Bare-Faced

Anyone who has an open mind won't need to be reminded: Congressional Republicans simply aren't serious about deficits, and they never have been. They've managed to get the public riled up and dumbed down about them, to the point of likely returning them to power; but in case there's the slightest doubt of their insincerity (to put it nicely), here's a direct quote from one of their most senior senators:

KYL: You should never raise taxes in order to cut taxes. Surely congress has the authority and it would be right, if we decide we want to cut taxes to spur the economy, not to have to raise taxes in order to offset those costs. You do need to offset the cost of increased spending. And that’s what republicans object to. But you should never have to offset cost of a deliberate decision to reduce tax rates on Americans.

Got that? Deficits are only important if they come from spending; and even then, since under Bush (and Reagan, of course) deficits rose dramatically, only spending done by Democrats. And the deficits generated by tax cuts (which is what happens, every time) don't need to be offset. Amazing. Because the way you offset tax cuts is by reducing spending, formerly a Republican talking point. When, that is, they're not in power.

Yet these are the people teabaggers would like to return to majority. Oh sure, teabaggers like to claim some sort of independence from Republicans. But every poll shows they are nearly exclusively Republicans; and those they elect will give people like Kyl control of committees. And policy.

I can't think of any political philosophy that wouldn't drop its figurative jaw at Kyl's claim. Its stupidity is matched only by its brazenness, and its assumption that people who support him and his party are simply too dumb, or too effectively brainwashed by their main source of "news" to notice.

Haven't heard much from them lately around here, in the comments. Have they become convinced? Are they unable to muster a response? Or are they simply too embarrassed to admit that their opinions have nothing to do with economics or reality. Confirming Kyl's smirking speciousness, they'll vote against Obama and his party come hell or high water; both of which, it's clear, are in our future.

Default Is In Our Stars

Assuming they're interested in facts, which, plainly, they're not, the RWS™, teabaggers, and pretty much all Congressional Republicans who've been claiming that the mortgage meltdown is the fault of the poor, and of the CRA, this study in the NYT should be of interest:

Whether it is their residence, a second home or a house bought as an investment, the rich have stopped paying the mortgage at a rate that greatly exceeds the rest of the population.

So much for a favorite shibboleth of the sh*tful. It's of a piece with their more recent claim, as they continue to vote for scuttling the recovery, that unemployment benefits discourage work. (The benefits, however, outweigh that effect, which is minimal.) I'd expect there's a bit of truth in both claims: people were sold mortgages they couldn't afford, and there are some for whom three hundred bucks a week is enough to feed their families and keep roofs (such as they might be) over their heads. But it's the easy and untrue extrapolations that become gospel among the preachy and the preached-to.

We've already heard that loans made under the CRA were more likely to be repaid, and less likely to have been bundled into leaky securities than other loans. Now, we find that the wealthy are more at default than the poor.

Once again, it seems clear: if there are arguments to be made -- should we help the needy or not, do the times require extraordinary measures or not, are short-term deficits necessary to economic recovery and more or less harmful than balancing budgets at this time -- they ought to be argued on the basis of fact, and not as empty talking points aimed at rallying the weak of mind.

You'd think so, anyway. Wouldn't you?

Data For Deniers

The above graphic is from an article whose title tells it like it is:

Critics Still Wrong on What’s Driving Deficits in Coming Years

Economic Downturn, Financial Rescues, and Bush-Era Policies Drive the Numbers

From the article:

The events and policies that have pushed deficits to these high levels in the near term, however, were largely outside the new Administration’s control. If not for the tax cuts enacted during the presidency of George W. Bush that Congress did not pay for, the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that were initiated during that period, and the effects of the worst economic slump since the Great Depression (including the cost of steps necessary to combat it), we would not be facing these huge deficits in the near term.

Also, because it's a credible and balanced article:

While President Obama inherited a dismal fiscal legacy, that does not diminish his responsibility to propose policies to address our fiscal imbalance and put the weight of his office behind them. Although policymakers should not tighten fiscal policy in the near term while the economy remains fragile, they and the nation at large must come to grips with the nation’s long-term deficit problem. But we should not mistake the causes of our predicament.

