Good for a grin

GOP Faces Growing Peril In 2008 Races (Washington Post, 9/2/07):

"It's always darkest right before you get clobbered over the head with a pipe wrench. But then it actually does get darker," said a GOP pollster who insisted on anonymity in order to speak candidly."

That's speaking pretty candidly, all right.

Al Gore, speaking to the Harvard alumnus magazine 01238 about Cheney saying as Vice President he's not part of the executive branch:

Not much surprises me anymore. I have a lot of friends who share the following problem with me: Our sense of outrage is so saturated that when a new outrage occurs, we have to download some existing outrage into an external hard drive in order to make room for a new outrage.

If you want gods who work for you, choose the Wiccan religion -- you could hit the jackpot. Dundalk, Maryland accountant Elwood Bartlett did, to the tune of a quarter share of a jackpot worth nearly a third of a billion dollars:

Bartlett practices Wicca, a religion whose followers worship nature. He said favor with pagan gods resulted in his win.

"I look at it this way. If the gods are going to intervene, it would be easier to manipulate a machine versus me trying to interpret what they are telling me," he said, explaining why he opted for machine-selected numbers.

An' it harm none, do what ye will -- after all, it's a positive good that Bartlett's good fortune and choice of religion will burn up the likes of Pat Robertson. (Via morbo, at "Carpetbagger Report.)

From an e-mail I got recently:

Many will recall that on July 8, 1947, witnesses claimed that an unidentified object with five aliens aboard crashed onto a sheep and cattle ranch just outside Roswell, New Mexico.

This is a well-known incident that many say has long been covered up by the U.S. Air Force and the US government.

However, what you may NOT know that in the month of March 1948, exactly nine months after that historic day, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfield, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Condolezza Rice, Pedro Rosello and Dan Quayle were all born. See what happens when aliens breed with sheep.

Well, March is eight months after July -- but as we all know, alien/sheep embryo implants gestate sooner than humanoid ones.

posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:30:00 AM -- |    

 
Cool stuff on the Internet

The German satirical literary magazine "Simplicissimus" was a must-read for liberal Germans of the early 20th century; in its heyday, it dismissed all political cant whether it came from the Nazi right or the communist left. Now all the issues from 1896 to 1945 have been archived in Acrobat PDF format and made available to the public by the Literature Department of the RWTH Aachen and other institutions. The magazine is fascinating reading in its own right (though the early issues are in the hard-to-read "Fraktur" type), and is certainly interesting side reading if you're reading about those times.

That got me to looking for historical American magazines that are archived online. Here's one: the Civil War editions of Harper's Weekly, archived by Paul McWhorter at his "sonofthesouth.net" web site. Among other things, Harper's Weekly is where the great American artist Winslow Homer got his start as an illustrator; perhaps his best known work from that period was the "Sharpshooter" drawing done in 1862. The site also has images of several of Homer's paintings from later in his career, though not of my favorite, "The Veteran In a New Field". That painting was done a few months after the surrender at Appomattox in 1865, and captures a lot of emotion in a simple way; it now hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

I've run across the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Timeline of Art History before, when I was re-experiencing some of our trip to Italy last year. It's hard not to get absorbed by this site, even the overview pages are fascinating, say "World Regions, 1000–1400 A.D." After reading "1491," I intend to read more about the pre-Columbian Americas, and there are dozens of essays to choose from on this theme alone.

Plant of the Week

© Smithsonian
Institution,
Natural History
Museum

This site also has a slideshow, sortable by species or date of publication to the web, and a query page where you can find photo galleries of plants by genus, family, or region.

Women in Western Art -- This is kind of spooky, but fascinating.
There's also a guide to the paintings in the video.

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NOTES: Simplicissimus via Jens Scholz, women in art via WorldWideWeber ("Notes from the Basement") posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:00:00 AM -- |    

 
Arctic ice cap loss accelerates
Loss of Arctic ice leaves experts stunned, the Guardian's David Adam reports:

The Arctic ice cap has collapsed at an unprecedented rate this summer and levels of sea ice in the region now stand at record lows, scientists have announced. Experts say they are 'stunned' by the loss of ice, with an area almost twice as big as the UK disappearing in the last week alone. So much ice has melted this summer that the Northwest passage across the top of Canada is fully navigable, and observers say the Northeast passage along Russia's Arctic coast could open later this month. If the increased rate of melting continues, the summertime Arctic could be totally free of ice by 2030.

