For Chist's Sake, Who Cares? John Edwards in the Age of Holier-than-thou Morality
Tonight on Hardball, David Schuster, went on about how John Edwards' titillating 2006 affair has damaged his message on poverty so severely that...well, he has lost his message. So powerful is the media's feeling about this moral lapse that it surpasses everything else in his career, and all other news on this Friday dump-day.
The National Enquirer, after months of trying, for no real reason, to uncover this thing, as if no one else in politics ever has cheated, as if it means anything in the face of what his work and message has been....or even in the face of the news of the week or the fact that we are at war and planning another, has finally satisfied a hungry supermarket checkout line, dragging our culture further into the gutter.
Lies? You wanna talk lies? How about the lies that the democratic leadership don't want to waste time bringing to light? How about the sick, the old, the suffering that are hungry tonight because of the lies of the government and the insurance industry? What about those old republican ultra-conservatives who would force patriotic Americans to deny their right to the pursuit of happiness honestly, forcing don't-ask-don't-tell, while they have sordid bathroom sex with strangers, even sneaking them into the White House press briefings?
Yeah, HuffPo's Edward's Big News Page will fill you in on the immorality of that night way back 2006, and its even being suggested that then the family went forth, stoically, with this lie under their belts. But who is to say what happened, how they felt, and if they even knew? Maybe it was his own personal secret...Why do we care?
You know what? As heartbroken as I am, because this may answer the question of why he dropped out when and how he did, and as much as I hate liars, I've got to say that I don't think that it changes what his message has been in this race or how he would be as a President or a Vice President, Attorney General, or diplomat. To deny his influence on the messages of the primary candidates, of all of them, is to deny the effective parts of Bill Clinton's Presidency, the social and political impact of RFK and JFK, and if you want to go there, evidence suggests that even Martin Luther King Jr strayed.
Anyone who has been on the road in any intense job capacity understands what happens sometimes in those intense hours and days and weeks. Not that it's OK; not that anyone would condone it. But can't we just understand that whatever it was back then, in 2006, they obviously worked it out and decided to go forward as the happy family that they appear to be. Can't we allow ourselves to learn from Edward's message about the Two America's and apply that to what needs to be done? Why does the message have to be tarnished by a slip that is as common as divorce is in this country? All of Europe laughs at us, the ugly Americans who waste so much time on issues of morality while we slaughter innocents for oil and allow our own weakest citizens to go hungry and without proper care.
I don't like it, and I'm really, really disappointed, but humans are fallible and its not for us to question what happens in someone's personal life unless it is against the law or hurts others in some way that effects society as a whole.
Why are men like this? We are animals and the urge for sex with many different people is deep in the coil. That doesn't mean that we dont have the ability to reason and that we shouldn't strive to overcome those urges, especially when there are children and the construct of the family unit involved.
I cant say that I believe in marriage in general, as a 100% forever thing. I don't understand the mentality of lying to oneself that any particular marriage is the one that will weather years and trials. Rather, if I were to find someone who I felt compelled to marry, I would have to say, realistically, that its a craps shoot and that all we can hope for is to make it to old age together in one piece; that we would promise to try to understand the fallibility of humanity and to not be cruel to each other. Its not OK to make a promise and to be untrue, but its unrealistic to think that its possible for 100% of the people, especially in positions of power that require huge egos, to be perfect 100% of the time.
Why should this make a difference in what he did professionally? I guess he should have told the truth up front... I guess they all should have. I suppose that if we took the same amount of time to hold up the truths of the Clinton's, the McCain's, the Bush's, the Cheney's...I wonder which would be more destructive to society as a whole.
As usual Americans will follow the bouncing ball, the shiny-shiny, and let the rest be buried. Its the soap opera effect...but this is not a story on TV, these are people who have some very real ideas that just could improve our lot as a country and the world as a whole. So, lets no get carried away with this crap. Move along, theres nothing to see here...except some ideals that were meant to bring us closer to what America was founded for.
Vocabulary and Doubt..... Propagandizing the Word "Victory" as the New Patriotism...
Remember back when BushCo was pushing us into Iraq, when the UN was still over there, and we were waiting on reports to find out what was really going on? My sister slapped a bumper sticker on her minivan that said "Bomb Iraq? NO!" I was with her in the sentiment, as anyone who has seen my car bumper through the years will attest to, but I was wary of the language, because I wasn't quite sure what the outcome of the UN inspectors was going to be and I was still in denial that America would do something as crazy as actually divert our troops from Afghanistan to Iraq and in fact "bomb" them ("back to the stone age," as the survivalist working at the local video store said, spittle flying.)
Back then, as the Rovian spin machine began to blend the terms of 9-11, Afghanistan, and Iraq into easily digestible sound bytes with a threatening undertone and the fear of being viewed as un-American somehow for questioning our leadership, I was overcome with defiance. From the Impeach lawn signs that grandpa used to crawl up the steep rocky slope to pull down (because it only takes one crazy with a moltov cocktail!...not that he disagreed, you understand,) to my "Who Would Jesus Bomb?" bumper sticker addressing the bold twisting of the power of belief, and using the framework of religion to sell their war. I read a study years ago that people who commute in cars or just drive alot actually learn quite a bit from bumper stickers. I forget the exact numbers, but I remember being impressed enough to consider my bumper as a teaching opportunity, regardless of if I felt frightened of how others might react. So far I get alot of thumbs up for my " My Child is an Honor Student, But My President is an Idiot!," and the like, though lately I had an Obama sticker taken off the car in Manhattan (I'm hoping because it was unusual and someone wanted to use it!) and Ive gotten a few fingers on the highway. Am I un-American for expressing my disgust with the state of things? Should I be frightened because my words might cause some people to act violently towards me?
