The Busted Brackets

This year it was the pundits who led me astray. If a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, lots of information is worse. Far worse. And so it was that Eastern Washington/Iowa State and their Cinderella spokesmodels led me astray. Once again, as two years ago, my brackets are pretty much busted.

That means it’s time to recall the story of Diane (not her real name). About five years ago members of her extended family encouraged her/bullied her to fill out a bracket and enter the family $100 pool. $5 per person. She probably felt this was just another attempt to filch money from her. She acknowledges that she doesn’t know anything about basketball (but has a loyalty to Illinois) and the pool wouldn’t be the first time she was played for a sucker. She ponied up the fin and set to work.

Her method was unusual. It’s Applied Kinesiology, in other words: use a pendulum to choose the winner of each game. This is very time consuming. She filled out the full bracket, but Diane never put it up on line. That was a level of commitment she didn’t quite summons. I was a part of her family pool also: I came in second.

After the tournament, noting that she didn’t actually post the bracket at ESPN, I asked her how she did. Said she, “Well, I got them all wrong.”

“You mean almost all of them, right?”

“It’s embarrassing. I got them all wrong, every single one.”

When I first heard this, I was astonished. I immediately thought that she must have asked the wrong question of the pendulum or didn’t know a yes from a no or maybe she just should have inverted her choices. She, of course, didn’t recognize that hers was an incredible achievement.

Mathematically, it is not as hard to get all of the choices on a bracket wrong as it is to get them right. That’s because after you lose the first 32 games, all of the following ones are also losses. You don’t need to worry about the second round or the Sweet Sixteen or the Final Four. All of your teams are on a bus home after Friday.

In comparison my brackets are clear, muddy mediocrity. The better of them (yes, I did 2 this year) now has 67.1 percent correct and is ranked 3,812,839. The other is far, far worse. My hope, the same as at all other times, is just to beat the President. He is hard to beat because he is very conservative (not just in basketball predictions) and does not get inveigled by the Georgia States, Iowa States and Eastern Washingtons of the world. He doesn’t like me automatically try to pick a 9 to beat an 8 or a 14 to overturn a 3. Unlike me, he’s not trying to bring home the long shot. So let me note that right now, the President has 56.2 percent correct and is ranked 5,065,809.

You're welcome to draw from this whatever conclusion you like.

Why Walruses?

Funny you should ask. Although your Bloguero is officially on hiatus, he has been posting walrus photos and videos on Facebook. And he will continue until the election has been decided.

Why is that? inquiring minds might ask. It might just be that your Bloguero is fascinated by Walruses, and particular the baby walrus in New York City. But that's not all there is to it. No, it's not.

Your Bloguero offers The Walrus And The Carpenter as a partial, but probably too metaphorical explanation. Surely you remember Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking Glass." No problem if you can't summon up the details. This is, after all, the Internet and Wiki always refreshes your memory (or creates a new one for you):

The Walrus and the Carpenter are the eponymous characters in the poem, which is recited by Tweedledum and Tweedledee to Alice. Walking upon a beach one night when both sun and moon are visible, the Walrus and Carpenter come upon an offshore bed of oysters, four of whom they invite to join them. To the disapproval of the eldest oyster, many more follow them. After walking along the beach (a point is made of the fact that the oysters are all neatly shod despite having no feet), the two main characters are revealed to be predatory and eat all of the oysters. After hearing the poem, the good-natured Alice attempts to determine which of the two leading characters might be the more sympathetic, but is thwarted by the twins' further interpretation.

Ralph Nader, of course, seized on tweedledum/dee in 2009, saying,

"Our two parties are basically one corporate party wearing two heads and different makeup," Nader said. "There is a difference between Tweedledum and Tweedledee, but not that much."

"

Oh was he ever right about that. Yet, there are important differences between the candidates on a whole host of issues. Your Bloguero accepts the received wisdom that returning the White House to those who destroyed the economy and created Iraq would be a mistake. At the same time, your Bloguero has no illusions about how very far to the right the Obama White House has migrated. And your Bloguero is saddened, when he's not angered by that. Where, he asks, is the single payer? The closing of Gitmo? The repeal of NDAA? On and on your Bloguero goes. It is ok to tune him out before he starts ranting about this.

In 2012's election race, your Bloguero feels he should draw your attention to and quote this part of the poem:

"I like the Walrus best," said Alice, "because you see he was a little sorry for the poor oysters."

"He ate more than the Carpenter, though," said Tweedledee. "You see he held his handkerchief in front, so that the Carpenter couldn't count how many he took: contrariwise."

"That was mean!" Alice said indignantly. "Then I like the Carpenter best—if he didn't eat so many as the Walrus."

"But he ate as many as he could get," said Tweedledum.

This was a puzzler. After a pause, Alice began, "Well! They were both very unpleasant characters—"

Both very unpleasant characters. Indeed.

