Ivan Awful Feeling

... about this one.

On the other hand, considering the people facing it...

... Ivan idea most will survive.

Those of you who stand in the path of this thing will be in my thoughts in the next 48 hours or so. Stay safe.

Steve
   PermaLink     

Sticker Shock

Timothy Noah adds to his ongoing collection of stories of people fired for expressing their political beliefs:

One of this column's various mandates is to keep track of people who get fired from their jobs solely for holding certain political beliefs. Firing a person because you don't like his or her politics runs contrary to just about everything this country stands for, but it is not against the law.

By now, the case of Lynne Gobbell, fired from her job at Enviromate (find your own link; I'm not advertising for them) for driving to work in a car sporting a Kerry-Edwards sticker in the window, is famous. There's even a happy ending: John Kerry himself phoned Gobbell and offered her a job on the campaign, which she accepted. Noah has links to his own posts on other people's similar misfortunes in past years; those people were not usually as fortunate as Ms. Gobbell.

This is one of those cases in which even the ACLU is powerless: it's simply not illegal for a private-sector employer to fire someone for their politics. I'm not qualified to speak to the legal issues involved, but I urge everyone, employers included, to think about what such an action means. Pursued to its illogical extreme, the practice of employing only workers of the bosses' own political persuasion (excepting, of course, on political campaigns themselves) not only results in a balkanization of the workplace along partisan lines, but also risks the whole economic fabric of America. In my line of work, there is no shortage of Republicans; I suppose I am expendable from a partisan standpoint. But what about factory line workers, printers, telecom repair and customer support workers (those who are still in America), and others on whom those oh-so-Republican bosses depend every day? Are they all Republican? I don't think so!

If every Democratic worker quit work tomorrow, the nation would grind to a halt. The same is true of Republicans. Can't live with 'em; can't live without 'em... the principle is clear to just about all Democrats at least, if not to some Republicans. But that unavoidable interdependency is why this practice must stop immediately. And if anyone working for my little business disagrees, I'll fire 'em right away! OK, OK, that's not much of a threat: I'm a one-man business...

In the past, I have worked contracts in the oil business, where I was often the token liberal in the department. I've often subcontracted through a lifelong friend, an excellent IT professional who is also a Republican, for companies as diverse as scrap metal dealers and NASA. I've worked for a nutrition research company whose owner was almost certainly a Democrat. I've worked for the local Planned Parenthood; guess which way their managers probably vote. And I'm working right now for a couple of companies that do dealer-to-dealer trading information; I don't really know, but I suspect their owners select the "R" column when they vote. Not one of these employers has ever even remotely hinted that I, as a contractor, should vote the way they do, or refrain from politicking in public. And that's precisely as it should be. It's an American thing, y'know?

Steve
   PermaLink     

Juanita Jean Herownself

Juanita, a.k.a. Susan DuQuesnay, proprietor of The World's Most Dangerous Beauty Salon, Inc., spoke last night at the regular meeting of Harris County Democrats (the club, not the Harris County Democratic Party). Juanita is as delightful in person (and as astringent toward her "congressvarmint" Tom DeLay) as she is on her web site. If you're not reading Juanita's site, you're missing a rare opportunity in this day and age: a chance to laugh about politics at the same time as you get your political red meat, or in my case, raw tofu (yecch! either way). Recently, Juanita has been writing about DeLay's recent receipt of some sort of award... Golden Shower, Golden Sprinkle, ah, I remember now, Golden Eagle Award... that appears to come from the local Boy Scouts but really doesn't. Read her site; I'm sure you'll become a regular visitor to The World's Most Dangerous Beauty Salon. (Come to think of it, Tom DeLay is indeed enough to curl your hair!)

Steve
   PermaLink     

Bill Howell Does Bob Dylan

The always excellent Bill Howell, former chair of the Texas Democratic Party, offers his parody of Bob Dylan's "Maggie's Farm":

I ain't gonna vote for Dubya's scam again. No, I ain't gonna vote for Dubya's scam again. I queue for unemployment, In a line out in the rain, With nothing for enjoyment But the other fellow's pain. My job? It left on the outsourcing train. I ain't gonna vote for Dubya's scam again.      ...

Read the rest (several more verses) on Howell's site, linked above.