9-11 sent us all into a spiral of what might have been national shock, fear, or depression, and the Bush White house, with Karl Rove in the wheelhouse, manipulated and played that up to great effect with the undercurrent message being a warning that we must support the executive without question or risk death at the hands of terrorists or worse: being labeled un-American.
In April of this year, BushCo began circulating memos that warned of the power of the use of certain language because of its ability to inflame religious tensions and, according to MSNBC
U.S. officials may be "unintentionally portraying terrorists, who lack moral and religious legitimacy, as brave fighters, legitimate soldiers or spokesmen for ordinary Muslims," says a Homeland Security report. It's entitled "Terminology to Define the Terrorists: Recommendations from American Muslims."
"Regarding 'jihad,' even if it is accurate to reference the term, it may not be strategic because it glamorizes terrorism, imbues terrorists with religious authority they do not have and damages relations with Muslims around the world," the report says.
Further, just as of this year apparently, words like "jihad," which beyond the U.S.'s common use of it to imply the waging of a holy war, supposedly means to do good, and "mujahedeen," which are just those involved in a jihad, are supposed to be cut from any official discourse. Likewise, "violent extremist," "terrorist," and "Islamo-fascism" have been deemed inappropriate as highly inflammatory. The reports also note that use of these terms increases the star power of terrorists and inflames relations with regular Muslims, who have nothing to do with terrorism and don't much like their religion attached to what amounts to fringe groups.
Too little, too late, you say? The British published similar reports last year, and I don't think I would have to Google far to find these and many other inflammatory terms used by our very Commander in Chief...often...lately...on television from the rose garden...from the oval office...while dropping his Scotty on his head from Air Force One...When has the man NOT used these talking points again and again to inflame and frighten the American people, while apparently breeding more contempt and new baby terrorists all the time?
This is just another pathetic example of the use of language as a propaganda tool to start and continue unrest and to germinate fear and blind obedience in the people of a nation. Loose lips sink ships, but what if those loose lips are your President's? I know that he is gonna be viewed for all of history as a dummy, but look at how frequently the dummy repeated what the ventriloquist fed into his backflap...look at how insidious these few words have been...and wonder, as I am, how many innocent people died because of a couple of very smart guys who decided to use deep psychological manipulation on a lulled and frightened populace, in order to achieve a goal that will likely play out to be one of stone cold self enrichment.
A week or so ago DINO-republo-freak Joe Lieberman appeared on Faux News Sunday representing the republican point of view in a debate against real democrat Evan Bayh. In one of those unreal exchanges about the war old Joe threw around the talking points and buzzwords shamelessly, referring to victory and how the surge had worked, when it must be clear to all thinking Americans by now that victory is a relative term that can be used in any number of ways, and the effectiveness of the surge is questionable at best. Not one interviewer or pundit seems to be able to ask the question of what victory would look like exactly because the term seems to be attached to supporting the troops. In my estimation, this is some sort of leftover plug from the "cut and run" days and it really does a disservice to the troops because it implies that anything less than victory is not acceptable. If victory, as it has been historically viewed, is really not possible in this theater then the troops are damned to failure.
OK, I get it that Joe is caught up in the talking points and is working with a deep neocon belief in the cause of "spreading democracy," (aka. controlling the oil for mid-east domination, fun and profit,) or whatever flavor of kool-aid they were passing out that day, but as a Connecticut voter and someone who worked on the Lamonte campaign, I have to say that what he is saying does not represent me or anyone I know. Not even CT Republicans are onboard with this pap, so where does he get off heading into territory that betrays all that he ran on and even every other more conservative viewpoint in his state? This man so clearly lied to his constituency to get into office. He used the fear and lies of the vocabulary just as surely as he is following at the heels of John McCain and whispering the new jargon into his hearing aide. Joe Lieberman is delusional and so is John McCain, but they are using the new talking points to great effect.
McCain implies that we would be cowards to withdraw, and that there is some sort of shame in ending this war without achieving its objective. The thing is that the objective has been stated and restated a few times by the Bush administration without anything concrete that one might hang onto, and there remains, even in the face of the Iraqi government asking for us to set a timeline, no clear way to declare victory or mission accomplished, or even just get the hell out of there without the leadership of this country deciding that they are going to make it OK to end this thing. There will never be an easy withdrawal, and even in Obama's best case scenarios we are looking at a long drawn out process involving much loss of life, and probably tremendous heroics of the brave soldiers who are tasked with this nearly impossible task.
What does victory look like? The Iraqi people waving flowers and candy at us as we ride our tanks out of town and into the bellies of huge transports? Can we ever go home? From the White House's Victory page itself comes this confusing bit:
* Short term, Iraq is making steady progress in fighting terrorists, meeting political milestones, building democratic institutions, and standing up security forces. * Medium term, Iraq is in the lead defeating terrorists and providing its own security, with a fully constitutional government in place, and on its way to achieving its economic potential. * Longer term, Iraq is peaceful, united, stable, and secure, well integrated into the international community, and a full partner in the global war on terrorism.
None of these goals are even close to being accomplished, nor are programs in place that even seemingly function in the general direction of an orderly return to self governing. The next section gets really bizarre:
* Iraq is the central front in the global war on terror. Failure in Iraq will embolden terrorists and expand their reach; success in Iraq will deal them a decisive and crippling blow. * The fate of the greater Middle East -- which will have a profound and lasting impact on American security -- hangs in the balance.
