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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
thomas dumm
Published Letters: 73 Editor's Choice: 3
I agree with Glenn about the need to broaden the inquiry into what Rumsfeld, Chaney, and yes, Bush all did to establish the torture regime. But I also think that the office of legal counsel has a special resonsibility, to say no, and to scream bloody murder when overridden on something as fundamental to human rights as this. Yoo wasn't the spearhead, but he had an opportunity to try, at least, to stop it before it began. But he, with Addington, and with Cheney especially, was gung-ho on the Straussian-Schmittian idea of unitary executive power, or what the conservative American constitutional scholar Clinton Rossiter once called "constitutional dictatorship." It is the lawyers in the end, who stand between us and fascism. Yoo is exactly that, an American fascist, serving a fascist administration. No, they aren't Nazis, but you don't have to be a Nazi to engage in the policies and programs that constitute a fascist policy of rule. The latest forms of this stuff never appears as we imagine it will.
it isn't just the pander. Clinton is trying to use this specious proposal to attacj Obama as not caring about average people. In other words, it is straight out of the GOP play book. There is a difference between being tough and being dirty, and Clinton long ago crossed over the line. Obama is plenty tough -- it's just that he isn't a liar.
Today's Washington Post has an article about the racism that Obama workers experienced in central Pennsylvania and West Virginia. I grew up in Altoona, Pennsylvania, have continually returned to visit for thirty years, in fact visited there two weeks ago, and unscientifically will attest to the fact that a majority of white folk there are racist. Not as many of them use the "N" word as they did when I was growing up -- instead, they talk about how Obama is a Muslim, or how he is elitist (a code word for uppity). No one needs to write off Pennsylvania or West Virginia, but you can't pretend that there isn't serious ignorance and bigotry among the poorly educated, provincial, and yes, bitter and resentful working class white people of those states who have been left behind in the contemporary economy. The question is what to do about it. I wish Obama would have gone after Clinton for her race baiting, and challenged the voters of West Virginia to overcome their prejudice -- much as JFK did in 1960, except that that isn't exactly the parallel. But to claim that there is an elitism among Obama supporters, as Joan Walsh claims, because they are frustrated by this hate, is simply blaming the victims of bigotry. Of course people voted for Hillary for good reasons, but she herself encouraged people to vote for her for bad reasons too, which is shameful, and hopefully will keep her off of the Democratic ticket come the end of this.
The one disagreement I have with Walter Shapiro's essay is his repetition of the standard, and backward looking, view that because the split of states in 2004 so closely tracked that of 2000, we should expect 2008 to continue to follow the pattern. I don't think that the pattern will hold, for some of the oldest reasons in the world -- the state of the economy is dismal, the incumbent party's president is severely disliked (hence, Bush/McCain the constant refrain), and we are very, very war weary. Some years back, in a book entitled The Golden Rule, the political scientist Thomas Flanigan traced presidential election spending, and determined that in EVERY election of the 20th century, the party that spent more on the presidential race won. This year, the Democrats are way ahead on every metric, and moreover, the $ difference also obscures a resurgence in union activity on behalf of the Dems. Come fall, we will see, but it is very difficult for me to see how the GOP can possibly be competitive by the fall. All the short term stuff isn't going to matter -- it hasn't in the primaries, and it won't in the fall. The bread and circuses of CNN, Fox, and MSNBC (why WAS that ignorant clown even invited to be on Chris Matthews if Hardball isn't an entertainment program, anyway? I bet he is invited back, too) won't matter.
I started an Edwards supporter, and in the MA primary voted for Obama. As soon as I left the polling place I experienced buyer's remorse. That feeling sure has faded over the past few months. Hillary Clinton is a very smart politician, and she slipped up by saying what she said -- it revealed the desperation of her campaign and herself -- first, she lied about her husband's 1992 campaign still being contested in June, when the contest was over in April, and then she mentioned Kennedy's assassination, in the context of suggesting "anything might happen," the clear implication being that her hopes rest on Obama's death. Her slip was saying what she was thinking. It is truly disgusting.
For a long time the Clinton's have been complaining about people trying to "force them out of the race." That is the name of the game, for crying out loud, and it is exactly what Bill Clinton did in 1992 -- he put enormous pressure on Tsongas and Brown to give it up, and went at the super delegates with threats, as well as favors. Their hypocrisy and lying at this point is truly in the tradition of Atwater and Rove, and that GOP slimeball who helped them triangulate their way to reelection. I once thought that the Clintons did what they did because they had to in the political environment they found themselves in. This campaign reveals that they have always been what they have been, manipulative narcissists who only care about their own privilege. Walsh is simply a tool for them, unable to see what they are.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