Steve
   PermaLink     

Iraq And Ruin

I haven't posted on Iraq lately. How are things going over there? Why, haven't you been listening to Mr. Bush?   Things   are   going   just   great   in   Iraq!

Last Friday evening I attended the local memorial for the thousand (and more) American soldiers killed in Iraq since the beginning of this war. The vigil was very moving. The candelarias, one for each dead soldier, lined Main Street for a goodly portion of a mile. I am pleased to report that the people who gathered at Mecom Fountain for the vigil also did not neglect to mention both the American wounded (see one of the articles linked above) and the vast number of Iraqi civilians dead. There were many familiar faces among the mourners, including blogger Elizabeth W. of Texans Against Bush Unite, and quite a number of my colleagues from my musician days. (Musicians seem to prefer peace... funny thing about that.)

I believe we have a choice. We can elect Kerry and begin the long process of removing ourselves and undoing such damage as can be undone... not much, I fear... or we can see this process repeated over decades, probably beginning with Iran.

How many years? How many wars? How many dead? To some extent, it is your choice.

Steve
   PermaLink     

An Act Of...

... um, Nature?

This is apparently the effect of Hurricane Frances on a Baptist church in Cocoa Beach. According to SpinDentist of The All Spin Zone, this church is known locally for preaching against gays and against choice.

Now personally, I detest the phrase "an act of God" used to mean "a natural disaster." But unlike the practitioners of some religions, I'm the first to admit that maybe I've got it all wrong. Draw your own conclusions... I retort, you deride.

Steve
   PermaLink     

Sorry, No

No special post today. Plenty of 'em are available elsewhere, though. Happy birthday to Kane and Kos!

Steve
   PermaLink     

Celebrate!

Charles2 celebrates the first blogiversary of his excellent political blog, The Fulcrum. Please go and wish him well!

And... a day early, so it won't get lost in everything else that happens tomorrow... please wish humorist, blogger and all around good person Mad Kane a happy birthday! While you're there, enjoy her latest bit of verse, "W" Stands For What?

---

I'll be working today and out of pocket for part of tomorrow. Amuse or enrage yourselves by reading the excellent blogs you see listed (where else) on the left.

Steve
   PermaLink     

Sleazy And Despicable

Al Gore calls it as he sees it:

The claim by Bush and Cheney that the American people must give them four more years in office or else be 'hit hard' by another terrorist attack is a sleazy and despicable effort to blackmail voters with fear.

I'd just like to add something to Gore's statement:

It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States.

Damned straight, Vice Preznit Cheney. Who occupied the preznitcy on 9/11/2001? Who didn't read the 8/6/2001 security memorandum? Who ignored Osama bin Laden despite warnings? Who gave their Saudi buddies a break, a quick, free ride out of the country when no one else could fly? Who continues to fail to protect ports, airports, refineries and nuclear power plants? Who is breaking the back of our military in pursuit of preemptive imperialist adventures that contribute nothing to our nation's security and indeed endanger it? Who? Who?

It's absolutely essential that ... on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice ...

Steve
   PermaLink     

Guarded Optimism - Bush Busted

UPDATE: Josh Marshall has much, much more. Start here and work your way forward.

---

After years of rumors, Bush is now officially busted for his Guard record. You can follow either a Rather weak-kneed CBS effort on 60 Minutes tonight, or a rather more robust Boston Globe article. Will our broadcast media... the source of "news" for the vast majority of Americans... cover this? Maybe so: it does have some element of the sensational about it, and that's what they really care about. My take: it can't hurt; it might help. My hope: live by the lie, die by the truth.

Now can we please move the campaign on to present-day issues such as what I paid at the gas pump last time, what my monthly medical insurance bill is, where my next contract job will come from, whether my older friends who depend on a genuine, non-privatized Social Security and Medicare are about to be stiffed, whether I'm going to be arrested and held as an enemy combatant for writing this blog, etc.?

Steve
   PermaLink     

Diebold, With A Vengeance

(Yeah, I know it's pronounced like "Dee," but I couldn't resist, and besides, I am pretty sure Jeanne has used that headline before me.)

Via Tristero, we learn that Diebold's assets are being sued by the state of California:

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California Attorney General Bill Lockyer said on Tuesday he would sue electronic voting machine maker Diebold Inc. (NYSE:DBD - news) on charges it defrauded the state with false claims about its products.