Impossible to accomplish, as far as I can see...and really scary if we don't! I suppose that if we replaced the "Iraq" with "our huge embassy serves as our base as a central front in the war on terror and controlling all oil production in the region..." oh wait, our presence creates more terrorists, so no matter how many stinking embassies we build over there, we cant stay if we are serious about stopping it's growth....hmmmm....
The concept of retreat, defeat and/or victory do not apply to what is going on in Iraq. The more that Bush apologists are allowed to throw these phrases around, the more America believes in the fairytale unattainable goals of fighting them over there so we don't have to here. Further, these words should offend us every bit as much as the anti Muslim words and the words that increase the star power of terrorists that are in the memos being sent around now by the white house....now, after Bush has used the terms a million times...and how many times will John McCain imply that our troops are somehow less than brave if they leave without the indescribable and unattainable victory that he...er, Rove... has in mind.
Our acceptance of these words from the likes of John McCain or George Bush, and their surrogates, is the first step down the path to submission and the very real unAmerican act of not demanding full disclosure and accountability from those that we elect to represent us not only in our own government but to the world.
And so it goes. lets stop the presses and do a special on the life of....hey, lets do a couple or three... nothings going on anyway, and its been so long since Timmy... And what a great guy he was as well... The reporters ARE the news
Tony Snow: deliverer of lies, fudger of truths, all around mensch. But....where does his responsibility begin for this?:
Just as DINO Joe Lieberman (D-CT,) is clearly not gonna support his party's candidate for President; neither will he be supporting democratic congressional candidate, Jim Himes, to replace Congressman Chris Shays (R-CT.)
Best buddies, Shays and Lieberman, have visited Iraq together some 20 times, and held tight to their shared rosy, pro-war stance until just before the '06 elections, when they both began to waffle and turn, only to change back once they assured themselves that their positions were safe...if only temporarily. They are sharing chairmanship of McCain's presidential campaign's CT "leadership team," and from the way that the two of them have been acting, they expect positions in the McCain cabinet. Its too bad that CT voters were so short sighted, misled, and plain old terrified of the unknown, to vote these guys out. Its too bad also that the two of these crony's can hold hands while saluting their leader, in the name of bipartisanship, which is really just shared neocon vision by any other name. They are sure of the fact that we will be "victorious" in Iraq (which means...what?) and don't care how long it takes or how many die. Lip service paid to bringing troops home is just that; lip service. But what is going on is more insidious than just one turncoat and his brown-nose buddy; its about the movement to actually take over the country while we all slumber in our denial. Scared of the "terra," and worried of "losing" or this idea of "cut and run," I doubt that most people could explain what any of that means in real terms or what we are doing there int eh first place. They can, however, explain how hard day to day life has become in this country and most of what people talk about having changed can be attributed directly to this administration and this war.
The Stamford Advocate, my local paper, today had a great letter about Christopher Shays and his praise of the new big oil deals, by one Scott Kimmitch. What struck me was not the facts about Shays and how dirty he is, because its clear or not to the individuals in this state who likely like Shays because of his manner or his smooth lies, but his clear definition of fascism, which is something that every person in this country needs to understand:
Handing out no-bid contracts to big oil companies headquartered in the two countries whose leaders conspired to mislead their peoples into a criminal war sends the wrong message to the world, particularly if you understand the word "fascist." Fascism is the seamless merger of corporations with national leadership, producing a belligerent nationalism accompanied by suppression of citizens' rights.
Fascism happens when the corporations call the shots and the government connives to let them do it. Why not let oil companies around the world submit bids to Maliki's government and let it work the way private enterprise is supposed to work? Why let our government put pressure on Iraq in the name of corporate favorites?
I actually read this at the local firehouse while a bunch of the guys were taking a CPR refresher exam, and I managed to find a highlighter and highlight it, leaving it on the desk so that they would find and read it. Alot of them are not going to vote because they feel so burned by the system, and lied to by their party. I can only quote facts, because the emotional part is tied up in some of their own service in Viet Nam, and having to face what that war was for...and really, the facts are what you need if you're anyone who cares about the lives of soldiers and the future of the young people of this country.
So this is what its come to. Even if much of this were only partly true, it would be worth taking a good hard look at. You can say that we don't have a Hitler leading that march, and maybe Bush is in his lame term, but that doesn't mean that a Hitler doesn't appear out of this...a deranged and mentally damaged man who's got a clearer and better plan for the victory of the country...someone like McCain, if he weren't so bat-shit crazy...or, maybe somebody pulling a McCain's puppet strings as if he were say, a George W. with a Cheney behind him... I-m not saying that McCain has a chance, because I don't think that he does, but if it all works out, we will have spent 8 years as close as any of us should ever be to fascist rule. This is what I call a close call...and if the republicans were somehow able to pull a reasonable candidate out of their asses we would be in shit trouble, because Americans are uneducated and complacent.