Among the titles of other paragraphs in the article:

Financial Rescues, Stimulus Add to Deficits in Near Term

And:

Bush Tax Cuts, War Costs Do Lasting Harm to Budget Outlook

Another article makes mostly the same point, if a bit skeptically:

The dire outlook from CBO today is not the fault of the current administration or any one administration (LBJ may be the most to blame I guess for starting Medicare). In fact, if the Medicare cuts in the health care bill are to be believed and CBO's estimates pertaining to the health care bill are to be believed, Pres. Obama has already done more to reduce in magnitude the long-term budget problems for the U.S. than the previous administration, who undoubtedly made the problem worse. That's true despite the amount added to the deficit from the stimulus bill and the costly coverage provisions in the health care bill. The obvious question is whether or not you believe the large cuts to Medicare will ever pan out. If not, Obama's fiscal record thus far is about as bad as the previous administration's.

Yet, in their usual disingenuous (at best) and cynically dishonest (for sure) or deliberately destructive (in reality) manner, the RWS™ remain in force and on message, claiming that the merest suggestion that GWBush has the tiniest shred of connection to our perilous situation is politics of the worst (if not unfamiliar to them) kind.

I repeat myself, some might say. But isn't this what it's all about, politically, for the next several months, in the US? In hopes of getting back into power, the robbers return to the scene of the crime claiming they're innocent. This is a willful disinformation campaign by Congressional Rs, the RWS™, and Fox "news," aimed at distracting the disturbed and deceived from the truth: that their policies and their most recent president have left us damaged -- possibly beyond repair. Knowing their faithful and faith-needy and hugely uninformed and formlessly angry and base base will take it in like high-fructose corn syrup, they continue to dish it out and provide the spoons. Common sense and simple facts be damned: there are teacups to be filled, and teabaggers most eager to drink.

The Culprits

Starting with the Republican intellectual leader, Rush Limbaugh; flowing to their pseudo-intellectual leader, Krauthammer; and picked up by their spiritual leader, Palin, is the latest and perhaps the most idiotic (for now) talking point of the season: the oil spill is the fault of environmentalists. With this, they've truly outdone themselves. Which, most certainly, is NOT to say it won't be sucked up and re-mouthed as gospel by teabaggers and the sort of happy harpers that occasionally roam these parts.

It goes like this: those nasty tree-huggers have made it impossible to drill on shore or close to shore and, because they call the shots, have forced the helpless oilmen like the obsequious and pliable Cheney, lacking influence, to take their platforms and slink into the deep waters. Right. Had they let them drill in ANWR, they'd never have gotten wet. Right. Had Palin won she'd have corked those babies and we'd never see an offshore rig again. Right. And, I imagine, had it not been for environmentalists, BP would never have cut corners. Environmentalists have always been delighted to see deep water drilling. Right.

It's not at all surprising to hear this sort of crap from the RWS™. They simply have no regard for reason or and even less -- much less -- for their audience. (When, oh when, will teabaggers realize it?) And, having witnessed the deeply depressing spectacle of that audience slurping up their effluvium and repeating it as if it made some sort of sense, it's not surprising -- not any more -- to see them do just that. Why should the RWS™ stop spreading sewage as long as people think it's chocolate pudding?

Unsurprising it may be; but it's still really depressing. It's a perfect example of the sort of slop that passes for political thought on the right, and is accepted as such, no questions asked, by the masses -- poised to vote in mere months.

We're Hucked

Mike Huckabee, Christian, and phony good guy, is, in fact, a f*cking liar and a hypocrite. Big surprise, eh?

Along with other RWS™ he warns Democrats against "politicizing" the death of Edward Kennedy (as opposed to the lengths to which they did just that when Ronnie died). Then he warns that under "Obamacare," the details of which have yet to be written, Senator Kennedy would have been encouraged to die much sooner. I hope to hell someone in the Kennedy family will speak directly in response to this. Caroline?