Secretary of State Kevin Shelley has said Diebold deceived California with aggressive marketing that led to the installation of touch-screen voting systems that were not tested or approved nationally or in California.

Lockyer's office issued a statement noting he has authority to intervene in and take over false claims cases involving vendors to state.

     ...

California in April set tough new standards for electronic voting by ordering new security measures for e-voting machines, and California's Secretary of State called for a criminal probe into Diebold, the state's largest e-voting machine supplier.

Between the previous post and this one, I'm coming to the conclusion I live in the wrong state... Gropinator or no Gropinator. Meanwhile, here in Texas, the manufacturers of our eSlate voting systems continue to display a video testimonial... i.e., a commercial... by our Harris County clerk, Beverly Kauffman, linked from the main page of their Hart InterCivic web site. Conflict of interest, anyone?

Steve
   PermaLink     

The Freeway Blogger...

... is at it again:

A hundred new signs, they say. Go see for yourself. Or if you don't live in L.A., visit the web site.

Steve
   PermaLink     

Profiled!

Your vehicle, not your person. At a fast food joint, not a police traffic stop. Still... is it just me, or does this bother anybody else?

PITTSBURGH - Do you want fries with that? Never mind, we already know.

A Pittsburgh startup, HyperActive Technologies, is testing technology at area fast-food restaurants designed to give kitchen workers a good indication of what customers want before the hungry souls even get close enough to place an order.

By this time next year, HyperActive Technologies expects to have in place software that keys on the type of vehicle entering the parking lot to determine whether the customers they bear are inclined to order, say, a burger over a chicken sandwich.

The system, known as "HyperActive Bob," is already in place in several restaurants around Pittsburgh in a primitive form: It tells employees when they are about to get busy, even how much food to put on the grill.

The system uses rooftop cameras that monitor traffic entering a restaurant's parking lot and drive- through. Currently, the system is all about volume: If a minivan pulls in, there's apt to be more than one mouth to feed.

     ...

Well, OK, it isn't quite Big Brother, yet. But when do they start pointing the cameras at license plates? Better predictive value, you know, and I'm pretty sure the technology already exists. The whole thing is reminiscent of the ACLU video of a certain pizza order you may have seen recently. If you haven't seen it, you should... it's funny, exasperating and thought-provoking.

Excuse me; now I'm hungry for fast food...

Steve
   PermaLink     

For The Thousand

(With apologies to William Butler Yeats.)

An American Soldier Foresees His Death I know that I shall meet my death A world away from my home state. Yet Mr. Bush will spare no breath For me: I do not share his hate. My country's what I would defend, But why we're here, I am not sure. Saddam's demise is terror's friend, And leaves my nation less secure. No lonely impulse of delight Drove to this nightmare in the heat: Where my commander says, I fight; What Halliburton serves, I eat. Not fully armed, I'll hit the road, And, soon enough, The Thousand join; For empire has our young blood flowed, For oil... and Mr. Bush's coin. - SSB

How many thousand more?

Steve
   PermaLink     

Labor Day - Labor Blog

Welcome the Labor Blog to our neighborhood! Labor lawyer Nathan Newman is a familiar name to those who follow labor issues. A longtime author of his own blog, Newman has started a group blog together with some other (to me less familiar) writers on labor issues. The new blog looks pretty skeletal at the moment, but if Newman's past efforts are any indication, that won't be the case for long.

Meanwhile, live, from Houston, TX, your resident member of AFM Local 65-699 wishes you a great Labor Day!

Steve
   PermaLink     

BushCo Raises Medicare Premiums

This is mostly for the record. It is all over the blogosphere and the mainstream press, but I feel a need to add my own mark:

Citing Higher Costs, U.S. Plans Rise in Medicare Premium
By GARDINER HARRIS
Published: September 4, 2004

WASHINGTON, Sept. 3 - A day after President Bush heralded his efforts to help the elderly cope with increased medical expenses, federal officials announced the largest premium increase in dollars in the Medicare program's history, raising the monthly expense by $11.60 to $78.20.