To reiterate: American big oil corporations being able to take back Iraq (...help them with their oil problem, perhaps?) is not what we went there for. We were gonna help them run the oil for the people and then the rebuilding and the war would pay for itself...remember? For the American Government to allow our big oil corporations in there no-bid, without a parliamentary decision on how they want to structure this deal is to go back to the days before Saddam Hussein kicked out the western players and nationalized the country's oil. For the US to put in place the exact same players from the deal before the nationalization has a damning sort of scent to it...like, we went in there to spread democracy? Capitalism? And now they want us to believe that the Iraqis "need" western modernization and expertise in order to make money on their oil? (Like they need sustained electricity still, and buildings without failing plumbing systems, because our private corporations are so, so, great at building infrastructure!) They couldn't ask anyone else who is maybe less conflicted in their interest? Forget those other countries who were shut out of the bidding...This is OUR corporate oil...maybe we'll get a little trickle down from it...in theory, we could; but in truth we won't...And don't expect the Iraqi people to benefit from this either.
So, this is the face of fascism, and it really makes me sick. I'm sure that the Rovian machine can drum up enough outrage and anger to make half of all Americans believe that our corporations deserve this because we've done so much "work" over there, but lets not forget that we broke it...we bought it...and its ours to fix, not gut of its natural resources. And with such an unstable leadership there, I can imagine that the contracts will be long... So, did we go there for oil? Yeah...we did. And Chris Shays, my Congressman, is PROUD of the American oil companies that will put themselves in danger's way (but, oh, is it lucrative!...yes it is...) It will take another strongman dictator to nationalize the oil again...till then, I wonder how much of that profit is gonna go to rebuilding the country? How much of it is gonna go to huge bonuses for CEO's and other players? And will the price of oil drop substantially again? Why should it? Mission accomplished!
I guess the heat got too hot in the frying pan at MSNBC, and after a phone interview with Morning Joe last week, "Standing by his words..." and an insane visit with Jay Leno this week, much the same, chuckling and guffawing about how he is the non PC, wild man of politics...grasping on the slippery slope, the vines snapped tonight and there he was at 5PM, looking dolefully into the camera, and telling me something serious. Something to the effect of; I know I'm wild and crazy; I know I shoot from the hip; but thats who I am. I said some things about Hillary and they were mean...and probably wrong...and unfair too...and I hurt people!! But, I LOVE POLITICS...I love Johnny and Baracky andHill...I love Mittsy and bootsy and bitsy and Bushy....I LOVE YOU ALL!...(and thats why I hit you!) CAN I , PHULEEZE, STAY ON THE AIR??...Stop the complainin' to the bosses here!! Now lets get on with the show!
I dont buy it...no, I dont...not even a little... I wish I had been a fly on the wall in those meetings...imagine what goes into making Matthews make a sincere and personal apology into the camera, between him and us?
And in breaking the 4th wall, (of which 2.5 are made of freakish bluster, even though he technically "talks" to us,) acting as if he sincerely sees us and is communicating from the heart, he proved that he really shouldn't do that; Leave that territory to Keith Olbermann and his brilliant comments. It came off as forced and disingenuous. But what else would we expect from out Tweety?
New York Magazine on Rudy Vs. New York...Were we Really That Bad?
I love New York Magazine. The new one came today with our Rudy on the cover, and Chris Smith unraveling the myth that is 9-11 hero, Rudy. And though it seems like its fish-barrel time, this stuff bears repeating to anyone out there who doesn't know this all by heart already. I can't imagine how many more people that old Rudy can piss off, but he seems to have nailed down every single last one of the 8-10 million New Yorkers and ex-New Yorkers out here, creating more and more material all the time,and Leaving New York Magazine's editorial board no choice but to put him on the cover every other month in terms only as damning as his actions. But then, its really not hard to damn Rudy when you know him like we do.
And really, how much better can it get than: "Rudy has Seen the Enemy and He...is Us,""Rudy Vs. NY," and "Rudy is Running Against the City he Claims to have Saved. He Knows better. So do We." The banner headlines of the piece, quite truthfully, say that the only way for Rudy to fully be the hero that he needs to be in order to win the republican nomination, is to demonize the NYC that was before he became mayor. It was one thing, living through what we lived through after he came to power, to hear his laughable claims, and imagine how fun it would be when the tape started to roll on a tearful Donna Hanover out front of Gracie Mansion, having just found out that he was leaving her on TV, but its quite another when he needs to paint our city and us, as some sort of depraved animals hanging out in sex shops and smoking our crack pipes in alleys. Remember, it was Rudy who was schtupping his Goomah on our dime, the All Spin Zone has the details here....and it must be nice to have a police escort out to the Hamptons, for Christ' sake...that is the most expensive and public place around and he boldly put the tab on revolving city agencies, including an agency for the disabled; has he no shame? No...the answer is NO!
...but the condescending attitude is completely familiar to any New Yorker. The city in the nineties was far from perfect. But were we really living in the hellhole of depravity and despair that Giuliani describes without ever realizing it? And was he the man who single-handedly tamed 8 million misbehaving New Yorkers, delivering us from an economic and physical nightmare?
snip
fitting snugly between the invocation of his September 11 heroism and his mocking of Hillary Clinton: Rudy Giuliani is the man who saved New York. His campaign TV ads are a perfect distillation of the strategy. Before Mayor Rudy, the city was a black-and-white jungle-land of sex shops, violence, and crushing taxes. After Rudy, New York is Oz: sunshine, happy young couples, and shiny gold-plated statues. The message, which Giuliani hammers in his appearances outside the city, is that he made big bad New York safe for the rest of the country. For the pitch to work, Giuliani has to demonize the city he inherited and claim all the credit for the improvements he left behind. The city itself is his original enemy.
snip
So far on the campaign trail, the genial Rudy has been showing his face. The city saw plenty of that other guy—the nasty, credit-hogging, conflict-addicted, wife-humiliating Rudy. The man who tried to put himself above the law and stay mayor after September 11. And we know he’s still in there.