This is not to say that your Bloguero will not vote. He will. Definitely. He always does. He always votes against the callous, the out of touch, the plutocrat, the oligarch, the racist, the moralist, the sentamentalist. Whatever you've got. But he has few, if any illusions that this voting against someone for more than 10 elections leads to good governance. It doesn't. Where, your Bloguero wants to know, is the candidate who embodies your Bloguero's idealistic views? Will there ever be one for him to vote for?

Our Nominee For Understatement Of The Week

I know. Most US officials are ahistorical, meaning that either they don't know history of they've conveniently forgotten it. It's in this context that you have to read these remarks by Dan Restrepo, the National Security Council "point person" on Latin America. States Mr. Retrepo:

At a briefing Monday for reporters traveling with Obama, the National Security Council point person for Latin America, Dan Restrepo, indicated that some U.S. actions in the region were “bad.” However, he declined a reporter’s suggestion to be more specific about the impact of U.S. backing for Chile’s brutal [Pinochet] dictatorship.

“There are 34 countries in the Americas and … that time could cover 200 years. The U.S. has had a complicated history with different countries in the Western Hemisphere over the course of our independence,” Restrepo said. “So, if you had a long time, we could go through each country and whether the U.S. was good or bad in a particular decade or a particular century.”

Yes, we could go through each country decade by decade, and what we would discover, if I may be permitted to summarize and simplify, is indisputable: the US has committed atrocity after atrocity after atrocity in Latin America, exploited and expropriated its natural resources, oppressed its people, manipulated its governments, and bestrode it like a Colossus. Generally, the US thinks of Latin America as its Plantation. Not just in 1970s Chile or 1980s El Salvador or 2011 Honduras. In fact, the US has had institutions for a centuries devoted to promoting this role, from United Fruit and the Army to the School of Americas (now WHINSEC) and CAFTA and NAFTA.

"A complicated history." What a joke. My nominee for understatement of the week.

Cops Of The World

Simultaneous War III continues. Nobody knows its goal or how or when it ends. Or who's in charge of operations. Or what a success might look like. In fact, the many questions US airstrikes on Libya have raised seem to have struck many (including me) dumb. Why? Because I just don't get it. I don't understand the point of this latest military adventure. Or what it is supposed to accomplish. Or how.

There are lots of countries in which dictatorships with varying degrees of brutality toy with the lives of the citizens, suppressing dissent, imprisoning, killing, disappearing, repressing in one way or another. These countries are not democracies. How many are there in which tyrants of one stripe or another are in charge and acting like, well, tyrants? I don't know, but you can bet that Libya isn't the only one in Africa. And, of course, all of these countries, to one degree or another, have nascent opposition groups that are involved in various kinds of opposition to the tyrant, including demonstrations, rebellions, or outright armed insurrection. But the US isn't busy lobbing $1 million missiles at these countries in support of the rebels, or flying airstrikes to blow up their military defenses, or coordinating with the allies to advance the opposition, or even threatening them to straighten up and fly right. Or else. Libya is special, probably because of oil.

And who is this utterly disorganized opposition in Libya? Yes, they are opposed to Ghaddafi. But other than their opposition to the despot, what's their plan, assuming the tyrant is toppled? Are they talking democracy? Is there a reason why they are somehow worth the potential loss of US lives and the enormous cost of this operation when other insurrections don't merit attention? I just don't understand how deposing G (or is it K) and a victory by the rebels assures democracy or any other worthy goal. And I don't understand why it matters to the US. Unless, of course, it's about the oil.

As the great sage County Joe put it many years ago, "And it's 1, 2, 3 what are we fighin for? Don't ask me, I don't give a damn."

And now we have President Obama's lame effort to address some of these concerns. CNN reports:

"Our hope is that the first thing that happens once we clear this space is that the rebels start discussing how they're able to organize themselves, how they articulate their aspirations for the Libyan people," Obama said.

Is this an announcement that the rebels are still disorganized and have no plans for the future other than deposing G (or is it K)? Or does it mean that the US is now bombing in behalf of people who are leaderless and acting without any plans, forget about long term goals? And then there's this, which is very had to understand:

The president acknowledged the irony of being a Nobel Peace Prize winner who ordered the U.S. military into action on the eight anniversary of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, but said the goal in this case was humanitarian.

"I'm accustomed to this contradiction of being both a commander-in-chief but also somebody who aspires to peace," Obama said, adding the Libya mission was to protect the Libyan people from Gadhafi's military.

"We're not invading a country; we are not acting alone," he said. "We are acting under a mandate issued by the U.N. Security Council."

The American people will see no contradiction between someone who believes in peace and "who wants to make sure people aren't butchered because of a dictator who wants to cling to power," Obama added.