The increase, which amounts to 17 percent, results largely from increased payments to doctors and reflects rising medical expenses generally, officials said. The rise has nothing to do with a program that will start in 2006 to offer prescription drugs, for which beneficiaries must pay a separate premium.

     ...

Friday evening. Before a holiday weekend. It's dump-the-garbage time, folks!

Indulge me while I add an anecdote of my own. My mother was institutionalized with Alzheimer's disease at a time (1988) in which virtually no insurance carrier covered institutional care. My father went almost broke paying for Mom's care. If I had helped him financially, it would only have delayed the time at which Medicaid would have helped. The very week in 1990 that Dad was finally broke enough to apply for help, Mom died.

Dad himself survived another five years, during which he built up a tiny bit of savings... and I do mean tiny, at least by my standards. His own final illness, lung cancer, was covered by a combination of Medicare, affordable care at a state-sponsored hospital (M. D. Anderson, about which I have many good things to say), and a very small private Medicare supplement policy. Dad lasted only a few months; he was quite ill by the time his cancer was detected. But when he departed this world, his estate was solvent... and you have no idea how important that was to a proud man like my father, who had been financially independent since his mid-teens, contributed to the family income during the Great Depression, paid his own way through college, etc., etc. I don't mean to exaggerate, but Dad was an extremely responsible kind of guy, almost to a fault.

Basically, it was Medicare that made it possible for Dad to hold his head up, to his dying day.

We owe our elders a lot. As little as they realize it, the bastards in the Bush administration who perpetrated either the largest or second largest premium increase (depending on how you measure it) in the history of Medicare, are defaulting on an obligation to those elders. They can get away with it because they are personally filthy rich... so rich that the notion of anyone's being unable to pay for their elders' care is either beyond their ability to conceive, or beneath their sorry consciences to care about. I leave it to the reader to decide which explanation is the correct one.

I realize some are ideologically driven to despise Medicare. I even know one guy who detests the whole notion of Social Security. And I suspect BushCo™ has a veritable "starve-the-beast" opposition to any entitlement whatsoever as a not-so-secret element of its ideological charter. But anyone who actually thinks this is a family-friendly ideology... as opposed to merely pretending to think that for public political purposes... is ignoring the reality most of our seniors and their families face. This premium increase is just the latest aspect of that reality: a boot in the face of those who tried all their lives to do right by their nation and their families. I think it's time we redirect that boot toward our deplorable excuse for a man in charge.

Steve
   PermaLink     

Osama? Yo Mama!

Oh, this is just too rich:

U.S. Near Seizing bin Laden, Official Says
Sep 4, 4:58 PM (ET)
By MATTHEW PENNINGTON

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) - The United States and its allies have moved closer to capturing Osama bin Laden in the last two months, a top U.S. counterterrorism official said in a television interview broadcast Saturday.

"If he has a watch, he should be looking at it because the clock is ticking. He will be caught," Joseph Cofer Black, the U.S. State Department coordinator for counterterrorism, told private Geo television network.

     ...

"What I tell people, I would be surprised but not necessarily shocked if we wake up tomorrow and he's been caught along with all his lieutenants. That can happen because of the programs and infrastructure in place," he told Geo.

     ...

All in place... awaiting Karl's word, right?

TalkLeft reminds us that there have been published reports as long ago as January that Osama bin captured. Perhaps Osama bin iced, awaiting word from Bush's political advisors. Perhaps Osama bin located, for real. Any way you slice it, Osama bin central to Bush's claim to "catastrophic success" in the war on terra.

One can read the lack of mention of Osama at the GOP convention in at least two ways: either they really didn't have him yet, and wanted not to remind us all, or they wanted to sucker Democrats into making a big deal of the fact he has not been captured.

Either way, I do not believe in this degree of coincidence. If Osama has already been captured, we are being played as fools. If he hasn't, but could have been captured any time by applying sufficent pressure to Pakistan, then the Bush administration has thrown away out national security for political advantage. And if this is just a feint to take up a news cycle... if Osama isn't captured almost immediately after this statement... then issuing the statement is cynical past anything Rove has done to date. And that's really saying something.

One might even say that if the administration could have captured Osama earlier but didn't, their actions approach treason. How do you ask a person to be the last one to die in a terrorist act perpetrated or orchestrated by someone who could have been neutralized?

