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My reaction to the State of the Union Address

My reaction to the State of the Union Address

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I somehow made it all the way through the State of the Union address last night. Much as I disagree with the Bush administration, I even found him unusually appealing.

I actually had the thought, “Well, maybe most of this administration’s ugliness is Cheney. Maybe Bush means some of what he is saying here.” I thought he really tried to appeal to our hopefulness at a very sour time – that showed some good leadership. But that’s about it.

So many platitudes, so little straight talk.

He opened with the death of Coretta Scott King. At least he kept his remarks short and honored her as best he could, considering everything.

Isolationist? I haven’t heard anyone advocating that America should be isolationist or retreating from the world. I guess everyone can get behind that – attack a position no-one holds. Actually, it seems that this administration might benefit from more open debates on how to engage with the rest of the world in more effective ways. The costs of our invasion of Iraq – all the costs (ethical, diplomatic, financial, etc.) – have yet to be justified. I sincerely hope that his view of Iraq is not as simplistic as his few comments suggest. Probably just dumbing down.

Ditto for terrorists, but this is even more troubling. He seems to view the terrorists as a singular force, when it is really a mutating, changing and global set of loose alliances. He hasn’t got at what it will take to defeat them if he is concentrating on nations.

Interesting that he went back and forth from inaccurate representations of Democratic views to words about bipartisanship and working together. He suggests that they are soft on terrorism? Please. In my darker moments, I wonder how far this administration would go to bolster those claims.

The Rule of Law – I can’t believe he’s trying to wrap his illegal surveillance of Americans in 9/11 again. The claims he is making on the NSA spying scandal are pretty much to be expected – and really it’s probably all he can do right now. Of course, everything he said is problematic from a variety of perspectives, but that’s all playing out elsewhere. Personally, I believe this president violated federal law, but feels secure enough about it to brag. Bad sign.

“Human-animal hybrids”? What? Is there some room from O Lucky Man hiding in North Carolina? Is there an island of Dr. Moreau off New York? Maybe they mean Plum Island?

Well, good to see the value of life expressed. I think about the lives of those people who died in the aftermath of Katrina, the lives of the people of Fallujah or in Gitmo or Abu Ghraib or in our huge domestic prison system which still carries out barbaric if sterile executions, or the lives of people around the world who get HIV for lack of real educational programs beyond “just abstain” and die from it for lack of support for generic drugs. It’s easy to see the values of “life” in cutting anti-poverty programs, in cutting education, in cutting healthcare. Or maybe the value of all our lives is measured in terms of profits and cannon fodder. I felt sorry for that military family standing there. I felt sorry for that soldier’s wife and his parents. What did he die for? Invasion and occupation wasn’t the only option. I’ve now heard rumours of dropping nukes on Iran. Evidently civilian killings are planned to represent our support of their liberty too.

I liked the “switch grass” – it added spice, although I’m not sure where the marshlands could be retrieved for growing it. Can you see the slogan? “Grow Grass for Bush.” Actually, I think the clean reliable and safe energy he’s planning on is primarily nuclear energy. Has that really registered? Do we really want to give terrorists even more underdefended targets here?

I’m not sure I can really believe that an administration so closely tied to oil and gas (and who always supports industry over consumers) will be the ones who will move us out of a petroleum-based economy. He said that the US would replace 75% of our Middle East oil imports by 2025, but only 20% of our imports come from the region anyway, and he gives it about 20 years to happen. The White House has been against efforts to tighten fuel economy standards, and the tax system actually gives SUV drivers an incentive. He pledged support for alternative fuel technologies in previous State of the Union addresses, too, just like every other President I ever remember. Let’s see how it pans out.

Line item veto? Maybe it was a joke? He did grin. Anyway, that power was granted to Clinton but then overturned by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional.

On the economy, let’s remember that he inherited a $281 billion budget surplus that is now a $400 billion deficit. The national debt is up 44% (trillions and trillions of dollars, folks), but he wants to keep those tax cuts to the rich. The gap in America between the rich and the poor grows.

We’ve created “more jobs than Japan and Europe combined”… and they are all at Halliburton. Seriously, I don’t know if the claim about job creation is true or not, but it is my understanding that in both Japan and most of Europe, there is healthcare whether or not you are employed, a free college education, weeks and weeks of vacation, and generous pension plans. Part-time jobs at Walmart don’t really compare. Let’s also compare the worker populations. I wonder how many new workers entered the market in that time? No mention of how many jobs India or China have created in the same amount of time…. Anyway, there was a reason he didn’t cite the figures from the beginning of his presidency – it would have cut his total by more than half. 2 million jobs over a five-year period isn’t really much to brag about, especially when you look at the jobs.