What? I see a contradiction. A huge one. Is this a case of making war to make peace? Is this destroying Libya to save it? And is the President saying that in other nations, those who are being "butchered because of a dictator who wants to cling to power" can make a claim on US military assistance which the Peacemaker President will dutifully grant?

What a steaming hot mess. The US continues to play out Phil Oakes's song, "Cops of the World."

War Du Jour, Part III

War, endless war. Evidently, Iraq and Afghanistan, even taken together, cannot sate the US's taste for armed combat and blood. No. Not a chance. Those are insufficient. Today we learned that the US was going to get involved in yet another war, a third one, this time in Libya, again complete with ill defined purpose, the possibility of massive and uncontrolled escalation, and no exit plans. Yes, I know. No ground troops are being committed. Yet. Right now. But this intervention is a lot more than just imposing a "no fly zone". Let's call it what it is: it's an open invitation for the US to get embroiled in yet a third, simultaneous, distant ground war.

How so? Let's suppose that air power can keep Libya's air force on the ground. But let's also suppose that Libyan armor attacks Benghazi. Or Libyan mercenaries and infantry attack some other civilian center in which there is resistance to the Gaddafi government and its tanks and infantry and mercenaries. It's clear that to defend the rebels (read: the less well armed Libyan people) there would have to be at the very least an air attack on the advancing forces. And the Libyan response to that would be an escalation of some kind, and the response to that, in turn, another escalation. Have we seen this particular sequence and its consequences before? Or more to the point, haven't we seen it far too often? And hasn't it killed enough US soldiers? And enough foreign soldiers? And enough civilians?

MSNBC reports:

NATO allies meeting in Brussels were drawing up plans to enforce a United Nations resolution authorizing military action to prevent the killing of Libyan civilians Friday as Western leaders delivered an ultimatum to Moammar Gadhafi.

Fighting continued Friday in Libya despite the government's declaration of a cease-fire to comply after the U.N. resolution passed a day earlier.

President Barack Obama and other Western leaders said military response would be swift if Gadhafi forces continue attacking protesters trying to end his 42-year rule.

I think we've heard that line about "swift" elsewhere, perhaps in the different context. At least so far we've been spared the silly prediction that the Libyan people would greet US troops in the streets of Tripoli with flowers. We'll have to wait until next week or next month for that. Right now there is already video of people in the streets with Libyan flags supposedly cheering the UN/US decision to intervene. Those videos are positively Chalabi-esque.

But it's the language about "military action to prevent the killing of Libyan citizens" that's the real problem. That very phrase opens the door wide to yet another quagmire. You remember quagmires. Vietnam. Iraq. Afghanistan. Now Libya. What does this phrase mean about the limits, if any, of US/UN intervention in Libya? As far as I can tell, not so very much.

And how does our present War President explain (video) why the US cannot sit this out in the peanut gallery and try to nurse it's own economy and Japan back to a modicum of health? Ah. Well. He doesn't. You have to watch the entire statement. Very nice rhetoric. Very broad. Very fierce (where has this fierceness been hiding for the past two years that it gets to show off now?). Yes, it's intolerable that Gaddafi's forces are killing civilians. Yes, Gaddafi has abused the populace for more than four decades. Yes, he's violated human rights. Yes, he's suppressed expression and the right to assembled. And worse. We've heard all that before about Mubarak, and Saddam Hussein, and [fill in the name of the dictator who is now out of favor in the US]. Yes, he's a bad, bad man. And, yes, he has oil, oil, oil. How coincidental.

You would expect a large outcry about this newest of US wars. But so far, I don't hear much. I'm amazed that committing the US's military to anything like this can happen so easily. Have we become that desensitized, that habituated to war for oil?

Obama: Get Out Your Comfortable Shoes

h/t to Sam Pratt:



I invited you to please go to Wisconsin. You apparently declined. Or didn't get the invitation. Ok. I guess you forgot about this.

Obama: Please Go To Wisconsin

Well, here I go again, oversimplifying, being idealistic, possibly ranting. To all of these I plead guilty. In advance.

President Obama's made a few statements about the demonstrations in Wisconsin. The most widely disseminated one is this one, reported in TPM:

Well I'd say that I haven't followed exactly what's happening with the Wisconsin budget. I've got some budget problems here in Washington that I've had to focus on. I would say, as a general proposition, that everybody's gotta make some adjustments to new fiscal realities. And I think if we want to avoid layoffs -- which I want to avoid, I don't want to see layoffs of hard-working federal workers.

We had to impose, for example, a freeze on pay increases for federal workers for the next two years, as part of my overall budget freeze. You know, I think those kinds of adjustments are the right thing to do.

On the other other hand, some of what I've heard coming out of Wisconsin -- where you're just making it harder for public employees to collectively bargain, generally -- seems like more of an assault on unions.