---

A question: does anyone know if Joseph Cofer Black is a career diplomat or a political appointee? The title sounds political to me.

---

UPDATE: Sunday's Houston Chronicle refers to the possibility of Osama's capture only as an hypothetical, in a column about the political horserace. There is no mention I can find of the AP article cited above. My BS detector is tingling...

Steve
   PermaLink     

Not Mine, Not Urine

Who knew what business opportunities would emerge from the war on drugs:

LENEXA, Kan. (AP) - In Kevin Dyches' mind, the future is yellow. Dyna-Tek Industries, a company Kevin and his wife, Sandra, bought five years ago, has developed synthetic urine for the research industry.

One of their first customers is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which made a big purchase this summer and has hinted it could be a major buyer long into the future. Other research institutions and laboratories are also looking into Dyna-Tek's product, called Surine.

Researchers, drug-testing labs and other institutions buy thousands of gallons of the real stuff, mostly to calibrate the equipment used to test regular urine samples for drugs or other substances. Researchers periodically check the accuracy of their equipment by introducing samples that have been intentionally spiked with chemicals.

But human urine has its limitations.

It's unstable, decaying rapidly if not kept refrigerated and must be frozen when shipped. It can smell, it foams and donors must be screened carefully for drug use or disease. Also, different body chemistry guarantees that no two people's urine is exactly alike, an irritation for researchers who rely on consistency.

In the end, a fully synthetic urine has remained a laudable goal in scientific circles.

     ...

Meanwhile, in other news, the Bush administration continues to be the industry leader in the production of genuine bullshit...

Steve
   PermaLink     

Keep Bill In Your Thoughts

If you're the praying sort, you might want to say one for Bill Clinton:

NEW YORK (AP) - Former President Bill Clinton will undergo heart bypass surgery after complaining of mild chest pain and shortness of breath, his office said Friday.

Clinton was being admitted to New York Presbyterian Hospital-Columbia, a statement said. He had seen a doctor first on Thursday, and additional tests Friday revealed the need for the surgery, it said.

     ...

It appears he has not had a heart attack. That would indicate his blockages were detected in time to avoid major damage. And these operations are almost routine: they perform them literally by the dozens in several hospitals here in the Texas Medical Center, usually with successful outcomes when the problem is detected this early. Still, let's keep the Big Dog in our thoughts and prayers. Democrats, even liberal Democrats like the YDD, owe him a lot, and we need him around for this election.

One other thought... it's a good thing Clinton has excellent health insurance, isn't it? If only everyone did!

Steve
   PermaLink     

The Whole Ball Of Wax

Via Josh Marshall, we have this Knight-Ridder post:

Alleged Pentagon leaks may be connected to Iran policy
By WARREN P. STROBEL
Knight Ridder Newspapers

     ...

FBI agents have briefed top White House, Pentagon and State Department officials on the probe in recent days. Based on those briefings, officials said, the bureau appears to be looking into other controversies that have roiled the Bush administration, some of which also touch Feith's office.

They include how the Iraqi National Congress, a former exile group backed by the Pentagon, allegedly received highly classified U.S. intelligence on Iran; the leaking of the name of CIA officer Valerie Plame to reporters; and the production of bogus documents suggesting that Iraq tried to buy uranium for nuclear weapons from the African country of Niger. Bush repeated the Niger claim in making the case for war against Iraq.

"The whole ball of wax" was how one U.S. official privy to the briefings described the inquiry.

     ...

"Policy officials in the Pentagon repeatedly bypassed the normal interagency process, and there are questions about whether they also may have tried to mobilize Israel's political influence in Washington to lobby for some of their proposals, especially on Iraq and Iran," one of the administration officials said.

A Pentagon spokesman declined to comment Thursday on Feith's policy proposals.

"Policy-making is like sausage-making. What matters, though, is the sausage," the spokesman said, citing unified concern across the Bush administration about Iran's nuclear program.

     ...

A former senior official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Pentagon also tried to kill a dialogue between the United States and Iran that began around the time the United States invaded Afghanistan. Washington eventually broke off the dialogue after terrorist bombings in Saudi Arabia were traced to Iran-based al-Qaida operatives.

The Washington infighting over Iran policy was so severe that the presidential policy document was never completed.