As Daily Kos diarist "Barcelona" points out, since ice reflects sunlight and open water absorbs it, this isn't just a symptom of global warming, but a cause of it as well -- the process is self-accelerating. Speaking with Elizabeth Kolbert for her 2005 New Yorker series on climate change, scientist Don Perovich put it this way:

“Not only is the albedo of the snow-covered ice high; it’s the highest of anything we find on earth,” he went on. “And not only is the albedo of water low; it’s pretty much as low as anything you can find on earth. So what you’re doing is you’re replacing the best reflector with the worst reflector.”

The Guardian article seems to bear this out:

The Arctic has now lost about a third of its ice since satellite measurements began thirty years ago, and the rate of loss has accelerated sharply since 2002.

We got a Prius this spring, for what little that's worth. (We like it a lot, too, though average mileage seems to be more like 40mpg than 50mpg, judging by the car's instrumentation.) But we need to keep looking around for new ways to reduce our carbon footprint.

Or our warming footprint: maybe put aluminum foil on our roof? Or maybe we should all really start wearing those tinfoil hats we talk about a lot. Desperate times require desperate humor. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:30:00 PM -- |    

 
Worth reading

Thirteen Ways Not To Think About The Petraeus Report (hilzoy, guest blogging for Andrew Sullivan) --- I particularly like number two:

...Even if we can't maintain the surge, we're making progress, so we should stay. -- This is an example of what, on Obsidian Wings, I called "benefit analysis": noting that an option provides some benefit and concluding that we should adopt it. (Relatedly, "cost analysis" involves noting that an option involves some cost and concluding that we should not adopt it.)

John Edwards' Plan To End The War In Iraq --- Just when I thought there wasn't a major candidate really saying what I think.

By leaving Iraq, America will induce the Iraqi people, regional powers, and the entire international community to find the political solution that will end the sectarian violence and create a stable Iraq. We must show the Iraqis that we are serious about leaving by actually starting to leave, with an immediate withdrawal of 40,000-50,000 troops.

But that's not all; as Nell Lancaster notes in a post also worth reading, Edwards also believes the U.S. should "completely withdraw all combat troops in Iraq within about a year and prohibit permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq."* (All emphases added.) Nell:

Primary campaigns are truly pointless, massive wastes of money and effort if there's no significant difference among major candidates. This is a healthy step forward.

Post-Mortem America, Chris Floyd, "Empire Burlesque" ---

The annus horribilis of 2007 has turned out to be a year of triumph for the Bush Faction -- the hit men who delivered the coup de grâce to the long-moribund Republic. Bush was written off as a lame duck after the Democrat's November 2006 election "triumph" (in fact, the narrowest of victories eked out despite an orgy of cheating and fixing by the losers), and the subsequent salvo of Establishment consensus from the Iraq Study Group, advocating a de-escalation of the war in Iraq. Then came a series of scandals, investigations, high-profile resignations, even the criminal conviction of a top White House official. But despite all this -- and abysmal poll ratings as well -- over the past eight months Bush and his coupsters have seen every single element of their violent tyranny confirmed, countenanced and extended.

Thanks, Nancy!

The (Josh) Marshall Plan, David Glenn, Columbia Journalism Review --- A well written description and analysis of the Talking Points Memo media empire and its founder, Josh Marshall. Here's a key observation, I think:

When asked whether he would rather have more staff resources devoted to original reporting, [Marshall] says, "I think we’ve got our percentages down pretty well. I think it’s key to our model that we don’t draw a clear distinction" between original reporting and aggregation. Marshall favors such a mix because he wants his reporters to serve as the "narrators" of complex, slowly unfolding stories. "Sometimes that will mean walking our readers through what’s being published elsewhere," he says. New articles in mainstream dailies often contain facts whose full implications aren’t explored, Marshall says, "either because of space or editorial constraints or because the reporters themselves don’t know the story well enough. They’re often parachuted in to work on these topics for just a few weeks."