And I think it's very important for us to understand that public employees, they're our neighbors, they're our friends. These are folks who are teachers, and they're firefighters, and they're social workers, and they're police officers. You know, they make a lot of sacrifices, and make a big contribution, and I think it's important not to vilify them, or to suggest that somehow all these budget problems are due to public employees.

So, I think everybody's gotta make some adjustments, but I think it's also important to recognize that public employees make enormous contributions to the well being of our states and our cities.

Sounds, feels, smells and looks like a politician. It's balanced. It's cautious. It looks over his shoulder to wonder which side might ultimately win the Battle of Madison. It sounds like he'd like to be on the winning side for 2012. What it doesn't sound like by any means is leadership.

Leadership would be going to Madison and linking arms and standing in solidarity with the demonstrators and union members against the reactionaries and would-be union busters. It would be standing up to the Koch funded "movement." It would be explaining clearly to all who would listen that these unions are important to sustained high pay in Wisconsin and the nation, and that the antedeluvian effort to kill these unions must be defeated. The Wisconsin football stadium might be a good place to hold the rally.

The President, however, hasn't shown any signs that he's ready to lead a fight for labor, his largest supporter. It looks like he might still want to invoke politesse and refer to these union busters as "the right to work" advocates with whom he has a small disagreement.

These people don't deserve that kind of deference. They have ginned up a plan to destroy public unions and are inflexible about it. They will not modify it or back off from it. They plan to destroy public unions. Period. They have begun by trying drive a wedge between public workers' unions. The teachers and highway workers and bureaucrats are ok to beat up on and they won't be able to bargain, but those the cops and firefighters, which are more traditionally Republican, will.

Today's mock phone call with "David Koch" proved beyond all cavil that Scott Walker is the lead dog running a national union busting movement. He doesn't care at all about the state's budget. This is another item entirely. This for Walker is only about destroying public unions. Yes, it's happening through the state legislatures, but this is a manifestation of an organized, well funded, nationwide movement to emasculate public workers' unions.

That's why the unions can't afford to lose this battle. And it's why President Obama needs to organize an appearance in Wisconsin. The unions have already conceded on the economic issues in this confrontation by agreeing to pay more for their health insurance and to contribute more to their pensions. Those issues are not what's keeping 14 Wisconsin legislators under cover in Illinois (or elsewhere). No. They are outside the state solely to protect collective bargaining. It bears repeating. What makes the confrontation persist is only one thing: the governor's adamant refusal to drop his plan for withdrawal of collective bargaining rights for certain Wiaconsin public workers. Plain and simple: the Governor insists on destroying these unions.

That's why the national democratic leadership in Washington needs to go to Wisconsin. And they need to go now. This is a confrontation that can and should be won. Obama and the national leadership have to stop playing Bert Lahr. They have to show up in numbers, and they have to roar.

Eternally Tan, Always Wrong

The Beginning Of Demanding That Promises Be Kept

Bright Lights, Big City

I've been thinking about disappointments. And how to deal with them. How to handle that bitter taste. And the sadness.

You must know what I mean. Relationships that wither. Expectations that dessicate. Hopes that die. Plans that collapse. Love that fades away. Friends who pass on. Children who move away. Parents who die. Machines that rust and fall apart. Treasures that rot. Fabric eaten by moths. Politicians who don't deliver. The list is long. And it's inexhaustible. It's about what we want but cannot have. It's about what we want to get rid of but cannot shed. The Buddha was right. Our clinging makes us suffer. And we cling. Oh how we suffer.

Disappointment is just a particular form of sorrow, of suffering. It's everywhere and as common as dust. It begins in expectations and ends in rubble.

I could get angry about this. Many people do. But that doesn't do any good. I could yell about how unjust, unfair, improper, illegal, brutal and stupid it is. I could want to fight and look for a brawl. But that doesn't matter. The hurt remains. It persists despite how I distract myself.

I could catalog my disappointments for you. Disappointments in love. And in politics, which might be the same thing. Disappointments about health. Disappointments about wealth, fame, esteem. And in all of the other human areas in which I didn't get what I wanted or expected or desired. Or what I deserved. I could give you, if I haven't already done it in installments over the past few years, a long list of my many, many grievances. But that's not why I'm writing now. No. I'm writing now because I want ever so slightly to shift our attention, to shift how we deal with our inevitable and pervasive and continual disappointments.

Which brings me to the blues.

Here's the cardinal blues idea: things are disappointing and they hurt us in our hearts and souls. We all have these profound hurts. But, and this is the biggest but in the blues, if we're going to keep our souls and our hearts and our passion and our humanity alive, we need to release these hurts and pound them out and scream them out and see them for the rich, beautiful, human feelings they are. We want to embrace them in all their humanity. We want to embrace that we love deeply and that, sadly, we're disappointed. It doesn't matter whether it's a lover, or a friend, or a country, or a political party, or a group, or an idea. None of that matters.

