task for it, as well. It is the emotional manipulation and scaring of voters for political gain that I am objecting to here. I have targeted Republican politicians because they have been the ones blatantly engaging in this sort of behavior in recent years.

As I said in response to a comment last night, it is my hope that if members of the public are educated about terror management theory, they will become more conscious of deliberate attempts by politicians of either party attempting to use emotional manipulation to obtain votes, and thus better able to resist such attempts. Politicians of both parties really ought to be focusing on the issues facing our country at the moment in the course of their campaigning – and to their credit, many of the current crop of presidential candidates in both parties seem to be attempting to do just that. (Well, except for Giuliani, who can’t shut up about 9/11 – though that is perhaps understandable since it is public perception of his performance in the aftermath of that catastrophe that is keeping him viable against the other Republican frontrunners among likely Republican primary voters.)

Notwithstanding the foregoing, I really think that Bush and Cheney ought to be impeached.

-jane doe

So apparently our alleged president, in his infinite wisdom, has decided to begin a covert campaign to destabilize Iran. Obviously the fiasco in Iraq, the re-emerging war in Afghanistan, the Justice department scandal, the World Bank mess, and his battles with Congress aren’t enough to occupy his time, and he has decided to go looking for additional trouble on another front.

And how do I know about this covert campaign, you may ask? Because it was very helpfully reported by ABC News.

This, of course, has prompted howls of ungrammatical outrage from the steadily dwindling number of Americans who still support George Bush – witness the comments to the above-referenced story, where commenters called ABC News “traders” (one assumes the person meant traitors) and speak of their “tresonous [sic] actions”.

While I can understand the poorly articulated concerns of those who commented on the story, I disagree with their conclusions. There are actions that our government takes that clearly should be kept secret. Broadcasting details of troop movements during combat operations, for example, would put our troops and our entire strategy at grave risk. Barring some notorious exceptions, I think our press has generally been sensitive to this need for vagueness in reporting on ongoing operations.

On the other hand, when our leaders decide to take unauthorized action against a country with which we are not at war, hoping to destabilize its government in the face of very vocal protests by many Americans that we should not go looking for trouble with that country given our current commitments in the world arena, and a news organization finds out about it, I believe that circumstances justify a decision to report on that story.

Clearly, someone within the administration was concerned enough about Bush’s decision to feel that public disclosure was necessary to prevent a huge catastrophe. Just a few weeks ago, George Tenet came under strong criticism from many quarters for his decision not to quit as head of the CIA and go to the press in protest of Bush’s actions in the run-up to the Iraq war. Someone watching all that apparently concluded that they didn’t want a similar catastrofuck on their conscience with respect to Iran – and bless them for it.So am I angered by ABC News’ decision to run this story? No. I view them as the whistleblower in this instance, alerting us to yet another questionable action by this administration that is running amok at our expense. We cannot afford a war with Iran at this time, due in large part to Bush’s bungling of the Iraq situation. And frankly, I don’t trust the motives of anyone in the Bush administration anymore.

As our alleged president’s administration has lost the few remaining voices of dissent within it and Bush’s policies and public statements have become increasingly divorced from mainstream political views in the country, I have been inevitably reminded of a study I read about eight months ago on group deliberation and its effect on the individual members of the group in question.

The study, by David Schkade, Cass R. Sunstein, and Reid Hastie, compared two sets of groups asked to deliberate together on the issues of global warming, affirmative action, and civil unions for same-sex couples. One set of participants was drawn from the community of Boulder, Colorado – a city with a well-known liberal leaning. The other set of participants was drawn from Colorado Springs – a city as conservative as Boulder is liberal. Participants completed measures designed to assess their views on the three subjects prior to the deliberation, and again post-deliberation. Not surprisingly, there were significant differences between the Boulder and Colorado Springs groups prior to the deliberation, with the Boulder groups reporting scores indicating views associated primarily with the liberal viewpoint and Colorado Springs groups reporting views associated with the conservative viewpoint.

Now, according to the researchers, when groups containing diverse viewpoints deliberate about divisive issues together in an open manner where all parties are able to express their views, post deliberation views of the individual participants are generally closer to the group mean than their pre-deliberation views were. That is, people on both the liberal and conservative ends of the spectrum tend to moderate their views somewhat, bringing them closer to the middle.

Researchers in the Colorado study expected to see similar trends within each of the 5-person groups, at least with respect to the groups’ means – that is, people at the extreme ends in a given group would become less extreme and more centrist, at least as far as moving toward the center of that group’s spectrum of opinions.

Instead, what they saw, which they attributed to the relative lack of opposing views from the other end of the political spectrum within individual groups, was that the group means for Boulder and Colorado Springs became more extreme post-deliberation – that is, the Boulder groups were even more liberal, and the Colorado Springs groups were even more conservative than they were pre-deliberation. In the words of the study’s authors, “Deliberation thus increased extremism.”