Conscience of a Conservative, Jeffrey Rosen, New York Times Magazine --- Rosen profiles Jack Goldsmith: conservative, head of the Bush administration's Office of Legal Counsel in 2003 and 2004 ... and eventual dissident from the worst of what Bush, Cheney and Addington were up to. The profile and Goldsmith's book will go down in history for this quote:

But Goldsmith deplored the way the White House tried to fix the problem, which was highly contemptuous of Congress and the courts. “We’re one bomb away from getting rid of that obnoxious [FISA] court,” Goldsmith recalls Addington telling him in February 2004.**

(Emphasis added.) In the event, of course, Addington was wrong -- they were zero bombs, three years and six months away. This quote is also worth hanging on to, for its succinct summary of the Bush/Cheney/Addington m.o.:

In his book, Goldsmith claims that Addington and other top officials treated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act the same way they handled other laws they objected to: “They blew through them in secret based on flimsy legal opinions that they guarded closely so no one could question the legal basis for the operations,” he writes.

Impeach them all.

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* See also a video of recent comments by Edwards in Iowa (via lambert at "Corrente") on Guantanamo, warrantless surveillance, U.S. secret prisons, and torture; Edwards says he'll end all of it. While Edwards doesn't favor impeachment for many of the usual bad reasons (essentially, Congress has better things to do), his election on a platform like this would be the next best thing.
** The quote begins with "In addition, he shared the White House’s concern that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act might prevent wiretaps on international calls involving terrorists." This is either false or reflects Goldsmith's own willingness to play a little fast and loose with the facts. When factually warranted, the FISA court would certify that such a wiretap was legally warranted -- and could do so after the fact.

NOTES: "Post-mortem" via Avedon Carol ("The Sideshow") and Arthur Silber ("Power of Narrative"); "Conscience" via Avedon Carol and Glenn Greenwald.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:30:00 PM -- |    

 
Explosive Labor Day sale!
PSoTD asks "What should the federal holiday, "Labor Day", mean to America? And how should we appropriately honor the day?" Those are two good questions -- and I don't have the answers to either one.

I do think we shouldn't let it be used as the starting gun for a war-with-Iran campaign. Barnett Rubin, of the Council on Foreign Relations, writing for "Informed Comment Global Affairs":

Today I received a message from a friend who has excellent connections in Washington and whose information has often been prescient. According to this report, as in 2002, the rollout will start after Labor Day, with a big kickoff on September 11. My friend had spoken to someone in one of the leading neo-conservative institutions. He summarized what he was told this way:

They [the source's institution] have "instructions" (yes, that was the word used) from the Office of the Vice-President to roll out a campaign for war with Iran in the week after Labor Day; it will be coordinated with the American Enterprise Institute, the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, Commentary, Fox, and the usual suspects. It will be heavy sustained assault on the airwaves, designed to knock public sentiment into a position from which a war can be maintained. Evidently they don't think they'll ever get majority support for this--they want something like 35-40 percent support, which in their book is "plenty."

Of course I cannot verify this report. But besides all the other pieces of information about this circulating, I heard last week from a former U.S. government contractor. According to this friend, someone in the Department of Defense called, asking for cost estimates for a model for reconstruction in Asia. The former contractor finally concluded that the model was intended for Iran. This anecdote is also inconclusive, but it is consistent with the depth of planning that went into the reconstruction effort in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I hesitated before posting this. I don't want to spread alarmist rumors. I don't want to lessen the pressure on the Ahmadinejad government in Tehran. But there are too many signs of another irresponsible military adventure from the Cheney-Bush administration for me just to dismiss these reports. I am putting them into the public sphere in the hope of helping to mobilize opposition to a policy that would further doom the efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq and burden our country and the people of the Middle East with yet another unstoppable fountain of bloodshed.

Via Jim Henley, with links to other warnings about a looming Iran war. Bush's American Legion speech last Tuesday also triggered concern, with sentences artfully or baldly linking "Iran," "nuclear holocaust," and "sophisticated IEDs."

Regarding WMD, even assuming Iran is running its own Manhattan Project and that that's a terrible thing, the question is whether threats of bombing are likely to make a rational country want to halt its nuclear weapons development -- or carry it forward at all costs. At any rate, even Defense Secretary Robert Gates has acknowledged Iran was likely to see them "in the first instance as a deterrent," i.e., not as a weapon with which to bully neighbors or terrorize all Satans great and small.* Meanwhile, with EFPs ("explosively formed projectiles," kind of super roadside bombs) charges, it's the claims themselves that haven't withstood close scrutiny.

And, as with Iraq, it's the administration's shifting claims about Iran themselves that best indicate that none of those claims are that important to Bush and Cheney per se. As Henley puts it,

Remember, they don’t want a solution to supposed problems, they want a war. For these people in Iran in 2007-2008, as in Iraq from 2002-2003, a peaceful resolution of outstanding differences is a danger to be avoided.