Healthcare. Again, Bush would rather cut Medicare than allow, for example, negotiated drug prices. A closed-door session just gave away another $22 billion benefit to insurance companies, and some $140 million was spent by drug and insurance companies to lobby Republicans on the Medicare drug benefit alone. How about looking at some of the systemic issues?

Yes, we need to have a debate on healthcare, one that bases decisions on the common good of all Americans – is he really going to have that debate? I hope so. We need everyone’s ideas on this one. He didn’t really make any move toward fixing the current mess that privatizing the drug benefit (or is it “penalty”?) has caused. There seems to be no move (while he’s in the mood to cut needed programs all over, like Pell Grants and Medicare), to optimize or reform the healthcare system or to watchdog the health/drug/insurance industries. Any administrative assistant at any healthcare facility in the country can tell you where the fat is, where the corruption is. How about this as one small measure – insurance companies have to pay bills within 30 days, like the rest of us. Don’t wait around to hear such measures suggested by the Bush administration.

The Patriot Act? How about if we lose some of these provisions, such as the criminalization of protesters (carrying punishments of up to ten years in prison)? Or perhaps the Congress should consider cutting back on the wholesale authority to wiretap your phone, monitor your e-mail and demand your medical, financial and student records from banks, vendors, doctors‚ offices, and libraries – those required to turn over your records are prevented from ever telling you, even if the records turn up no wrongdoing.

The Bush administration has worked hard – to subvert America’s laws regarding open government while it infringes on your constitutional rights. This administration has done everything in its power to block and stall and hide from investigations into 9/11, the way we entered into the Iraq war, the Katrina aftermath, and the outing of Plame. It is a very very secretive administration. It has promoted cronyism at such levels as to have become actual security threats to our nation, and blocked meaningful debate by simply shutting down the conversation.

Just the little detail that adds insult: Cindy Sheehan was arrested and taken away in handcuffs for the crime of wearing a teeshirt that said “2245 How Many More?”. She was an invited guest. She wasn’t the only one in trouble either. Beverly Young (wife of Rep. C.W. Bill Young of Florida, chairman of the House Defense Appropriations subcommittee) was removed from the gallery for another teeshirt considered to be a “protest.” It read, “Support the Troops — Defending Our Freedom.”

So while I feel the President has, with practice, improved on his speech delivery skills, we’re still just being had.

Of course, I wasn’t that impressed with the Democrat’s response either, which had a few good points but was dumbed-down wayyyy too much.

I did like the brief comments I saw from Barack Obama. Maybe he should run in 2008. I’d vote for him over anyone else at this point.

So here’s his statement, which makes me a lot more hopeful than any words from this President’s speech:

Tonight, the American people know our union should be stronger. They know we can defeat terror and keep our shores safe. And they know that we can be competitive in a 21st century economy where every hardworking family prospers, not just some.

But the American people are wondering if this Administration can lead us there. Because after five years of the same timid solutions to great national challenges, Americans are more anxious about their future and more uncertain about the direction of the country we love.

They’ve seen their wages go down as their medical, gas, and tuition bills go up. They’ve seen jobs go overseas and wonder if our children will be prepared to compete in a global economy. And they’ve seen scandal and corruption take hold of a Washington that helps high-priced lobbyists at the expense of hardworking families.

Americans everywhere want a leader who speaks to their hopes for a better future and then acts on them.

But tonight, the President barely mentioned his health care plan for people who can already afford health care, ignoring bold, bipartisan proposals that can guarantee affordable and available health care for every American.

He identified America’s addiction to oil, but ignored his Administration’s addiction to oil-industry giveaways that won’t free us from our dependence on fossil fuels.

And after forty-six minutes of speaking, the President used less than sixty words to tell us how he’d clean up Washington and restore the American people’s faith in a government that works for them, not just big donors.

We can have this kind of government in America, face the future with hope, and move our country in the direction of progress. But we need strong leadership to get there – leadership that isn’t afraid to think big, try new ideas, and reach out to Americans of all political stripes. This is how we will restore the American people’s faith in our union and truly make it stronger.

Independent Judiciary, Roe v Wade

Independent Judiciary, Roe v Wade

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So what does Sandra Day O’Connor say (in case you’ve forgotten, she is a Republican but not a neo-con) now that she has announced her retirement from the Supreme Court?

Speaking in Spokane WA to a group of lawyers and judges in late July, retiring U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor said she is worried about the future of the federal judiciary because of a “climate of antipathy” in Congress. “I’m pretty old, you know. In all the years of my life, I don’t think I have ever seen relations as strained as they are now” between the judiciary and Congress, O’Connor said. “It makes me sad. … The present climate is such that I worry about the federal judiciary.”