What can I say. If I were more confident that America had a future, I'd say we should make videos of these clowns and sell 'em along with the Three Stooges for the amusement of future generations. Or maybe we should just draw new episodes of the old Mad Magazine Spy-vs.-Spy series. As it is, I'm more inclined to cry than to laugh. I've read legitimate accusations that the Bush administration has no real foreign policy, but I think this investigation suggests the contrary: they have a half dozen foreign policies, each promoted by one or more freelancers distributed across various agencies, each with his or her own agenda, none clearly in the interest of the United States. In other words, U.S. foreign policy is out of control.

I don't know who is trying to burn whom in this Pentagon - White House - CIA - FBI - etc. battle, but I do know that ultimately it is our national security that gets burned when this sort of political interagency crap runs rampant. Can you imagine John Kerry allowing things to descend to this sorry state on his watch? Neither can I.

We really, really need to oust these incompetents in November.

Steve
   PermaLink     

That Is More Like It

Kerry hits back. At long last!

Steve
   PermaLink     

SETI Confronts STI

Michael of Musing's Musings points us to a Reuters post about the possibility that the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) may have turned up a signal that may... just may... have been generated by intelligent life elsewhere. Reuters:

LONDON (Reuters) - An unexplained radio signal from deep space could -- just might be -- contact from an alien civilisation, New Scientist magazine has reported.

The signal, coming from a point between the Pisces and Aries constellations, has been picked up three times by a telescope in Puerto Rico.

New Scientist said on Thursday the signal could be generated by a previously unknown astronomical phenomenon or even be a by-product from the telescope itself.

But the mystery beam has excited astronomers across the world.

"If they can see it four, five or six times it really begins to get exciting," Jocelyn Bell Burnell of the University of Bath told the magazine.

     ...

Here, have some more Kool-Aid, Jocelyn. But seriously, here's Michael:

Perhaps the coolest thing about this news is that the signal was picked up through the SETI@home project. This was, if I recall correctly, the first-ever distributed computing program whereby computer users around the world could download a snippet of code and let their personal computers work on data from a central server while they weren't being used.

Well, yeah, I suppose MyDoom came much later. I am not an enthusiast of such programs. Computing power is so cheap these days that massive projects can be accomplished just fine without the assistance of my computer. And goodness knows what else they're doing while they're running their code on your computer, and how would you know if they are or aren't doing something else? Some years ago, the free email service Juno demanded that its customers run some sort of distributed processing program... I don't know if it was SETI@home or not... as a condition for continued free service. Some friends of mine declined. I don't blame them.

Never mind all that; back to SETI. There have been plenty of false alarms before in this search, and I am not in a hurry to believe this one is The Big One. But at least one man of action is preparing far better than I am. Let's look at the latest update:

Bush has declared Them to be a new member of his Axis of Evil, and has ordered an investigation by the OSP into whether Their signals show evidence of concealed WMD's. To the Republican National Convention, Mr. Bush said, "You're either with US... or you're with Them." He advised Americans to acquire tinfoil hats and attach them to their heads with duct tape. To those who cautioned that America may be militarily ill-equipped to confront a technologically advanced society capable of sending messages to other star systems, Bush replied, "Bring 'em on. Mission accomplished. 9/11. 9/11. 9/11. 9/11!"

Meanwhile, the signal has been determined to contain a two-dimensional image, presumably of one of the beings who sent it:

General Confusion, a military expert assessing the photo, was quoted from rush transcripts as saying, "it is a clear message to Americans that we should elect George W. Bush, who has lots of experience dealing with [unintelligible]."

The search for terrestrial intelligence (STI) goes on...

---

UPDATE: For a more serious technical discussion of the possibilities, see BOPNews and read what Simon says.

UPDATE: apparently this purported signal is, after all, a false alarm. Sigh.

Steve
   PermaLink     

Desperate?

Maybe not, but you know the GOPers are really, really concerned when they send Karl Rove into the light of day. Rove said the usual things you'd expect, impugned Kerry's patriotism, etc., but what really caught my attention was this paragraph (emphasis mine):

"It was a period of intense feeling on both sides for and against the war, but I think that was painting with far too broad a brush to tarnish the records and service of people who were defending our country and fighting communism and doing what they thought was right," Rove said during the 30-minute session with AP reporters and editors.