Even if you don't care about the strength of Bush's claims and innuendoes, though, maybe you'd at least care that a war with Iran will be an excellent way of bringing all kinds of additional hell down on American troops in Iraq. And if you don't even care about that, you might bear in mind that a recently bombed Iran might very well want to take its fight to us here in the U.S. -- and could probably do as much damage in the long run as any rag-tag outfit out of Kandahar and Waziristan ever could.

War with Iran would be the worst idea this administration has had yet, and that's obviously saying something. It beggars belief this even needs to be discussed, let alone fatalistically anticipated. This Labor Day, each of us should think about what we can and will do about an administration that won't stop breaking laws, resisting scrutiny -- or escalating wars.


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* I can't judge whether Iran indeed is seeking nuclear weapons; what I glean from sources like ArmsControlWonk is that it's likely they want to at least put up a credible effort in that direction: lots of centrifuges -- even if they don't work all that well -- tough negotiations with the IAEA, etc. If Iran wants nukes and isn't prevented or dissuaded from acquiring them, the recent NIE seems to suggest they'll have them by 2010-2015 -- an ETA that's remained curiously unchanged despite all the work they've been doing, suggesting, I guess, that they haven't been doing the work all that well. posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:07:00 AM -- |    

 
This isn't the time-so nothing was done
or Conyers puts his calculator on the table

Recently some guy in Massachusetts said he could envision the United States attacking Iran and Bush declaring martial law and suspending the 2008 elections. The reason this is worth reporting is that the guy was Congressman John Olver (D-MA-1), according to constituents who met with him -- and he said at the same meeting that he still wouldn't support impeachment because Pelosi says it's "off the table."*

This kind of "Secretly I'm on your side, publicly I'm not" stuff is becoming fashionable for a certain variety of Democrat, and no one seems to have perfected the (non-)impeachment two-step better than Representative John Conyers (D-MI-14), who as chair of the House Judiciary Committee would be central to almost any impeachment process.

This summer, Conyers seemed to indicate he just needed three more impeachment supporters to step forward and he'd initiate impeachment process. But when Cindy Sheehan appeared on his doorstep shortly thereafter, he backed off. And three more co-sponsors for Kucinich's H.Res. 333 calling for Cheney's impeachment have long since appeared, with no more effect on Conyers than Sheehan had.

Last Tuesday, Conyers again excited impeachment supporters, this time in a Pontiac town hall meeting (video). Once again, he seemed to be signaling defiance of the House Democratic leadership on the impeachment issue. Raw Story's Nick Juliano reported:

"Nancy Pelosi has impeachment 'off the table,' but that's off her table, it is not off John Conyers' table," the Michigan Democrat said during a town hall meeting in his district Tuesday. "Nancy Pelosi, who I actually supported, cannot prevent me from introducing an impeachment resolution against, well I've got a long list of people who are eligible. [...]

"I want you to know that I have no reticence, no reluctance, no hesitation to use the tool of impeachment ... whenever I feel that it is appropriate," Conyers said. "I only wish that I could be moved by a lot of people coming to my office."

That last didn't bode well, on closer examination; Juliano also noted that "Conyers did not announce plans to begin impeachment proceedings, which he has previously said would be politically untenable. Rather, his speech seemed to indicate that pro-impeachment activists did not yet convince him that Bush and Cheney deserved to be booted from office."

Sure enough, Conyers was sounding quite different the same day during a phone interview with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now. Asked by Goodman how he responded to continued calls for impeachment, Conyers said "we have several things to do," and referred to the "question of how we orchestrate moving a congressional schedule forward of accomplishments -- we’re pretty proud of what we’ve done in eight months after having no control over the agenda for twelve years." Conyers continued:

We also are trying to make sure that we don’t bring resolutions or hearings that would put the election in jeopardy. We could close down the Congress -- I have been in more impeachment hearings than anybody in the House or the Senate. And our legislative attempts to reverse so many things would come to a stop.

Goodman asked just how impeachment would put the elections in jeopardy. Rather than answering the question, Conyers replied

Well, because unless I’ve got the Constitution in one hand and a calculator in the other, so I’ve got any kind of hearings on removing both the President and the Vice President -- or putting it in reverse, remove the Vice President and then the President -- within the months remaining, would require 218 votes in the House of Representatives. That’s my calculator giving me this information. And then, in the Senate we need two-thirds to convict. Notwithstanding all of my progressive friends that would love to see me start impeachment hearings, those votes I do not think exist in the House of Representatives or in the US Senate.