And it doesn't matter how much it hurts. Sometimes it really stings. I just want to sing and dance the song of life one more day. I want to celebrate that I'm alive, I'm human, and I feel it deeply, deeply in my heart. Here's what I mean:

Honduras: The Golpistas Raise Their Middle Finger

The news of an impending resolution to Honduras's coup was hopeful, but apparently too good to be true. Today it's clear that nothing has been decided, that rightful, democratically elected President Manual Zelaya is still stuck in the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa, and that the negotiations to resolve the crises are now totally dead. This should not be a big surprise to anyone.

The New York Times reports:

Ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya pulled out of talks with the country's post-coup de facto leaders on Friday, throwing efforts to resolve a months-long political crisis back to square one.

Zelaya pulled his representatives out of meetings with envoys of de facto leader Roberto Micheletti that were the latest in a series of attempts to resolve the political deadlock sparked by a June 28 military coup.

"As of now we see this phase as finished," Zelaya envoy Mayra Mejia said shortly after midnight (7 a.m. British time) at the hotel where both sides have been negotiating for three weeks.

All attempts to reach a deal have snagged over whether Zelaya can return to power for the last few months of his term, which ends in January.

"Post-coup de facto leaders" is an interesting turn of phrase. I prefer "golpistas." Or if you prefer, "leaders of the coup d'etat." But the bottom line is that no matter what you call Roberto Micheletti and his friends in the oligarchy, their coup continues despite virtually universal condemnation. And it only has to continue, as far as the golpistas are concerned, until November 29, 2009, the present date for elections of a new president. That date is right around the corner. The golpistas have no intention, none whatsoever of restoring Manual Zelaya to his rightful presidency. That is the one, single thing they will not permit. And, unfortunately, that's the one single step the rest of the world believes is an essential first step to end the crisis.

This is what is called a deadlock.

The rest of the world may insist on restoration of Manual Zelaya to the presidency as an initial step, and it may insist as well that the coup's running the national election in November undermines the legitimacy of the "democratic election." But the golpistas don't see it that way. At all. To them, surviving all the diplomatic initiatives and the sternly worded verbal condemnations and the impounding of funds until there's an election is the goal. They'll happily argue about the legitimacy of the election after its been held. And nothing is going to budge them from their present stranglehold on Honduras's government or move them to restore Manual Zelaya to the presidency.

The golpistas would rather clamp down on the demonstrators than move their position toward a possible resolution. This is what one should expect of them. The burden of the unrest, and especially the present damage to the Honduras economy fall on the poorest people in Honduras. These are not the golpistas. They are quite powerless to resist the military government and the US equipped and trained army.

And what of the US and it's recently announced "better relations" with Latin America?

The deadlock in Honduras is proving a challenge for U.S. President Barack Obama after he vowed better relations with Latin America. Washington suspended the visas of more figures in the de facto government this week to pressure a settlement.

"The two sides need to seal this deal now. Time is running out," U.S. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said on Friday. "We have not given up on a deal yet ... We are focussed on these guys sitting down and agreeing," he said.

This is nice. There is no deal to seal. There is no agreement. And now there are no talks. Put another way, US insistence on an agreement is and continues to be an utter non starter. Similarly, negotiations brokered by Oscar Arias. Similarly, the impounding of non-essential US aid to Honduras. The golpistas have raised their middle finger and most observers are making believe it's to tell which way the wind is blowing.

Prolonged Detention: Whipped Cream On Manure Doesn't Make A Dessert

Put in the simplest terms, the proponents of "prolonged detention" think that dressing up preventive detention with post detention procedures will make it constitutional. Procedures= whip cream. Detention= manure. This will not make the prolonged detention policy palatable. It will not preserve the sentiments behind the US Constitution. And a debate about how many dollops of whipped cream are required will completely miss the point. The point imo is that prolonged detention is in a single word unacceptable. It should not be countenanced. The idea should be shelved and abandoned.

The NY Times tell us that the "prolonged detention" plan is still mostly theoretical, that there aren't real details, but there's a frightening, general plan:

Mr. Obama has so far provided few details of his proposed system beyond saying it would be subject to oversight by Congress and the courts. Whether it would be constitutional, several of the legal experts said in interviews, would most likely depend on the fairness of any such review procedures.

Ultimately, they suggested, the question of constitutionality would involve a national look in the mirror: Is this what America does?

“We have these limited exceptions to the principle that we only hold people after conviction,” said Michael C. Dorf, a constitutional law professor at Cornell. “But they are narrow exceptions, and we don’t want to expand them because they make us uncomfortable.”

In his speech on antiterrorism policy Thursday, Mr. Obama, emphasizing that he wanted fair procedures, sought to distance himself from what critics of the Bush administration saw as its system of arbitrary detention.

“In our constitutional system,” Mr. Obama said, “prolonged detention should not be the decision of any one man.”