No, not the Rove quote; that's standard slime for him... but a 30-minute session? How could any of Kerry's staff, chief strategist or otherwise, get 30 minutes of press time not shared with any representative of their opponents?

There was at least this:

Democrats fired back with fact sheets and statements pointing out that Rove and Vice President Cheney received deferments during the war and never served. "Who in the hell is Karl Rove talking about John Kerry's war record?" asked retired Air Force Gen. Merrill McPeak, a Kerry backer. "A lot of Vietnam veterans are with John Kerry."

Well, I guess I should be grateful that at least someone from the Kerry camp said something.

Personally, I think when Rove comes out to play, he should be (metaphorically) hammered to within an inch of his (political) life. C'mon, rapid response folks... don't any of you in oppo research have something on Rove, beyond his draft deferment (which a lot of people, including me, had in those days)? He needs to be (again, metaphorically) bashed about the head and shoulders so hard he won't dare come forward again, for fear of looking silly. There's no downside to this: no amount of hammering will turn Rove into a sympathetic figure; everyone knows what kind of guy he is.

Do your jobs, campaign staff!

Steve
   PermaLink     

NGO Joint Statement On Gitmo

I mentioned in two earlier posts the presence of representatives of several NGO's at the military commission hearings at Guantánamo last week, and linked to ACLU executive director Anthony Romero's daily blog (well, it is a blog, even if it isn't formatted the way you expect) of his observations from the courtroom itself. Romero's week in Guantánamo is now complete, and he and the representatives of other NGO's now have the difficult task of suggesting modifications to a fundamentally flawed hearing procedure, a procedure that Romero at least says should be wholly replaced with America's uniform code of military justice, which he describes as "the finest system of military justice in the world." Whether or not that ever happens... it seems highly improbable... the NGO's have issued their second joint statement on the subject of the Guantánamo hearings. The statement is short; here it is in its entirety:

August 27, 2004

Joint Statement of NGO Observers at Guantánamo Bay

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

GUANTÁNAMO BAY, CUBA -- Despite the laudable professionalism of military officials throughout this week's military commissions, observers for Human Rights Watch, Human Rights First, Amnesty International and the American Civil Liberties Union today called on the U.S. government to replace the military commissions with a process that would provide fair and impartial trials consistent with U.S. and international standards.

The first four days of proceedings highlighted the structural problems already predicted by legal observers. Among the most significant concerns were:

• The absence of an independent review process outside the military chain of command;
• Rules of evidence that are stacked against the defendants; and
• Designation of commission panel members with little legal experience to decide complicated issues of military, U.S., and international law.

The legal and human rights trial observers said that compounding these problems were a series of inadequacies that should be immediately addressed. Most notable were:

• The significant translation failures that undermined the credibility of the week’s proceedings, and
• The U.S. government had not yet provided the defense team with sufficient staff and resources.

Moreover, serious questions emerged about the appearance of bias among members of the military commission. The presiding officer’s close friendship with the appointing authority, who is supposed to direct and review the presiding officer’s determinations, also could raise doubts about the process’s impartiality. Some commission members apparently also had direct intelligence or operational responsibilities over detainees, including some of the defendants, which might impede impartial deliberation.

The world is watching these hearings. My sincere hope, and Romero's recommendation, is that the decision to proceed in this highly unjust fashion be reconsidered and overturned. I believe that for those detainees who have legitimately committed offenses under international or American law, justice will be best served by the process which we have spent hundreds of years refining, not by some ad hoc procedure set up to grind out convictions. And for anyone held at Guantánamo who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time... it is essential that America pursue an unbiased determination of the legitimacy of their detention. Anything less is, well, un-American.

Steve
   PermaLink     

Selected Links To Recent Posts

 
Click any permalink below to go to the original article on a previous page. Click a comment link below to add a comment to the original article. Your comment will be noticed, by the YDD at least: HaloScan has a page allowing me to view recent comments, no matter which post they refer to.

GOP Offensive

Steve
   PermaLink     

Barnes and Ignobles

Steve
   PermaLink     

Tribunal Incident

Steve
   PermaLink     

ACLU, AI, HRW In Gitmo

Steve
   PermaLink     

Very Model - Of What? -- DOGGEREL!

Steve
   PermaLink