political designs

Apparently Dr. Bill Frist is willing to do anything to get back into the good graces of the right wing leadership. After a number of political missteps, including misdiagnosing Terry Schiavo via videotape and angering the right wing by endorsing the federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, Frist is apparently willing to embrace pseudoscience in an attempt to preserve his conservative credentials.

According to the AP, the good doctor has "said 'intelligent design' should be taught in public schools alongside evolution."

Over at the Onion, they are on the same page as Frist and they make the case that the theory of gravity is not as airtight as it could be and recommend some reasonable modifications to the scientific literature.

KANSAS CITY, KS—As the debate over the teaching of evolution in public schools continues, a new controversy over the science curriculum arose Monday in this embattled Midwestern state. Scientists from the Evangelical Center For Faith-Based Reasoning are now asserting that the long-held "theory of gravity" is flawed, and they have responded to it with a new theory of Intelligent Falling.

sheehan's enemies

I've always enjoyed reading Frank Rich's columns in the New York Times. I was especially glad when they moved him from the Arts and Leisure section to the Sunday Op/Ed section.

Anyway, I figured that this woud be an interesting column to link to because, in it, he basically says what I said about Sheehan in my most recent post a few days ago. Don't I feel prescient?

Once Ms. Sheehan could no longer be ignored, the Swift Boating began. Character assassination is the Karl Rove tactic of choice, eagerly mimicked by his media surrogates, whenever the White House is confronted by a critic who challenges it on matters of war. The Swift Boating is especially vicious if the critic has more battle scars than a president who connived to serve stateside and a vice president who had "other priorities" during Vietnam. . . .

True to form, the attack on Cindy Sheehan surfaced early on Fox News, where she was immediately labeled a "crackpot" by Fred Barnes. The right-wing blogosphere quickly spread tales of her divorce, her angry Republican in-laws, her supposed political flip-flops, her incendiary sloganeering and her association with known ticket-stub-carrying attendees of "Fahrenheit 9/11." Rush Limbaugh went so far as to declare that Ms. Sheehan's "story is nothing more than forged documents - there's nothing about it that's real."

the summer of sheehan

The whole Cindy Sheehan saga is truly amazing to me. I can imagine few actions more courageous and self-sacrificing than hers.

Of course, as with any other single individual, I don't necessarily agree with every statement that comes from her mouth, but I do think that the anti-war movement is incredibly lucky to have found such a sincere and compelling spokesperson who is neither a Hollywood actor or a musician.

For some reason, this country's right wingers continue to shoot themselves in the foot in an attempt to "deal" with her though.

To begin with, if Bush had any sense whatsoever, he'd have called her in for a private meeting days ago. The president could have been polite, sincere, and resolute with her and he'd have walked away scoring mucho political capital. Instead, he's stonewalled her and allowed the chorus around her to grow.

Meanwhile, the right-wing media has questioned her motives and accused her of telling a fraudulent story, (gasp!) changing her opinion and colluding with or being a pawn of fanatical left-wing organizations and individuals like (bigger gasp!) moveon.org and (biggest gasp!!!) Michael Moore.

First off, changing your mind is no crime, sin, or mistake. In fact, the administration might do well to consider this strategy someday.

Secondly, Cindy Sheehan is a regular person, a mom whose son died in a war that she did not agree with. Noone could have predicted how this story was going to play out. Just as they did with the probably illegal smear tactics of administration critic Joe Wilson, the right wing machine is trying to find a way to bring down the messenger, in an attempt to draw attention away from the message.

Sheehan has allied herself with these anti-war groups and individuals on the basis of their opposition to the war. I hate to sound elementary, but just because you agree with someone about one issue that doesn't mean that you agree with them about every one.

In her most recent post to the Huffington Post blog, Sheehan writes:

Even after my repeated attempts to keep the focus of my protest on the war, the Drudge Report and others continue to try to make the issue about me. But I am not the issue. The issue is a disastrous war that's killing our sons and daughters and making our country less secure. They attack me because they can no longer defend this war.

I've come to Crawford to bring to the president's doorstep the harsh realities of a war he's been trying so hard to avoid. But no matter what they say or how many shotguns they fire or how many crosses they destroy, they're not going to stop me from speaking out about a war that needlessly killed my son.

a poorly planned choice

When you choose to go to war, your timing should be based on well-made plans. Considering that, by most accounts, this administration was hoping to go to war with Iraq within days after 9/11, you'd think they'd get the pre-war planning right.