The thing is that Rudy did clean up certain aspects of New York City that probably stayed in place due more to our firmly entrenched knee-jerk liberalism, than to what was best for regular New Yorkers. But Rudy took those problems of laxity and a need to tighten up the ship, and parlayed them into an excuse to expunge all texture and individuality, along with most of the middle class, from Manhattan, and to drive the regular folks further and further out, making the island one of rare wealth and wimpy sameness. He made the city safe for the rest of the country, as a tourist destination and an eastern arm of Disney; safe enough for just about anyone to visit without the classic fear of getting mugged on every street corner. But it was his methods that were a little more than questionable, not to mention his cronyism and his not-so-private private life.
As Mayor, Dave Dinkins, was probably not tough enough, and alot of what was going on needed some healthy adjustment. For instance, in Washington Square park, at the height of the crack epidemic, the police were instructed to only give bench warrants to the hundreds of drug dealers who boldly approached passersby. The warrants led to not much, because people didn't show up for their dates and the paperwork was out of control. The police would drive their squad cars into the park and sit there, moving the loitering crowds from one side to another, and the whole thing had a rather gauntlet-like feeling if one were, say, walking the dog or pushing the baby in the stroller. There were also cars parked every night along 8th st (where I lived on the 18th floor,) with huge speakers that, when cranked up, rattled the windows all the way up there. this went on, with the percussive bass going boom-boom-boom, until all hours of the morning, when upon going down to walk the dogs there would be stragglers urinating here and there, and every car window along Mercer street would often be broken...in a row...as the crack addicts who had little care for anything rifled through cars for anything that could be sold. I remember going round to Green street one morning and a strung out guy breaking the window of a car right in front of me. I went into the copy store and the car alarm was blaring...and no one came.
If your car got hit down there in those days, the best course of action was not to call the police, but to run east and look for your stuff laid out on blankets by the junk sellers that lined the streets of the east village in what we used to call the Real Reaganomics. It only took around 10 minutes for bikes and other goodies to end up laid out for sale. Important papers were dumped in garbage cans or dark doorways around the corner, and just running round fast enough one could probably recover the draft of the doctorate or whatever else had been stupidly left in the car. It was usually just replacing the side window that was a drag. I seem to remember that insurers wouldn't write windows into policies for cars that lived in the city, but I cant remember exactly. Who hasn't bought a video camera box with a brick in it? I haven't, personally, but my ex-brother-in-law did when he first came to live in NYC. If you don't know what I'm talking about then you missed a tiny cultural phenomena that flickered through cities in the days before laptops and cell phones on every hip.
The crack epidemic was a huge problem and how to handle it was not to trust criminals to show up for a court date. The thing to do would have been to arrest truckloads of people over and over until they took it underground, as they tend to do in more controlled situations. The response was bound to be good, and it would look good, and I don't know why Dinkins didn't do more; were his hands tied by bureaucracy? Knowing the answers to my questions would take more time than is warranted, because it was all washed away in the flood of Rudy, who empowered the police to not only arrest the culprits, but also to bend probable cause into an art of gestures and glances, so that just about anyone could be thrown down and basically strip searched right there in Washington Square Park, (which I use as an example only because I can report first hand, having been there.) Throw in a little police brutality, of which we have heard the tales, and the drug dealers got alot more careful. They sort of moved back into the recesses and back to the project neighborhoods.
I met David Dinkins a couple of years ago at the Waldorf at a lunch for Brooklyn Law School, which alma mater he shares with my grandfather. he was quite older than I had realized he would be, and he was very soft spoken and sweet. He talked to the kids, and told us about his kids and grandkids, and how he still played tennis. I realized how much I respected him for his pure liberal vision, but that he just wasn't cut out to play the heavy, and the climate at the time in NYC was one of great frustration. Still, crime had already begun to come down by the time Dinkins was finished and he did beef up the police force. It took Rudy to take the force to another level and give them the power to enforce his ideal of the police state that he envisioned.
At the same time, Rudy was cutting welfare in whatever ways he could. The thing that worked then, and what is working now where I'm living in CT, is to make the forms and process really difficult, and as harrowing as possible. How anyone can take credit for the dropping enrollment numbers, when we all know how he did it, is beyond me. In other words, they made it so hard to get into the system that people left for other towns. With them, left some of the most interesting facets of city life, and possibly those who would be the great city artists or politicians or city workers...we sent away our greatest resource, which used to be our young people raised in a city with public education and diversity...and access to culture and experience like no other place in the world. We sent them away because Rudy thought they were unsightly in how it all looked back then. That was a choice that he made for us; as he cruelly had the cops jostle the homeless off of the heat grates all night until they went away too.
There was no problem solving in that equation. In some cases, more real than urban legend, and confirmed to me by city workers, bus tickets were bought to help in the relocation of the poor. And at the time of the great do-over of Grand Central Station, I used to go on about how the homeless who used to line the walls there with palms outstretched like some old Calcutta film, were actually ground up and put into the concrete of the new walls and tiles and floors. Who wouldn't want to have the station be as nice as it is now? But what did they do with those people in that richest of rich cities? One wonders...and I'm sure there are many answers and alot of legends. My tin foil hat theory was that unused tunnels below the subways became a teeming city of under-dwellers with full, rich lives, who only surfaced from time to time to take in some light or to get supplies. I still study the dark recesses when the train slows to rumble through an old abandoned station, thinking that I will see a family slip into the shadows.