There is sentiment that courts are overreaching,” and in our country today, “we’re seeing efforts to prevent that: a desire not to have an independent judiciary, and that worries me,” she said. “A key concept of the rule of law is the concept of an independent judiciary.”

Not surprisingly, John Roberts is expressing a firm view of an independent judiciary, but I’m not he means what she means by the phrase.

“Judicial activism” is another strangely loaded phrase, used primarily to accuse judges of “legislating from the bench” or being “out of (our) control” when they don’t get into lockstep with the President’s (or the religious right’s) agenda. It is used to generate antipathy toward the check and balance of the judicial branch as against the executive and legislative branches. Somehow, though, it’s never used to describe examples such as Justices Antonin Scalia and William Rehnquist, who have explicitly said they want to overturn the legal precedent of Roe v. Wade. Bush has loaded up as much as he can with right-wing judges – but even a couple of his appointments have this distressing tendency to look at the case at hand and to make a real judgment, not just move with the ideological wave.

Roberts writes on the Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire:

“It is difficult to comment on either ‘judicial activism’ or ‘judicial restraint’ in the abstract, without reference to the particular facts and applicable law of a specific case. Precedent plays an important role in promoting the stability of the legal system. A sound judicial philosophy should reflect recognition of the fact that the judge operates within a system of rules developed over the years by other judges equally striving to live up to the judicial oath.”

Roberts said that “judges must be constantly aware that their role, while important, is limited. They do not have a commission to solve society’s problems, as they see them, but simply to decide cases before them according to the rule of law.”

I agree with what he says in a general way – it’s well-crafted, although I’m a little worried about the emphasis on the limited role of the judiciary. What he leaves out is that the cases often establish new precedents that further impact rulings in other cases, and that judges still interpret – that is, after all, their purpose. That is why the Supreme Court is a body of judges and not just one judge, or a computer, or the President.

Besides not “remembering” his involvement in the Federalists, Roberts spent some time assisting Florida Gov. Jeb Bush during the disputed presidential election count in 2000. He said he went to Florida at the request of GOP lawyers, assisting an attorney who was preparing arguments for the Florida Supreme Court and at one point meeting the governor, President Bush’s younger brother, to discuss the legal issues “in a general way.” Other political affiliations Roberts listed were the executive committee of the D.C. Lawyers for Bush-Quayle in 1988, Lawyers for Bush-Cheney and the Republican National Lawyers Association. Last month, a three-judge federal court ruled the Bush administration’s plan to convene military tribunals to try terrorist detainees at Guantanamo Bay was constitutional, overruling a lower court’s opinion that the tribunals violated the Geneva Convention. The opinion of the court in that decision was joined by none other than Judge John Roberts, who days later became President Bush’s nominee to the Supreme Court.

My only real hope, a long shot I know, is that once he is facing the actual position, a certain gravitas will let him use that great mind of his to good purpose, even occasionally against his entire history of contacts and networks. Who knows? Someone that smart might have hidden depths. What else can we hope for? It’s going to be difficult to challenge him. He’s got the credentials. Some of the papers that would show his lines of thought on different issues are not going to be released – for good reason, one has to think, or else they would be proud to do so.

Roberts wrote that he was interviewed by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales as early as April 1. Besides Bush, Roberts reported having discussions with Vice President Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, White House Counsel Harriet Miers and Chief of Staff Andrew Card. To the question whether if any of them asked about his specific legal views or positions on cases, Roberts gave a one-word reply: “No.”

Of course, they really didn’t have to ask, did they – he is well-vetted. I wonder why they keep repeating this refrain as though we would believe that they had absolutely no idea about his opinions and viewpoint. The far right is celebrating for a reason.

The funny thing is, I don’t actually think Roe v Wade will be overturned. If it’s not about money and power, I don’t think it really truly interests this administration all that much. I think they will make some noises in that direction to manipulate the pseudochristians – but they won’t deliver it.

Why? Abortion is a very controversial issue – and along with birth control allowed the liberation of women. Roe v Wade was the compromise that honored both positions. Right now, the majority of American women are somewhat depolicitized. Feminisms have, for a host of reasons, lost ground. Many women are somewhat disenchanted with their options and careers, and feeling as though they might have given up more than they got – after all, the childcare options and equal pay and respect from men never entirely came through. Feminists got painted as feminazis and a lot of women, including many of my friends and on certain days even myself, entered a sort of post-feminist phase.