"To say such a thing," that spokesperson ought to say, "to diverge so far from facts to advance one's political agenda is much more than an insult to the memory of Ted Kennedy. It demeans the speaker beyond redemption. It is a lie on its face. It is despicable and speaks directly to the depths of deception to which the supposed leaders of the Republican party have descended. That the ex-governor, failed presidential candidate, should be ashamed of himself goes without saying. Unfortunately, it also goes without saying that he has so little touch with the idea of shame that expecting self-reflection or apology from him is like expecting the Republican party to start making efforts to participate in meaningful health care reform. It ain't gonna happen. Still, I'll say it anyway: shame on you sir. Shame on you to the very depths of what might be left of your sorry soul."

[And as long as I'm suggesting things people ought to say, and not enough for a post of its own, there's this: Newt Gingrich thinks (affording a generous definition to the word) President Obama ought to fire Eric Holder. "Sorry, Newt," someone should reply, "Firing attorneys general that follow the law is what Republicans do. In this administration, it ain't gonna happen."]

Answers and Questions

Exhibit 1a:

Regarding the May 17 Obama speech on abortion, Tucker Carlson said, the very next day:

You can't have a real conversation about abortion if you're afraid to use the word.

Pro-choice? Pro-life? Those are slogans designed to obscure rather than illuminate.

The debate is about whether abortion ought to be legal, not about whether you respect "life," whatever that is, or whether you think people ought to have "choices," whatever those may be.

So let's call it what it is. That'd be a good first step. Obama, who's deeply interested in language, knows this but not surprisingly failed to mention it.

Exhibit 1b:

In the speech, the one given at Notre Dame:

The question then -- the question then is, how do we work through these conflicts? Is it possible for us to join hands in common effort? As citizens of a vibrant and varied democracy, how do we engage in vigorous debate? How does each of us remain firm in our principles, and fight for what we consider right, without, as Father John said, demonizing those with just as strongly held convictions on the other side?

And, of course, nowhere do these questions come up more powerfully than on the issue of abortion.

As I considered the controversy surrounding my visit here, I was reminded of an encounter I had during my Senate campaign, one that I describe in a book I wrote called, The Audacity of Hope. And a few days after the Democratic nomination, I received an email from a doctor who told me that, while he voted for me in the Illinois primary, he had a serious concern that might prevent him from voting for me in the general election. He described himself as a Christian who was strongly pro-life -- but that was not what was preventing him potentially from voting for me.

What bothered the doctor was an entry that my campaign staff had posted on my website, an entry that said I would fight, quote, "right-wing ideologues who want to take away a woman's right to choose," unquote. The doctor said he had assumed I was a reasonable person. He supported my policy initiatives to help the poor and to lift up our educational system, but that if I truly believed that every pro-life individual was simply an ideologue, who wanted to inflict suffering on women, then I was not very reasonable. He wrote, "I do not ask at this point that you oppose abortion, only that you speak about this issue in fair-minded words" -- fair-minded words.

After I read the doctor's letter, I wrote back to him and I thanked him. And I didn't change my underlying position, but I did tell my staff to change the words on my website. And I said a prayer that night that I might extend the same presumption of good faith to others that the doctor had extended to me, because when we do that -- when we open up our hearts and our minds to those who may not think precisely like we do or believe precisely what we believe -- that's when we discover at least the possibility of common ground.

That's when we begin to say, "Maybe we won't agree on abortion, but we can still agree that this heart-wrenching decision for any woman is not made casually; it has both moral and spiritual dimensions."

So let us work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions. Let's reduce unintended pregnancies. Let's make adoption more available. Let's provide care and support for women who do carry their children to term. Let's honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion, and draft a sensible conscience clause, and make sure that all of our health care policies are grounded, not only in sound science, but also in clear ethics, as well as respect for the equality of women. Those are things we can do.

Now, understand -- understand, class of 2009, I do not suggest that the debate surrounding abortion can or should go away, because no matter how much we may want to fudge it -- indeed, while we know that the views of most Americans on the subject are complex and even contradictory -- the fact is that, at some level, the views of the two camps are irreconcilable. Each side will continue to make its case to the public with passion and conviction. But surely we can do so without reducing those with differing views to caricature.