Rudy didn't fix us in the terms that he claims. He just applied a sort of marshal law as the crack epidemic was dying a natural death, and he made it really, really hard for the poor and the lower middle class to survive in the city. He rode a wave of numbers that began in the previous administration and made it his own. He played the heavy full tilt, but what he really did was to put the city into debt while pouring money into superficial and cosmetic fixes, without doing much for the infrastructure in human or mechanical terms. He basically kicked out those that he didn't want to deal with, all the while treating us all like we were some sort of rabble, and acting himself like he was the arbiter of what was acceptable as art, culture, religion, and values. And just like the hypocrite that he is, he held himself to a completely different standard than the rest of us.
So, this is what Rudy did; and meanwhile he was busy making glaring mistakes about security and communications. How rich of a concept it is, that Rudy is a security specialist, telling large corporations and Arab governments how to stay safe. Don't they even realize the nuts and bolts of his mistakes and how bad he was at the design of the security for the people of NYC? Hell, he almost got himself killed!
The truth is that Rudy is all bluster and bullshit. He comes off like a tough guy from the neighborhood, but I know that neighborhood, I grew up there, and most of those boys get dragged off by the ear when their mother found out what they've been up to. This guy is not qualified to be president. A few months ago I wouldn't have given it a second thought but then the ugly swift-boaters slithered out to test the air and see if it was time yet, and I realized that a Hillary Clinton or pretty much anyone (if it could be done to a decorated war hero, then anyone is in danger,)could be swift-boated before the dems could even turn around to fight back, and someone like Rudy could end up as president. I can't state strongly enough how dangerous I think that would be....and I know that a huge portion of the country knows this; but its the others who are just against Hillary or who just don't think that worry me.
...from New York but not of New York....a Republican in an overwhelmingly Democratic town, a prosecutor not a career politician, an outer-borough Roman Catholic in a Manhattan-centric, agnostic world. But that doesn’t mean he’s not a New Yorker. In fact, many of his character traits—his anger, his blind loyalty—come straight out of the tribal culture of New York’s old neighborhoods. On the presidential-campaign trail, Giuliani defines every issue and problem facing the country—not to mention his political competitors—as “enemies.” He sees an America besieged—by illegal aliens, by liberals, but most of all by Islamic terrorists....
snip
If I’m president of the United States, it will be crystal clear we will not allow Iran to become a nuclear power. We will take whatever action is necessary to stop them! We will not take the military option off the table. We will not beg to negotiate with them. We’re gonna make them beg to negotiate with us!
snip
Giuliani is suggesting he’d clean up Islamic terrorists like so many South Bronx crack dealers. He’s repeating one of his favorite phrases, that a President Giuliani would “keep us on offense” against terrorism. But it’s the way he says it that rings suddenly loud and clear. This was the man who told President Bush he wanted to personally push the button to execute Osama bin Laden.
And that's it, right there. This man cannot go further than Iowa or maybe New Hampshire. If the American people allow this to go on much beyond that, then we will have to just realize that this isn't really America anymore; the fringe has taken over and maybe its time to make other plans....maybe Stockholm or Denmark or Canada...But, I am going to try to hold onto Chris Smith and New York Magazine for one more cycle. He says that we, especially us New Yorkers, are wise to old Rudy. But how much sway do we have when the terra talk start in earnest and people want to hear the swagger and brag.
I was looking at my Bush Countdown key chain today. The battery went out a month or so ago and I was afraid that it might mean something. I felt so much better watching the days, minutes, and seconds tick away. It flashes back on from time to time but its set itself back in the 700 +/- range, so I'm just not putting stock in it anymore....but the thing I was thinking was: And then what? Whats next for us? The field is so strange on both sides, and I cant fathom what anyone can do besides start to unravel what amounts to a nightmare of chaos. I've put alot of my fear and anger into despising Bush and his people, but soon, everyone will say that we have to move forward and forget the past.
My fear is that in forgetting the past, we are condemned to repeat it. And if anyone is Bush lite, its Rudy. So, keep those exposes coming boys! Something has to stick on this guy...or maybe just the mass of a million smaller things will take him down....but, as I say...and then what?
The War May Well be the Least of Our Problems: Suicide in the Military; CBS Reports
Despite the best efforts of the department of defense, stories of a surge in veteran and active duty, in country, soldier suicides have plagued this war since we settled in for our long, long stay. Many have been presented as anecdotal, even though they really represented an alarming trend in what amounts to lack of treatment and understanding of what the problems of soldiers are going to be as this war winds on. Most Americans cant seem to focus for long on much these days, and the inability to view even a people magazine article as an indicator of a trend, leaves most regular people unprepared for the real sacrifices that are going to be necessary and the ground work being laid. Surely the care of thousands of depressed and PTSD citizens is not part of the grand budgeting for this war.
In this new world, where we are told to go shopping rather than make any vague sort of sacrifice, where we are not allowed to see even photographs of caskets being offloaded from military transports, where most communities are ill-prepared for their damaged brothers and sisters return to normal life, something is gonna have to give.
Now comes word that CBS has done that rare thing which we see so seldom these days from our media conglomerates; they actually did some research and dug up some information ...and then even reported a real story. So odd was this phenomenon that the method is part of the story, in that they first took the numbers from the states, then took the military numbers...then...then...Its all very fascinating and I hope that it gets huge ratings so that other M$M reporters might look up from their daily briefing from the White House, get off their asses, and look critically at some independent statistics.