I want to repeat myself. The proponents of "prolonged detention" think that dressing up detention with post detention procedures will make it constitutional. Procedures= whip cream. Detention= manure. Please recall that what the current Supreme Court says is Constitutional is the final word on a topic. So the practical question the administration faces is just how much seeming fairness in procedure do they have to provide to satisfy a rightwing dominated Supreme Court that defers regularly to assertions of national security and expertise by the executive. The answer? Not so much. Not so much at all. A little bit more than Bush. Maybe half a dollop.

But even aside from that, and the historical willingness of the Supreme Court to endorse totalitarian measures, like detention of Japanese citizens in the face of claims of national security threats, procedural protections are only as good as the person making the decision. Let me explain this: Substantive measures like detention of scary people will always trump procedural protections.

Years ago I was involved in representing prisoners (in prisons and mental institutions) who were punished by their holders for violating institutional rules. At the time, the big, national push was to require that prisoners receive a hearing before they were thrown in solitary confinement or lost good time or had to endure other serious punishments. We got federal courts to order that the accused prisoners would have a prior hearing unless it was an emergency. If it was an emergency, they could be locked up first and then be given a "due process" hearing with significant but not unlimited procedural safeguards. The prisons were enjoined to follow these rules. Great. An apparent victory for the prisoners, right? Wrong. Did any fewer prisoners end up in solitary? No. Did any fewer prisoners argue that they had been unfairly punished? No. Whoever held the hearing made whatever decision s/he thought should be made. The result was that the hearings slowly became recognized kangaroo courts. The procedural protections were there in theory only.

How could this happen with all of court ordered "due process" protections the inmates had? Hah. As a colleague of mine said about this very issue, "You can put whip cream on dung, but it doesn't make it a dessert." The prisons wanted to put prisoners in special housing units for long periods of time. Guess what? They did that. The procedures were there so they could argue later on, "But you had a fair, due process hearing in full compliance with what the federal court ordered." In some ways, and this is frightening, it made confinement easier.

The next question is who. What lucky people, who will be initially chosen to experience "prolonged detention" in all its wonderful procedural glory? The Times says:

Mr. Obama’s proposal was a sign of the sobering difficulties posed by the president’s plan to close the Guantánamo prison by January. The prolonged detention option is necessary, he said, because there may be some detainees who cannot be tried but who pose a security threat.

These, he said, are prisoners who in effect remain at war with the United States, even after some seven years at Guantánamo. He listed as examples detainees who received extensive explosives training from Al Qaeda, have sworn allegiance to Osama bin Laden or have otherwise made it clear that they want to kill Americans.

Did you get that? There are prisoners we have now who we cannot try because we have no admissible evidence (maybe they were tortured, maybe there was no evidence in the first place that they committed a crime, who knows why they've been locked up for 7 years or more?) but, and this is the big but, even though there's no proof they did anything, and there's nothing they could be tried for, they still are claimed to "pose a security threat," one that requires them to be locked up forever.

Take a look at the nearby precedents for detention without proof of crime: sexual predators who have finished their prison terms, psychiatric inmates who are an imminent danger to themselves and others, people who represent a risk to the community who have been charged but not yet convicted of serious crimes. In other words, the scary people. So, of course, the scary people from Gitmo might become a fourth category. Put another way, people come up to those who defend such people at cocktail parties and ask, wide eyed, "How can you defend such a person?"

The legal question might be parsed as how many dollops of whip cream procedure are required to turn detention into a seeming dessert. The current proposals, as general as they are, give cold comfort: the decision shouldn't be made by one person, there should be oversight from congress and the courts. Congress, of course, has provided such masterful oversight in the past 8 years that it's rational to rely on that. Not. And the Courts? You've got to be kidding. Show me a single court when faced with a claim of national security that has denied the claim outright.

My point on this? The people, yes, Virginia, they are people, presently held in Gitmo need to be tried or released. There should be no third category, there should be no "prolonged detention." The correct approach to this issue is to stop trying to make "new regimes," new categories, new inventions. The correct approach is to stop making believe that what the US is doing in the GWOT is a "war." And that the alleged participants in terror are some kind of special "enemy combatants." They're not. They're more criminals than they are soldiers. And we should imo be trying them as criminals if we possibly can. And if we cannot try them, the required step in the US for the past two hundred years is this: release them.

I am alarmed, but not surprised that so many people are ready to make excuses for the Government on this issue. To me, this is one proposal that needs for the sake of our country to be shelved and abandoned.

Torture: The Need To Prosecute

Yesterday, while I was driving to court, I heard on NPR that the "torture memos" had been redacted and released, and to my amazement, that Barack Obama had announced that the actual torturers would not be prosecuted. I thought I misunderstood the radio.