[...]

OBAMA: And at the time, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin was the archbishop of Chicago. And for those of you -- for those of you too young to have known him or known of him, he was a kind and good and wise man -- a saintly man. I can still remember him speaking at one of the first organizing meetings I attended on the South Side. He stood as both a lighthouse and a crossroads, unafraid to speak his mind on moral issues ranging from poverty and AIDS and abortion to the death penalty and nuclear war. And yet, he was congenial and gentle in his persuasion, always trying to bring people together, always trying to find common ground. And just before he died, a reporter asked Cardinal Bernardin about this approach to his ministry. And he said, "You can't really get on with preaching the Gospel until you've touched hearts and minds."

Exhibit 2a:

From Michael Rubin, of The National Review, regarding Obama's speech in Cairo:

Obama abandons Democracy

Obama studiously avoids the word democracy. Instead, he declared, "That does not lessen my commitment, however, to governments that reflect the will of the people." Dictators of the world, relax: Stage a spontaneous demonstration to demonstrate popular adulation; don't worry about those pesky votes.

Exhibit 2b:

From the speech:

The fourth issue that I will address is democracy. (Applause.)

[He went on to mention it three more times: but the believers believe what they will believe.]

Exhibit 3a:

Sean Hannity, on a comment Obama made regarding the Muslim population of the US:

All right. So we're not a Christian nation, but we're a Muslim nation?

Exhibit 3b:

The Obama words to which he referred:

“And one of the points I want to make is, is that if you actually took the number of Muslim Americans, we’d be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world,” Mr. Obama said. “And so there’s got to be a better dialogue and a better understanding between the two peoples.”

(Okay, turns out we'd be #35 out of about 105. So "largest" is questionable, perhaps. But not the point he was making, which, in obvious context, most clearly was NOT that we are a Muslim nation.)


So here's the question: what in gods' names motivates these people to say things that are, even as the words pass their lips and enter the atmosphere, falsified? Like oxidation kills pathogens. Instantly revealed to be untrue. What is conceivably up with that??? There are only so many possible explanations.

I don't know the Rubin guy; I've seen Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity. Hannity is clearly a man of limited intellectual means; Carlson is remarkably clueless sometimes, but I don't sense an idiot, the way I do with Hannity. And, as a writer on NRO, I'll give Rubin a pass. So, with only one of the three undeniably dumb as an anvil, I don't think it flies to say they're just too stupid to know the meaning of words.

Might it be that they are so convinced of their rightness in all things that they simply hear what they want to hear? False processing of information based on some sort of observer bias? Plausible. But I know of no counterpart on the left. Sure, there are people of liberal views who are over the top. Me, sometimes, included. But I don't know of any who regularly simply spout demonstrable falsehoods. Me, always, included.

So it seems most likely that they are willfully saying things they know to be untrue. I'll give them, in other words, enough credit to assume they know the basics of English language. Obama's thoughts are often complex, but his words generally up don't require looking. Which raises the most fundamental and troubling questions: why do they do it, and what does it say of their imagined audience?

Here it seems there are only two options, neither of which speak well for them or their intended audience. Either they think people are too dumb or lazy to notice, or they believe the truth won't matter to them. Between those two options, I find myself unable to choose. Blogging here has left me with data that strongly support both conclusions: we've seen studies that show facts don't matter to conservatives, and we see proof of that in the comment threads to nearly all my posts. I'll not go so far as to call any of my readers bereft of neurons, but it's hard to deny many seem unable to follow a thought or to provide either relevant arguments or factual support.

Right wing talkers and writers simply lie to their audiences. (I didn't even give Limbaugh/Gingrich/Cheney (D and L) examples. Where's the challenge in that?) As far as I can tell, the only ones who point it out are people on the left (and, sadly, rarely the mainstream -- incorrectly characterized as "liberal" -- media); the right happily eats it up, swallows it whole like the sea lions I see from my home, snarfing salmon.