This AP story says that the State Dept. warned otherwise prior to our entry into Iraq.

WASHINGTON - The State Department warned U.S. Central Command before the invasion of Iraq of "serious planning gaps" for postwar security, according to newly declassified documents.

In a memorandum dated Feb. 7, 2003 — one month before the beginning of the Iraq war — State Department officials also wrote that "a failure to address short-term public security and humanitarian assistance concerns could result in serious human rights abuses which would undermine an otherwise successful military campaign, and our reputation internationally."

No plan for war is ever perfect. However, you'd think that planners would do all that they could to eliminate potential problems, especially predictable ones. To me, it appears that these documents show that, in its thirsty rush for war, this administration did not do so.

If the invasion of Iraq were an emergency necessity, these oversights might be forgiveable; since it was not, they are not.

journalistic culpability

Although Atrios created the link that I originally followed to find this story, I have highlighted different portions of it, so I linked to the actual article as well.

In this article from Harold Meyerson of the American Prospect, the writer makes the case that the press is more than a little culpable for the "mistakes" that have been made thus far in both the run-up to and the the actual prosecution of the war.

For its war in Iraq, the Bush administration relied on and benefited from the cheerleading of a group of pundits and public intellectuals who, at every crucial moment, subordinated the facts on the ground to their own ideological preferences and those of their allies within the administration. They refused to hold the administration’s conduct of the war and the occupation to the ideals that they themselves professed, or simply to the standard of common sense. They abdicated their responsibilities as political intellectuals -- and, more elementally, as reliable empiricists.

They went far beyond just making the kinds of mistakes that pundits make … In the information age, wars are not made by governments alone. This is especially true of wars of choice. When America has been attacked -- at Pearl Harbor, or as on September 11 -- the government needed merely to tell the people that it was our duty to respond, and the people rightly conferred their authority. But a war of choice is a different matter entirely. In that circumstance, the people will ask why. The people will need to be convinced that their sons and daughters and husbands and wives should go halfway around the world to fight a nemesis that they didn’t really know was a nemesis.

The delusions for which they were apologizing weren’t only the administration’s; they were their own as well. There was an odd sort of integrity to their dishonesty; they believed (most of them did) all the theories that justified the war. But they didn’t present these theories as theories. They presented them -- misrepresented them -- as facts.

Yet by some curious code of Beltway etiquette, the war hawks are still sought out for their judgments on war and peace, geopolitics, and military and political strategy. They are, in varying degrees, the journalistic equivalents of Donald Rumsfeld -- authors of disaster, spared from accountability, still bewilderingly in place.

'w' is for women . . . in the kitchen?

Over at the New Republic, Jason Zengerle points to great gains for women in general thanks to the first lady's tireless efforts and bold successes.

Laura Bush's request that her husband appoint a woman to replace Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court fell on deaf ears. But she was able to strike a blow for her gender when she was given the final say on filling another crucial post--that of White House chef. On Sunday, the White House announced that the first lady had selected Cristeta Comerford, an assistant White House chef since the mid-'90s, for the top job. Comerford is the first woman to ever hold the prestigious culinary post.

impending deja vu

Although the Wilson/ Plame/ Novak/ Rove/ Miller scandal may have retreated from the headlines, look for its return in the fall.

The beauty of this situation is that it is a legal matter and not a political one. It doesn't matter what polls or politicians say; what matters is the ruling from the grand jury.

Anyway, in the meantime, here's a run-down of the administration officials implicated thusfar.

clinton's greatest gift

Rachel Maddow, one of my very favorite real liberals on television, is the only good thing about Tucker Carlson's low-rated new tv program. She alone is worth watching the show for.

Anyway, in this exchange with Monica Crowley about some ridiculous Clinton-approved jazz cd, Maddow's comments on Clinton's legacy :

MADDOW: I think. Well, Clinton hasn‘t been out of office very long. I think that his legacy remains to be—remains to be seen, and it is being fought out tooth and nail. I am to the left of the Clintons, as you know. You know me well enough to know this...

CROWLEY: Yes.

MADDOW: ... to know this now, and I‘m no huge Clinton fan. But thing that I think the thing the Clintons have given to American politics are the Clinton haters. And I think they the Clinton haters are some of the most amusing things in politics, and you have a little bit of the Clinton hater in you. I have seen it happen.

CROWLEY: Deny, deny, deny.

MADDOW: It‘s true. But I mean, no other president would have a group of people come out and try to build counter libraries in the same town because they thought the Clinton library was a lie-brary.