This morning I see that I didn't misunderstand anything. The New York Times reports:

The Justice Department on Thursday made public detailed memos describing brutal interrogation techniques used by the Central Intelligence Agency, as President Obama sought to reassure the agency that the C.I.A. operatives involved would not be prosecuted.

In dozens of pages of dispassionate legal prose, the methods approved by the Bush administration for extracting information from senior operatives of Al Qaeda are spelled out in careful detail — like keeping detainees awake for up to 11 straight days, placing them in a dark, cramped box or putting insects into the box to exploit their fears.

I'm more interested in the "would not be prosecuted part" than the bugs in a box, crazed dogs, waterboarding, sleep deprivation, slamming naked people into walls part. The latter aren't really news, nor are the legal contortions, sophistry, and nonsense that the memos have invoked to define these actions as "not torture" and/or to justify their use. No, the part that didn't register was the announcement of prosecutorial immunity for people who followed what are plainly illegal orders to torture. That is the part that inflames.

Mr. Obama condemned what he called a “dark and painful chapter in our history” and said that the interrogation techniques would never be used again. But he also repeated his opposition to a lengthy inquiry into the program, saying that “nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past.”

Mr. Obama said that C.I.A. officers who were acting on the Justice Department’s legal advice would not be prosecuted, but he left open the possibility that anyone who acted without legal authorization could still face criminal penalties. He did not address whether lawyers who authorized the use of the interrogation techniques should face some kind of penalty.

With all due respect to Obama, I don't think we need "a lengthy inquiry" and a "laying of blame" for torture. Not at all. What we need are prosecutions of people who tortured. As the Times points out, "The United States prosecuted some Japanese interrogators at war crimes trials after World War II for waterboarding and other methods detailed in the memos." And we need prosecutions of lawyers who wrote bogus memos authorizing and approving torture. And we need prosecutions of people who, knowing that the memos were nonsense, solicited, importuned, commanded, advised, and ordered others to torture. US officials tortured. If it's true that the US does not torture, there have to be consequences for torturing. Prosecutorial immunity is not a consequence for violating the law and human rights.

Further, as I wrote last night, there was no reason for an announcement that there would be no prosecutions of torturers. The memos had to be released because yesterday was the deadline in the ACLU's suit under the Freedom of Information Law for their release. There was nothing about releasing the documents that required a spontaneous grant of prosecutorial immunity to anybody. In fact, far to the contrary. Why didn't Obama just release the memos, and wait for the low level interrogators to come running to his office to say who ordered what and when? Unless, of course, the reason for the statement was to protect all of those up the chain of command.

I understand full well that the CIA opposed the release of the documents. I understand that "Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A. director, had argued that revealing such information set a dangerous precedent for future disclosures of intelligence sources and methods." That's all very nice. But the tail doesn't wag the dog. The assertion that CIA morale and esprit d'corps require the shielding of those who torture from prosecution is a chilling one that simply should not be countenanced.

Other than making a ruckus across the Internet, something that has not yet happened yet, I can suggest only that those who find this grant of immunity as disgusting as I do sign the ACLU petition and the democrats.com one calling for prosecutions.

Bracket Update

Well, here it is. It looks like I have 6 teams of the round of 8. I did not have Connecticut or Oklahoma going this far. I did have Syracuse winning everything, so that's over, over, over.

No matter what happens from here out, I'm doing far better than Barack Obama. Just saying.

Inauguration Day

On Inauguration Day, January 20, 2009, every workplace in America should pause between 9:30 am and 1:00 pm so that everyone can watch this truly historical event on television. I wouldn't miss it for any reason.

Barack, Say It Ain't So!

Here's trouble. The Telegraph reported a year ago that president-elect Obama's favorite Premier League team is West Ham. Obama hasn't denied the story. Oh, puhleez! Barack, say it ain't so!

The key question hanging over Barack Obama's White House credentials has been answered - the Democrat has been revealed to be a West Ham United fan.

As the 46-year-old's campaign to become America's first black president moves into overdrive, Obama has declared his fondness for the Claret and Blues quarter of east London.

According to reports, the US senator has been a fan of the Hammers ever since a trip to England five years ago and watches Premier League games whenever his busy schedule allows.

Of course, Bill and Hillary Clinton are reported to be Man U fans. As is Nelson Mandela. That's despicable in my view, but at least Man U is at the top of the table.

But West Ham? As of today, West Ham is 10th in the Premier League, with a record of 7 wins, 5 draws, and 9, that's right 9 losses. And it has a -4 goal differential. The team plays 9th place Fulham tomorrow. I'm pulling for Fulham.

What about this team could it possibly be that deserves any of Barack Obama's attention? I just don't get it. Not at all. I hope and pray it's not an augury of things to come. Things like stubbornly backing abject losers. Supporting failed strategies. Inadequate defense. Uncoordinated offense. Poor planning. This I could expect from Bush, who has no idea what the Premier League is, but from Obama?