For the life of me, I simply can't fathom it. It's like talking to an alien. It's an unfair fight; and, given a proclivity to stick to facts, it puts liberals at a distinct disadvantage. And it's not the political equivalent of "taking a knife to a gunfight:" it's way worse -- assuming the goal isn't to kill the opponents. It defines extremism, in an important way. If one side will say and their followers believe anything, how do you have meaningful dialogue?

One expects it of Osama bin Laden. But these guys?

Which, of course, is exactly why I feel so hopeless.
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Even I Know This

I guess I'd have blogfodder for months if I were to point out the stupidity of every argument the right wing crazies are making about Sonia Sotomayor. Of the quotes they're bouncing around like fury-fueled fireballs, nearly all are taken out of context and/or edited to look different from the original intent. (That's rich, isn't it: original intent being a favorite buzzword, courtwise.) But those are being handled pretty well; they pretty much debunk themselves, since all is needed is the full quote and context. Same, I'd say, with the claim that she's too sharp-tongued. Tough questioning is expected of appellate judges. Ask überhero of the right wing, Antonin Scalia. But he has, y'know, balls, not ovaries.

There's a couple, though, that are quasi-factual and which might get traction since, like so many things onto which the RWS™ latch, it takes a little explanation. Worse, it needs actual thought! And, given the fact that truth is hardly the coin of the Republican realm, it may need repeating. (I heard John Cornyn on NPR yesterday, willfully ignoring the fact that federal appeals courts are not simply a way station on the path to the Supreme Court. Federal courts of appeals are, for all but a tiny percentage of cases, as high as appeals get.)

People are trying to make something of the fact that sixty percent of Judge Sotomayor's cases that were heard by the Supreme Court were reversed. My god. If ever there were proof of incompetence.... And that guy in the paraprevious post, Alito or whatever his name is, his reversal rate was (ready, set...) one hundred percent. ONE HUNDRED!! (There were two.) How he slipped by the non-partisan scrutiny of the Republicans is beyond me. (On the NPR show, Senator Cornyn also said he hadn't heard the quote from Alito, about empathy... Funny how that works, huh? Not paying attention, or not caring when it was his guy?)

So here's the deal (and need I say again I lived with a guy who was both a state appeals court judge and a state supreme court justice): supreme courts pick and choose. Nearly all the opinions of the appeals court stand, because the Supreme Court opts not to take them. When they do, it's because there's a larger issue of some sort. They take them, in part, because they have issues with the lower court ruling. By definition, then, cases accepted by the Supreme Court have a higher chance of being overturned. Which is why Smiling Sam got nailed to the degree he did. Sonia Sotomayor's reversal rate is, evidently, a little lower than average. Of her hundreds of opinions, nearly all stood as rendered. But let's not let a few facts get in the way of a good hissy fit.

The other issue, which is really part of the same thing, is the faux (or is that spelled Fox) outrage over a comment she made about appeals courts setting policy. Outrageous. Cornyn didn't like it one bit, not one bit. The Supreme Court, he said, is the one that sets policy. Wow.

So according to the good Senator from Texas, where Bushlaw and Gonzaleslaw are as good as it gets, it's okay that the Supreme Court sets policy. That's not "legislating from the bench." Surprise: in that, we agree. When the court rules, it's obvious that policy is made. Otherwise, what's the point? And here's the thing, Senator: as we've just learned, nearly all decisions at the appeals level go no further. The point Judge Sotomayor was making was in comparing her role on the appeals court to that on the circuit court, on which she'd previously served. Not really complicated; but, admittedly, it does take about two thoughts strung together to get it.

And there's the problem.

[Update, 6/1: Seems people who know more than I do say the same thing.]
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Looking Back

And another thing...

"Let's not look back," they say. Need to move forward. Said by the party that spent tens of months and dozens of millions trying to impeach Bill Clinton. And, from one point of view, they were right then but not now. If crimes are suspected, part of the deal is looking into it. How, exactly, do you march forward if you don't know whence you are coming? Why prosecute the guy who robbed your store, or raped your wife? It's in the past. Those cops: what a bunch of whiners. What's done is done.