"israel hopes gaza pullout will end bashing"

Rarely have I read something as ludicrous, short-sighted, and devoid of historical context as this AP story on Israel's hopes for the Gaza pullout.

On the day that Israel started its pullout from Gaza, U.N. envoy Dan Gillerman told a news conference Monday that "it is time for the United Nations to acknowledge Israel's actions" and to show that it not only supports the pullout "but is doing something to demonstrate that support."

"We therefore hope that in the United Nations there will be no more business as usual as far as the Middle East is concerned, no more business as usual as far as Israel is concerned, no more Israel bashing, no more ongoing resolutions which keep repeating themselves time after time after time," he said.

Although I understand that this quote comes from the a UN envoy and not the author, the implication of the article seems to be that the UN has behaved antagonistically with regard to Israel for no other reason than the fact that they are Israel. Regardless of how fair or unfair one believes that the UN has been to Israel, this outrageous claim is demonstrably false.

a momentous occasion

Both symbolically and literally, the Israeli pull-out of Gaza is an incredible thing. Ethan Bronner talked about its meaning in a column in the Sunday New York Times:

FOR those who long considered it folly to settle a handful of Jews among hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the decision to remove them starting this week seems an acceptance of the obvious. What possible future could the settlers have had? How could their presence have done the state of Israel any good?

But for those, like Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who created and nurtured the settlements, the move to dismantle them is something very different. It is an admission not of error but of failure. Their cherished goal - the resettlement of the full biblical land of Israel by contemporary Jews - is not to be. The reason: not enough of them came.

As far as I am concerned, it is refreshing to see a government both acknowledge that the present situation is untenable and to actually move forward with concrete steps to do something about it (even if it does seem to have occured decades too late).

However, the Gaza pullout is definitely no kind of panacea for Israeili-Palestinian relations either. Not only does it leave open the issue of what is to be done about those settled in the West Bank, but it has made domestic relations among settlers and authorities very problematic. We'll see what happens now that the deadline for pullout has expired.

In my opinion, this is definitely a step forward, but I just fear that the distance travelled thusfar is minute in comparison to what must be undertaken to reach the end of this road.

biden's advice

I was away on vacation this weekend so I'm running a little behind.

I saw Meet the Press this morning and Joe Biden continues to impress, offering this comparison about the current defense secretary:

Imagine if Secretary Rumsfeld was the CEO of a corporation. These guys talk about how they came from business backgrounds. He'd be fired by now. The idea that we are at this moment, with this headline saying "U.S. Struggles to Get Soldiers Updated Armor," is absolutely irresponsible. And I realize all the problems. If you read the article, it goes back two and a half years and the mistakes consistently being made. And I just--I don't get it. I think Rumsfeld should get his notice on Monday morning . . . .

I don't understand the president's willingness to continue to follow the advice of a man who has not been right on a single major piece of advice he's given the president since the statue of Saddam has fallen in that circle on that fateful day over two and a half years ago.

Theoretically, this sounds like good advice, but, really, who would replace him? Is there anyone in the world who wants Rumsfeld's job at this point? And if they are crazy enough to want it, shouldn't that alone disqualify them from having it?

9/11 anniversary hoedown cancelled

Apparently, someone in the administration has some taste and decided to officially eliminate the aforementioned bash.

Luckily for those who were excited, the march and the concert will still occur; they just won't be officially tied to one another. Really, who could resist Clint Black?

Kos has the info.

bad news for everybody

According to today's New York Times, Iraq's leaders did not meet the deadline for the new Iraqi constitution.

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 15 - The Iraqi political process descended toward paralysis on Monday, when leaders failed to meet the deadline for completing the new constitution and voted to give themselves another week to resolve fundamental disagreements over the future and identity of this fractious land.

Several of the leaders said the disagreements, revolving around Islam, oil and the distribution of political power, grew sharper and more numerous as the day dragged on. Some said they were pessimistic that such vast differences could be resolved at all, much less in seven days.

"The differences are huge, and there is not enough determination from the political leaders to solve the problems," said Saleh Mutlak, a Sunni leader in the negotiations. "Almost 50 percent of the constitution is not finished yet."

When read in conjunction with Frank Rich's excellent, but disturbing Sunday column, this setback seems all the more problematic.

Meanwhile, Senators Biden and McCain are calling for more troops to be sent to Iraq. None of this is what the Bush Administration or the American people were hoping to hear.

I don't know about you, but this all sure makes me wish that I had been wrong about the war to begin with. Sometimes it sucks to be correct.