Meanwhile, it's reported that Osama bin Ladin apparently is/was a fan of Arsenal:

First there was Osama bin Laden's association with Arsenal, which led to the north Londoners reportedly banning the terrorist from attending any future games.

Bin Laden was apparently on the terraces as Arsenal side reached the final of the European Cup Winners Cup in 1994 season. The man behind the Sept 11 attack was rumoured to be so smitten with the Gunners that he bought a replica kit for his eldest son.

I have no idea what to make of that.

The First Dog

My Nominee For "First Dog"

Permit me to expand on this commentary from the Times:

So, Barack Obama has almost decided what kind of puppy he's getting. Aaah, cute. He's whittled his choices down to either a Portuguese waterhound or a labradoodle - both, funnily enough, dead ringers for the Queen guitarist Brian May - and soon we'll be treated to a photocall on the White House lawn as he ruffles its head in a gesture that says: “Look, I'm just a regular guy like you, except that I have 12 bodyguards here who can kill with their bare hands and you've got notebooks.”

The only problem now is this: he won't have any time left to run the US. I do not exaggerate. When Obama said choosing the dog “has been tougher than finding a Commerce Secretary” he clearly had no idea that getting a dog is the easy bit. It's actually looking after it that makes having a real baby seem only fractionally more difficult than a Daily Star crossword.

It's with this in mind that I have to recommend to Barack Obama a proletarian, low maintenance, rescued dog. My nominee is above. Playful, friendly, loyal, nice to children, and smart, Luna Long Legs deserves to be first dog. In her short 16 months of life, she has already survived numerous, false accusations, calumny, and slander. She has been threatened with poisoning, beating and even death. She has survived all of this with equanimity and style. She remains cute. She loves to cuddle. And best of all, she remembers who her true friends are.

You think some Labradoodle or Portugese waterhound has these qualities? You have to be kidding.

Today I Retired The Button

Good bye to this:



This button graced the right column of this blog for many, many months. And now, it's time to move on to the next thing.

I imagine that all across the Blogosphere these kinds of renovations are underway. After all, I removed the Obama sign from the front yard only yesterday, but I still see lots of other signs and lots of buttons. People naturally want to hold on to the victory. But very, very soon, if it's not time already, it'll be important to leave the wonderful campaign behind and to start the next phase, influencing the government's policies. That, I think, will be much more challenging.

Close Gitmo!

Tell President-elect Obama to close Gitmo on 1/20/09. Here's a petition. You know what to do.

A Mythic Hummingbird Flight

[Hummingbird photo removed. Sorry.]


In the Q'ero shamanic tradition, and doubtless others, there's the archetype of the hummingbird, the animal of the winds of the north.

Hummingbirds have impossibly small wings in comparison to the size of their bodies. But every year they take the mythic journey, all the way from South America to the northeastern United States and Canada, and later the round trip. They have enormous courage. They fly alone. They follow only their inner guidance. They eat heavily before the time comes. And when the time comes to fly, they realize that it's time, and they respond without hesitation and with enormous faith and begin the long journey.

During the flight, they lose up to 40% of their body weight. Some cautious ones seem to fly around the Gulf of Mexico so they will fly over land. But many, many fly directly, non stop across the open waters of the Gulf. They fly close to the waves, so that the headwinds will not impede them, but there are predators in the water and the air. They always fly alone. They always follow their guidance. Their unbelievable, heroic flight takes several days.

There are reports from oil rigs in the Gulf of seeing hummingbirds fly past them flying close to the water.

Eventually, the hummingbird arrives at its destination, the distant, perhaps unseen place, for which it first set out. It may be weak, exhausted, a shadow of its former self, but it nevertheless arrives at a destination it may not have seen before, a destination it could only dream existed, a destination that somehow called aloud to it, a destination known to all of its ancestors, and it responded without question.

This gigantic journey links it directly to all of its ancestors, and it connects each of us directly to ours.

Where, after all, does the hummingbird receive the knowledge about where to go and how to go there? How does it know so perfectly how to do the seemingly impossible?

And where did we get the ideas we have about justice, quality, compassion, honesty, courage, and perseverance? How do we know so well what these are?

Since the election, I've been seeing Barack Obama's journey as a fulfillment of the mythic hummingbird journey. Starting in near insignificance, he set out on a long, heroic, testing journey, keeping his eyes and heart on the destination, flying bravely and alone, finding help where he could, and at last arriving. A magical hummingbird journey.

It's an unbelievably old archetype. The Nazca lines in Peru, made more than 2500 years ago, have a hummingbird. It's there, I like to think, to remind us of our ability to achieve the seemingly impossible, that with our impossibly small wings, we are capable of the most epic flights.

I am astounded and humbled. My gratitude for being alive to witness this overwhelms me.