And it's not as if Conyers denies there are adequate grounds for impeachment:

...we can accomplish probably as much as we would need to to make the record clear that there has been a great deal of violation of the sworn oath of office, abuses of power, through the hearings and inquiries that we can conduct. But it isn’t that -- and no one has ever heard me suggest that we don’t think that there is conduct that could be proven to be impeachable.

No, it's merely that the timing isn't perfect:

...when Richard Nixon was being investigated, it was at the beginning of his term. And although he had been overwhelmingly reelected, there was time for us to have the hearing. ... there isn’t the time here for it.

Rebutting the excuses
Each and every one of Conyers excuses -- jeopardizing legislative agendas, jeopardizing the 2008 election, possibly not succeeding, and not having enough time -- are arrant nonsense; Conyers knows it, and the rest of the Democratic leadership knows it, too.

Begin with the time factor. The House Judiciary Committee hearings on impeaching Nixon were authorized on February 6, 1974, began on May 9, 1974, and concluded on July 27, 1974 -- less than 6 months had elapsed. Moreover, should Conyers choose to request and hold hearings, much of the investigative spadework would already be done -- by Conyers own staff, in the last legislative session -- so that much less time than that would need to be spent on Cheney or Bush impeachment hearings.

Continue with the legislative agenda and "attempts to reverse so many things." As Goodman all but replied herself, reverse, say, warrantless electronic surveillance? It seems more like the reversal is in reverse gear.

In fact, Conyers' hand-wringing in this regard actually raises an intriguing argument for impeachment, which traces to the third article of impeachment passed by the 1974 Judiciary Committee. That article held that Nixon's refusal to comply with impeachment-related subpoenas was itself impeachable (since it arrogated Congressional powers of impeachment to the executive):

The subpoenaed papers and things were deemed necessary by the Committee in order to resolve by direct evidence fundamental, factual questions relating to Presidential direction, knowledge or approval of actions demonstrated by other evidence to be substantial grounds for impeachment of the President. **

The application to issues of torture, warrantless electronic surveillance, and partisan abuse of law enforcement is obvious: because so many of the Bush administration policies that merit impeachment are shrouded in secrecy and executive privilege, drafting precise legislative remedies would be difficult even for a less timorous Congress. The subpoena power of an impeachment committee could corner a lawless administration once and for all.

Turn to "jeopardizing the elections." Would the party of impeachment be punished at the polls for an ultimately unsuccessful impeachment attempt? That's not what happened last time -- for a far less principled impeachment attempt supported by far fewer of the American people than this one would be.

Not that it should matter; if you can do a thing, and you must do it, not to do it is mere cowardice. And right now the thing that can and must be done is attempting impeachment, far more than even succeeding at it.

For one thing, you can't win if you don't play -- the attempt is necessary before Conyers can even turn on his calculator. But more importantly, to attempt impeachment is to finally, finally stand up and say calculators be damned, elections be damned, legislative agendas be damned -- we swore an oath to uphold the Constitution, not to pass a minimum wage hike, (fail to pass) an SCHIP bill, or (fail to) get us out of Iraq. Whether it paid off in the short run or not, the Constitution would have leaders clearly choosing to protect it, not just ones clearly unconcerned about shredding it.

Instead, the country has a so-called "opposition leadership" that is more content to rest on the laurels of yesteryear -- Van Hollen voted against the Iraq war five years ago, Pelosi demonstrated at Tiananmen Square sixteen years ago, Conyers voted articles of impeachment thirty-three years ago -- than on standing up and doing what's needed now.

Democrats: thanks again for your past service. Now go do your jobs -- and stop giving us excuses why you won't.


CROSSPOSTED to Daily Kos
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* Of course, you shouldn't impeach even Bush for stuff he hasn't done yet; but on the other hand if you think his methods so far don't make these kinds of predictions far-fetched, you shouldn't be waiting for permission to support impeachment either.
** Via Takoma Park Impeach Bush & Cheney.

UPDATE, 11/9: Welcome Sideshow readers! I mentioned this item in a comment about an earlier Sideshow post; the claim of Pelosi threatening Conyers with loss of his chairmanship if he pursued impeachment was made by Bruce Fein in August 21 Slate piece, based on "reliable congressional chatter." (Update delayed due to FTP problems.)
posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:19:00 PM -- |