Of course this is way bigger than lying about a blow job. We're talking about killing prisoners, taking us to an unnecessary war on false pretenses. Big stuff, you'd think.

Like virtually all the Republican talking points of late, this one is made of sand, built on sand. I accept that it's not black and white, given the politics. I understand why President Obama is reluctant: he has lots to do to clean up the mess, and even without this, he's encountering resistance to pretty much everything he does. Reversing direction like Dick Cheney from his draft board, Senate Republicans have decided there's nothing like a good old filibuster, especially for judges. No wonder they don't want to look back: just a couple of years ago they were saying such a thing was unconstitutional and a threat to our very existence as a democracy.

What's particularly disingenuous is that such talking points are based on the idea that the electorate is stupid. Obama addresses us as if we are adults, capable of carrying a thought beyond one line of small words. To the Rs, we're idiots, bamboozle-bait. Not that it's certain they're the ones that are wrong. It's easy to forget that Joe the Plumber was made god-like. McCain put him up there; but it was the people who ate it up, and the media, and the RWS™.

And then there's this. So there you go.
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Torture Truths

Readers will already know that Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson was Colin Powell's chief of staff when the latter was Secretary of State. He still strongly identifies himself as a Republican. Pulling no punches, he has a guest editorial at The Washington Monthly which is worth a read. Or two. No fan of Dick Cheney or torture, he. And he reiterates something I said a while back: torture was used to try to force false confessions to justify invading Iraq.

So furious was this effort that on one particular detainee, even when the interrogation team had reported to Cheney's office that their detainee "was compliant" (meaning the team recommended no more torture), the VP's office ordered them to continue the enhanced methods. The detainee had not revealed any al-Qa'ida-Baghdad contacts yet. This ceased only after Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, under waterboarding in Egypt, "revealed" such contacts. Of course later we learned that al-Libi revealed these contacts only to get the torture to stop.

There in fact were no such contacts. (Incidentally, al-Libi just "committed suicide" in Libya. Interestingly, several U.S. lawyers working with tortured detainees were attempting to get the Libyan government to allow them to interview al-Libi....)

He makes (among many others) another interesting point as well:

My investigations have revealed to me--vividly and clearly--that once the Abu Ghraib photographs were made public in the Spring of 2004, the CIA, its contractors, and everyone else involved in administering "the Cheney methods of interrogation", simply shut down. Nada. Nothing. No torture or harsh techniques were employed by any U.S. interrogator. Period. People were too frightened by what might happen to them if they continued.

What I am saying is that no torture or harsh interrogation techniques were employed by any U.S. interrogator for the entire second term of Cheney-Bush, 2005-2009. So, if we are to believe the protestations of Dick Cheney, that Obama's having shut down the "Cheney interrogation methods" will endanger the nation, what are we to say to Dick Cheney for having endangered the nation for the last four years of his vice presidency?

To me, these things are obvious. And yet there remains in the Republican party, reflected in the utterances of the RWS™, the notion that torture is good and that claiming anything else is treasonous; that in eschewing these things Obama has made us "less safe." It's preposterous, and yet there it is. Everywhere. Amid silence from the rank and file (and few) remaining Republicans. Heck, even some people intelligent enough to read this blog defend Beck, and Hannity, and Limbaugh and the rest of the RWS™ as reasonable. It's an alternate reality, in which up is down, black is white, truth is peanut butter.

As is clear to anyone who visits here, it's hard for me to be optimistic about much of anything these days, when this sort of thinking is so prevalent. I guess it isn't "thinking" so much as disingenuous propagandizing to further a failing political agenda. In any case, there are still enough Republican senators (and a couple of occasional Democrats who buy in) effectively to prevent much of what President Obama is trying to do. Were it on the basis of even half-decent arguments, it wouldn't bother me nearly as much. But when they're led by Mitch McConnell, who says "The administration needs to tell the American people how it will keep the terrorists at Guantanamo out of our neighborhoods and off of the battlefield," I can't but think that we're too far gone to find our way back.