According to AlternetCBS has uncovered some hidden statistics that the counters would prefer that we not know in this time of "the surge is working," (if you don't count the "crime" shootings in the front of the head, or was that the sectarian shootings in the back of the head?) Our brave soldiers are committing suicide at an alarming rate. We are talking about 120 dead per week, which is an average of 17 every day!
Anyone that has ever dealt with mental illness of any sort; PTSD, depression, or suicidal ideology, can tell you that an attempted or completed suicide comes from a place of complete and utter pain, such despair and desolation, a break from reality, and that it is not a situation usually where someone hasn't at least tried to get some relief in other ways. Blame it on the anti-malaria drug, the war, or any number of factors, the numbers are going up and regardless of the cause, its a problem that belongs to us all.
The fact that the veterans administration is not prepared for the physical injuries that this war has wrought is well documented, but the real rub here is going to be the numbers of psychologically damaged soldiers returning on top of those that are here already, that are not being treated properly, if they can be treated at all, and who are going to overwhelm a system that is unprepared for this. With the VA backlog already in the millions, how is this problem going to play out in our cities and towns? There is no money for this...there are not enough trained professionals at the ready, there is a lack of mental health care on the ground in Iraq, when some of this could be caught early, and the line snakes around the corner and back again.
The hot career path of the future may well be in mental health, folks. This is not the stuff of take a Prozac and feel better. This is not social anxiety like on the commercials. Its debilitating and disabling, and the cure is not simple. The numbers are bad enough right now, but the stories of the government propping up and shipping out anyone who isn't actively cutting their wrists on their way to the airport, are troubling, to say the least.
Meanwhile, many of those who are able to get enough help to at least document their problems, are dismissed as having "personal problems" rather than any reaction to the war, violence, long deployments and redeployment's, and a different type of percussive head injury that is probably not fully understood yet. I could also imagine that anyone in the position of having volunteered as a reservist and then realized that they were going into war, untrained for the most part, unequipped, and that the tours have been extended and are going to be repeated, might feel quite a bit of helplessness and despair. Add to that the ongoing grind of an ill conceived war that has had our forces clearing one area and then moving on, only to have to come back to the same area again...in other words, there are not enough forces there to hold any part of what they are able to clear.The frustration of risking your life every day for a policing operation that never ends, is some sort of nightmare; you roll the boulder up the hill and it rolls back down...forever...At some point it must be nice to be someone who can embrace the talking points and follow orders blindly, but it must be pretty damned hard for anyone over there right now not to see whats happening on the ground.
We can only extrapolate from CBS's numbers that many, many active duty soldiers are feeling really badly...and I mean that in a dangerous sense. How many depressed and suicidal soldiers are out there as important parts of squadrons on patrol? How many armed veterans are walking around at home with unaddressed despair? Our unpreparedness and obvious inability to treat the epidemic of PTSD and depression in the military is not only inhuman treatment of society's bravest members, but it is actual torture. What are we going to do when the military, lacking resources to deal with this problem, is flooded with returnees? What of the outsourced army who definitely have the same sorts of problems? What are we gonna do?
The crime that must be remembered on this and every Veteran's Day is that these horribly injured soldiers who fought for nothing more than a lie and the enrichment of a certain group of old white men in the war and oil businesses, will come to find that there are not adequate support systems in place for any of our veterans, much less those who have a new type of injuries that have been born of this war. Head injuries and PTSD might not be as spectacularly horrible looking as these photo-oped ones that the Bush administration have sent out to the world, but they will flood our already overburdened system.
Our veterans are the brave heroes, who have put their lives on the line for freedom, whether it was a lie or the truth is not the issue. They went and they fought for us and for our ideals. That's why it is so important for us to support them. That is why I cringe at the photo-op of these brave people being pimped out by Bush and his publicity team.
So, I don't cringe because the injuries tell a story of pain that we could not imagine and lives that are changed forever, that they are too graphic for my delicate sensibilities, but because this guy...this President of ours has the balls to look these brave soldiers in the eye and pretend that they will be able to get care for the rest of their lives.
November 12, 2007 Editorial The Plight of American Veterans
As an unpopular, ill-planned war in Iraq grinds on inconclusively, it can be a bleak time to be a veteran.
There is little outright hostility toward returning military personnel these days; few Americans are reviling them as “baby killers” or blaming them for a botched war of choice launched by the White House. Indeed, both Congress and the White House have been hymning their praises in the run-up to Veterans Day. But all too often, soldiers who return from Iraq or Afghanistan — and those who served in Vietnam or Korea — have been left to fend for themselves with little help from the government.
Recent surveys have painted an appalling picture. Almost half a million of the nation’s 24 million veterans were homeless at some point during 2006, and while only a few hundred from Iraq or Afghanistan have turned up homeless so far, aid groups are bracing themselves for a tsunamilike upsurge in coming years.
Tens of thousands of reservists and National Guard troops, whose jobs were supposedly protected while they were at war, were denied prompt re-employment upon their return or else lost seniority, pay and other benefits. Some 1.8 million veterans were unable to get care in veterans’ facilities in 2004 and lacked health insurance to pay for care elsewhere. Meanwhile, veterans seeking disability payments faced huge backlogs and inordinate delays in getting claims and appeals processed.
The biggest stain this year was the scandalous neglect of outpatients at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center and a sluggish response to the needs of wounded soldiers at veterans clinics and hospitals. Much of this neglect stemmed from the Bush administration’s failure to plan for a long war with mounting casualties and over-long tours of duty to compensate for a shortage of troops.