Secondly, post deliberation, the groups showed much less diversity of opinion within the group. Pre-deliberation, the groups showed significant variation in opinion on the various issues discussed, but post deliberation “group members showed much more agreement, even in the anonymous expressions of their private views.” The authors concluded that “deliberation among like-minded people produced ideological amplification – an amplification of preexisting tendencies, produced by group discussion.”

Why does this concern me with respect to the current administration? Because over the last several years, anyone who has expressed even relatively minor disagreement with the alleged president’s views has left the administration – perhaps it would be more accurate to say that such dissenting voices have been forced out. And there are troubling reports that they are not even listening to outside voices at all – it has been reported elsewhere that Dick Cheney and other members of the administration demand that hotel TV’s be pre-tuned to the Faux News Channel so they don’t have to risk hearing even a moment of news coverage that might be upsetting to their increasingly out-of-touch world view.

Thus at a time when cooperation and collaboration among politicians with different views has become critical in order for any political movement to take place at all in DC (witness the increasingly acrimonious debate on war funding and demands for the removal of Gonzo if you don’t believe me), the alleged president is becoming even more committed to his increasingly extremist conservative agenda. He is even losing his connection with members of his own party, as Republican senators and representatives face the political reality of a Democratic controlled Congress and loss of support in their home districts.

Presidents should, as a matter of course, appoint at least some Cabinet members from opposing parties, or at least some that don’t agree with them. We have already had plenty of opportunity to learn the drawback of a rubberstamp Congress, but now research (in the form of the study I describe above) and empirical evidence (in the form of the increasingly extremist Bush administration) have shown us the danger of homogeneity of opinion within the executive branch.

-jane doe

If you haven’t already seen former Deputy Attorney General James Comey’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, Crooks and Liars has the video posted here. It is definitely worth watching — get yourself some popcorn first. It actually forced me to reconsider (slightly) my opinions about Former Attorney General John Ashcroft. Seriously. When someone makes the inevitable movie about the catastrofuck this administration has become, the scene Comey describes will feature prominently in it. Go watch it. Now.

-jane doe

Yes, they found him guilty, on four out of five counts. Proving that occasionally, the jury system works in this country. Really, after all the testimony, was there any doubt that he wouldn’t be found guilty on at least one count? I don’t think so.

But the question is, now what? Everyone’s like, well, Rove this, and Cheney that, but are there going to be any consequences to either of those alleged gentlemen as a result of all this? I suspect not. Just a lot of sound and fury, which in the end accomplishes nothing. Sad, yes, but true.

In a just world, Cheney and Bush would both be impeached for their repeated, flagrant violations of the Constitution and their crimes against humanity (and yes, I have decided to use that term for their authorization of torture and other misdeeds), and they would be removed from office. But in the current environment, I don’t see it happening. I want it. I’ll scream at the top of my lungs that it should happen. But again, that is just more sound and fury.

I tell myself that the great big wheel-o-karma will eventually come swinging back around and whap them all upside the head — and I will allow that perhaps we are starting to see a bit of that already. But will true justice be served? And what would true justice look like, for these bastards who have stolen our civil liberties, violated the laws of man, waged an unjustified war that has resulted in the deaths of thousands of our own citizens and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, most of them civilians, and brought shame upon our nation? Is there a form of justice that can be administered in this lifetime that is sufficient to offset the crimes this administration has committed against our own citizens and the citizens of other countries?

It’s enough to make those of us of different spiritual/religious/philosophical bents begin to appreciate some of the appeal of the Christian notion of a hereafter where the good are rewarded and evildoers are punished in a manner that is suited to their crimes. The ancient Greeks told stories of Tantalus and others, condemned to eternal tortures that reflected the appalling nature of their acts. Dante wrote of the Inferno and the Purgatorio. These notions of punishment that far exceed what we mere mortals can do seem somehow fitting for the catastrofuck our leaders have wrought.

But then I wonder, what punishment for us, the American people, for failing to stop the bastards once the nature of their misdeeds became clear? Perhaps having to live with them as our leaders is our punishment? Do we not deserve to be shunned by the civilized nations of the world, for allowing such conditions to fester? I speak out, I write letters, I call members of Congress, but I feel as if I should be doing more — that I owe it to the other people of the world who are being harmed by our current administration’s actions.

And yet tomorrow, I will go to work, and to classes, and do the daily tasks of life that we all do. I will bemoan the state of the world with my co-workers and my fellow students. My day will be filled up by the little day-to-day things that seem to take up all my time, and at the end of the day I will once again wonder, what could I have done today that would help to fix things? And I will again berate myself for not having done something more concrete, and maybe hate myself just a little bit more.

Against all that, finding Scooter Libby guilty of a few relatively minor crimes really doesn’t seem all that important…

-jane doe