I found the suicide interesting, too.
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Another Sign Of The Apocalypse

Pete Sessions is a multi-term legislator, and head of the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee. And this is how he thinks:

Mr. Sessions, in his seventh term, said Mr. Obama’s agenda was “intended to inflict damage and hardship on the free enterprise system, if not to kill it.” By next fall, he predicted, voters may regain appreciation for the era of Republican governance when “many dreams were achieved,” the size of the economy doubled and employment and financial markets hit record levels.

If that's not enough of a double-barreled bit of paranoia combined with astonishing amnesia and historical revisionism, he also said

....that the administration intended to “diminish employment and diminish stock prices” as part of a “divide and conquer” strategy to consolidate power...

And his party officially agrees. (Then Limbaugh, who commands the biggest S in RWS™, as night is followed by darker night, takes it up a notch.)

So that's where we stand, politically. Does anyone doubt the Republican Party is off the rails? Or that they can't be counted on to inject anything useful into the political arena? Really! I'm no longer surprised to hear various members of the RWS™ saying such things -- and they do, daily -- but this guy is the one designated to get Republicans elected to Congress.

If this country functions best when there are two credible parties, each able to put helpful ideas into play -- and I happen to think that's the case -- then we are ever more, increasingly, piteously, irredeemably, irreconcilably, undeniably, cataclysmically, cosmically, existentially, consequentially, Constitutionally, politically, economically, irrefutably, self-destructively, idiotically, embarrassingly, deservedly, stupidly, willingly, inexcusably, laughably, sadly, entirely, irreversibly, majestically screwed.
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Mouth: Both Sides Of...

I watched John McCain on "Face The Nation" yesterday. Patrick Leahy was on, too, and the transcript is here. To his credit, McCain didn't hesitate to use the word torture and to condemn its use by the US. He did, however, resist any idea that there should be investigations or prosecutions, framing the issue strictly in terms of a few lawyers giving bad advice. If that's all there were to it, I guess we'd all agree that investigation is uncalled for. Which, of course, is why McCain and his pals are all over the airwaves framing it exactly in that way, ignoring what are, in fact, the real issues.

In my opinion, there's much more at stake, and I've said so. In particular, I wonder about the extent to which those opinions resulted from directives from the White House to produce arguments to justify torture; ie, the extent to which the lawyers obliged a demand to rationalize an unlawful plan (which, as we now know, was already in place). That, I think, is grounds for disbarment, if nothing else (my dad was a judge, after all, so I know these things). I'm even more concerned about the extent to which torture was used to try to gain "confessions" of falsehoods, namely of that non-existent connection between Iraq and al Queda, in order to justify a war. That ought to outrage EVERYONE. Most amazingly, it doesn't.

But what really struck me about the McCain interview was this exchange, near the end of the interview (emphasis mine):

SCHIEFFER: So you wouldn’t favor even appointing a special prosecutor to look into it?

MCCAIN: The allegations are that they gave the wrong counsel. That’s -- and that bad things were done. And we violated fundamental commitments that the United States of America made when we signed the Geneva Conventions, and we disregarded what might happen to Americans who are held captive in the future. And by the way, those who say our enemies won’t abide by the Geneva Conventions, they will if they know that there’s going to be retribution for their violation of it.

That's unspeakably mind-blowing: having just argued against consequences for any involved in what he acknowledges is a violation of the Geneva Conventions by the US, he says that others will be deterred by fear of retribution.

If I flipped my arguments 180º every time my party was in or out of power, I'd be embarrassed. In fact, I don't think I could do it. "Up or down vote" was the Republican mantra when they were in the majority and Bush was nominating judges. "Rule of law," they cried when Clinton was in office. Their political deity, Ronald Reagan, signed the UN Conventions against torture, but now they love it like the air they breathe. (I guess they believe Ronnie was soft on terror, hated America, and made us less safe.)

How can these guys say what they do without turning red or exploding? It's unfathomable.
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