Thus far, more than 4,000 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq or Afghanistan, many more than died in the almost-bloodless Persian Gulf war, but only a fraction of the body counts in Vietnam (58,000) or Korea (36,000). A higher percentage of wounded soldiers are surviving the current conflicts with grievous injuries, their lives saved by body armor, advances in battlefield medicine and prompt evacuation. A study issued last week estimated that the long-term costs of their medical care and disability benefits could exceed the amount spent so far in prosecuting the war in Iraq.
To their credit, Congress and the administration have poured billions of added dollars into veterans’ programs and streamlined procedures in a scramble to catch up with the need. That is only appropriate. The entire burden of today’s wars has been carried by a voluntary military force and its families. The larger public has not faced a draft, paid higher taxes or been asked to make any other sacrifice. The least a grateful nation should do is support the troops upon their return.
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We all need to look at the graphic truth of this war. This is our war; we own it along with the casualties and crimes that come along with it. So, while some people avert their eyes, lets remember that this is America, and we are only as strong as our weakest citizen...only as healthy as these guys are.
Lets just hope that those veteran's programs continue to grow and be funded properly. lets just hope that not even one brave soldier falls between the cracks of this flawed system. And lets demand that we pull out of Iraq as quickly and safely as humanly possibly. I hope that Bush and Cheney and their cohorts will be held fully accountable for their crimes. But no matter what, the record will reflect what we will be yelling about forever...the truth is that we have all been bamboozled and we have to take care of our soldiers while we search for justice.
Cognitive Dissonance Rules!! Durbin, Tenant, and Kieth Olbermann on Rudy...
Yeah, what she said!! Jill the Brilliant has been watching Moyers on the selling of the war and how the press has been complicit in the execution of what is turning out to be a crapload of worse, worser, worst lies than we could ever have imagined. Needless to say, She is as disgusted as I am about this whole thing.
What is it that Janeane Garafolo goes on about all the time?...oh yeah, cognitive dissonance! Thats when conflicting thoughts or beliefs cause mental tension that is so intense that one has to adjust what might just be the truth in order to release tension between opposing sides. With the release of tension also comes the adjustment of what the mind knows is truth; if one set of beliefs starts to become untrue, the mind then goes into overdrive trying to rejustify by actually altering the original belief or explaining it away in some convenient fashion that isn't really all that far from the original belief. So, when asked to lie about something, without even a profit motive, if a subject can be persuaded for whatever reason to begin the lie, the internal cognitive dissonance caused by the truth vs. fiction causes the lie to become internalized and embraced as some sort of truth. What other explanation is there in the face of our entire press corps laying down? This is probably the answer to my years old question of how do they sleep at night?... Its all been justified somehow and the evident truth to them, while not actually the real and scientific truth, seems just close enough...
The other troubling thing, which I knew already, but its worth repeating again and again, is that people who watch Jon Stewart and Steve Colbert have a much better knowledge and understanding of what is going in in this country than those who watch Faux news....Maybe its easier to embrace the comedy of the truth than the tragic lies that might make us complicit in the silence that has made the deaths of thousands of people and the physical destruction of a country possible...? The frightened woman in the gym (up from her winter home in Florida, no less,) was just telling me how her husband tells her, and she believes it, that she must ONLY watch Fox because all the rest are full of propaganda. But why the fear of hearing what everyone else is saying? Why would you want to protect yourself, if you know its all lies? Because the dawning truth is just too hard for most people to deal with, and so they have to embrace the lie harder and harder, closing their eyes tight and humming loudly so as not to have to face the fucking truth of this thing. Look, I love America, and I am a patriot just the same as any of these people, but patriotism isn't about blindness. Its about knowing what we've done and what has been done in our names, because we are a democratic society and responsible for what these guys do out there in the world! Its is our responsibility to know what is happening, good or bad...and to try to fix what has gone wrong. The longer we put this off, the worse it gets...and its bad.
Then, in the category of "And you're just saying this now??" comes leaked parts of George Tenant's book, in which he finally speaks up about all the lies...now...rather than when it would have made a difference...Apparently, it was OK to be "At the center of the storm" and complicit in all of this crap when it was happening, but as soon as he realized that he was gonna be the one who gets thrown under the bus, and with a multimillion dollar book deal, he found his voice.
And the Senate Intelligence Committee's Dick Durbin (D-Ill.)agonized this week on the senate floor about how the committee KNEW that the American people were being lied to all along but that they were sworn to secrecy. Not one of them would take a chance to break protocol and go public or at least leak something?...As Keith Olbermann said in response to this, not one of those "patriots" could see that this was going to be a disaster of epic proportions and considered that fact more important than their careers or their "oath?" I'm sorry but I don't buy this "oath" nonsense, because obviously, as has been shown over and over by their actions, almost every single one of those guys, on both sides put together, have about maybe 1/10th of the amount of ethical and moral sense as any normal person on the street. So, does that mean they they have now been suddenly released from their oath? Or are they just able to judge the line when the public knows enough that the oath doesn't make a difference anymore? I'm disgusted.
I love the snowball rolling down the hill behind Cheney and Bush as much as anyone, but I cant imagine that these people were so cowardly as to stay in the pack until it was perfectly safe for them to step forward.
And then in the arena of bald faced liars in the first degree we have Rudy Guilliani, liar extraoridinaire and just plan old nasty guy. Now there is a guy that we really cant have for president...he is on who would literally get us all killed! Here is Kieth's brilliant and angry comment on Guilliani...Its long but well worth it.
**Thanks, as always, to Suzanne Camejo for the nature images...
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