I don’t think they can go that far all at once. So what they do instead is start working against birth control and sex education… and they’re getting pretty good at that. A lot can be done there against women that is less noticable than overturning Roe v Wade. They even used the case of that poor Lacey woman. Do a little research.

It’s all about controlling women – it’s about power, it’s not about spirituality.

Well – overturn Roe v Wade and you are going to see a lot of angry women. A lot of angry women – we just aren’t willing to go back to the days of my mother, the days when your husband or father had to sign off his permission for a woman to get a loan, the days of backalley wire hanger abortions when only certain wealthy women had control over their reproductive options – those little trips to Europe. Not all women are ready to go back that far, to lose their hard-won rights.

I honestly don’t think they’ll risk the consequences of a fully-politicized female population.

No right to torture

No right to torture

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Torture is a contradiction of our historical national values. In addition, we undermine our national security and are in violation of our own laws when we allow it. Informants will not come forward if they cannot trust us not to treat them fairly under international law. We do not get accurate information with torture – ample historical precedent teaches us that those who are tortured will say anything to make it stop. After a couple of years of imprisonment, what useful information could they still have in any case? We rely on torture now because this administration does not value on-the-ground intelligence. They have not bothered to understand the language and context and history, to make the appropriate contacts that would enable them to infiltrate and get intelligence. The case of Plame shows that they are also less concerned with actual intelligence operations than with political ambitions. What appears to matter to them is the profit margin – Guantanamo, instead of being closed or moved onshore where it would have to abide by US laws, will soon have a shiny new prison – a torture profit center. If you think that the administration has to be told that we do not approve of this, please sign the form below.

There is a strong bipartisan move afoot in Congress to limit the power of the president to torture detainees in our name, specifically to bar the U.S. Military from engaging in “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment”. Does it surprise anyone that this out of control administration is threatening to veto the whole defense bill if can’t continue to commit war crimes? If we do not speak out they are our crimes as well.

This is especially meaningful in the context of the hearings Friday where seasoned intelligence operatives stepped forward to testify that good intelligence comes from building relationships over decades with foreign sources on a trust basis, not by pulling off the people’s fingernails.

Please tell Congress to demand that the torture must STOP.

http://www.usalone.com/guantanamo.htm

Criminal Source and Accountability

Criminal Source and Accountability

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Cozy with the Bush administration, Judith Miller may go to jail to protect their leakers (Rove and whoever is intended eventually to take the fall for his action – wherever will they find another Ollie North?). Normally I would be on the side of journalists to protect their anonymous sources, but in this case it is obstruction of justice to do so. I don’t think journalists should be accomplices to all this, and I don’t believe that’s what investigative journalism is all about. Of course, I don’t see a whole lot of investigative journalism anymore. There seems to be more of the “verbatim recitation of press release” style – not much in the way of helping the public to make even the most basic distinctions. Throw a few images together and you can make anything look like anything – like the falling statue of Hussein – let’s see a pan-out of the whole square, the context.

Ironically, Judith Miller says she is going to jail to defend “a free press” – could it be more absurd? What a strange Orwellian precedent! Watch for it to be used in future.

So anyway, “Bioterrorism Judy” has to decide which is worse – go to jail or risk the wrath of her sponsors/sources/demons/whatever they are. She was instrumental in spreading the word that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. I actually read her book while I was writing my dissertation, so I think I understand how she could have been pulled in…

Meanwhile her colleague somehow walks. Very strange.

I wonder what “reporter’s notes” were actually turned over and how the corporation would even have those notes to begin with?

Outing the classified information of Plame as a CIA agent is in fact an act of treason under the law. Her work, and the work of others was hopelessly compromised and their lives were endangered (and perhaps even lost, how would we know?) because of this spiteful act. We could have used them to get better intelligence, to better protect the USA. That this was done in a sneaky way, and simply to punish her husband’s truth-telling to power (he was right about there being no WMDs, remember?) simply underlines the unethical quality of this administration. Hypocrites – whispering to the press to manipulate us, while publically condemning leaks. Please.

Meanwhile, there is simply no accountability of the governing to the governed. No-one from on higher up has even been held responsible for the war crimes in Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo – and if Alberto G. comes up for nomination, just remember who crafted the new policies for torture. Can you still call this a democracy or even, as my few remaining conservative friends remind me, a “representative republic”? Wake up sheeple!

We still have mechanisms in this contry to change things. Don’t let it get to the point of revolution. Before the 2006 election, we need to take control of our electoral apparatus. Review the new information at http://www.blackboxvoting.org about the voting machine as a “a house with an unlockable revolving door.”