Saturday, November 07, 2009

Mike Smith gets history wrong

Mike Smith, former Vermont Secretary of Administration, had an editorial published in yesterday's Barre-Montpelier Times Argus.

This commentary is so unfocused it's hard to know where to begin.

"The key here is the objective the president establishes and his commitment to stick to that objective through both the good and the inevitably bad times. Without an obtainable objective and an unwavering commitment to that objective then probably the best course of action is to bring our troops home from Afghanistan, now."

The problem is that the Bush administration didn't clearly define the desired end state before entering Afghanistan and Iraq. For years the only assessments we could count on was that things were going great, and if we gave them just six months more, things would be going REALLY great.

The Iraq and Afghanistan wars have become perfect examples of circular logic. When times are goods we can't leave because they might go bad again. When times are bad we have to stay so we can make them good again. All we know for sure is that we're staying because we can't leave and we're not leaving because we're staying.

It's not enough to simply say "win" or "total victory." The military needs to know what objectives need to be met so that they'll recognize success when they've attained it.

Think of the Civil War. At its lowest ebb, when there were members of the Union who desired a negotiated peace with the Confederacy, Lincoln successfully rebuffed them because everyone had known from the beginning that his only condition for peace was that the Confederacy lay down its arms -- after that everything else was subject to negotiation. The Confederates wouldn't stop fighting in 1863 and 1864, so Lincoln successfully reminded his constituents of the precondition that had been set at the beginning.

Or think of World War II. When some individuals suggested negotiated peace with Germany, Japan and Italy, the Allies successfully rejected that argument because everyone had known from the start of the fighting that the strategic objective to be attained was the UNCONDITIONAL surrender of the Axis powers.

The failure in Vietnam wasn't the military's, whose goals were to stop the North Vietnamese Army from overrunning South Vietnam and to prevent the expansion of the Viet Cong in South Vietnam. The problem was that the political objective -- creating a stable and credible South Vietnamese government allied with the US -- was unachievable. NO ONE believed the South Vietnamese government was capable or honest. If we wanted it, our military could still be in Vietnam achieving its military objectives against the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army. Because the political objective was not realistic, the military's success didn't matter.

"In fact, they crippled Democrat Hubert Humphrey's presidential bid with their anti-war protests at the 1968 convention."

That's ridiculous. Humphrey's problem was that he wasn't STRONG ENOUGH in his condemnation of the Vietnam war. In the closing days of that campaign, when he finally, slightly, broke with Lyndon Johnson's Vietnam policy, Humphrey staged an amazing comeback in opinion polls. In fact, he barely lost to Richard Nixon. Since Humphrey's momentum was generated by his anti-Vietnam stance, it seems obvious that if he'd been stronger in this regard, he'd have become president.

"The same can't be said of today's fickle protesters, where morality is absent and politics is all-consuming."

How does Mike Smith figure that today's anti-war protesters have no morals and are interested only in politics? Many of these individuals have been consistent in their opposition, especially to the Iraq war. They've made clear why -- they're protesting a war of discretion against a country that posed no threat to the United States. They're protesting Bush's intentional, lying, conflation of Saddam Hussein with the 9-11 attacks. They're protesting the torture and rendition and detention policies of the Bush administration, not as a question of whether those tactics are successful, but as a question of right and wrong -- the very definition of morality. Contrast that with the "tea party" protesters, who had no problem with Bush's illegal detentions and searches, his torture policy, his data collection that amounts to spying on Americans -- fascism. But they think guaranteed access to health care is a dictaorial plot by the Obama administration. Pardon me if I conclude that these "tea party" protesters are hypocritical and amoral.

I've spent 27 years in uniform (and counting). I did my time in Iraq, a tour for which I volunteered. From my perspective as a soldier and a student of history, Mike Smith is completely off the mark.

Wednesday, October 07, 2009

Olbermann's health care reform special comment

I quit watching Countdown a while ago. Keith Olbermann's insistence on continuing to host Richard Wolffe and his possible participation in the MSNBC/Fox News detente caused me to lose appreciation for his point of view.

Well, maybe he's started earning it back. Tonight's entire edition of Countdown was devoted to a special comment on health care reform. Olbermann uses his father's own recent experience with the system to illustrate everything that's wrong with health care in corporate America and what can be done to fix it.

Watch it. Go ahead. All five segments. It's well worth it.



Part 1



Part 2



Part 3



Part 4



Part 5

Monday, September 28, 2009

O'Reilly smears Vermont -- again

From the September 28 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor:



O'Reilly is a stupid putz. Not that the facts matter, but we here in Vermont don't give rapists 40 days in jail for sexually assaulting 13 year olds.

O'Reilly, Nancy Grace, et. al. did Vermont and Judge Edward Cashman a HUGE disservice a few years ago when they lied about Cashman's sentence of a man convicted of sexual assault.

Cashman was upset that the state Corrections Department wouldn't put sexual offenders serving long sentences into treatment that would reduce the chances that they'd re-offend after leaving prison.

To make his point, he gave a convict a short sentence that would qualify him for treatment, instead of the long sentence the guy deserved. A reporter for a local, Republican-owned TV station then took to the air and announced that Judge Cashman had said he "no longer believed in punishment." In fact, Cashman NEVER SAID THAT.

So, the national media flayed Cashman as soft on crime. They mocked Vermont as being rapist-friendly. But back here, in actual Vermont, the state Corrections Department agreed to start making those convicted of long sentences eligible for treatment. At that point, Cashman re-sentenced the defendant to the long prison term he deserved.

Of course, O'Reilly, Grace and company proclaimed that Cashman had cowed in the face of their determined opposition to his softness on crime. In fact, as we here in Vermont know, Cashman had carried his point with the Depatment of Corrections.

Oh, and the now-retired Judge Cashman, a Vietnam veteran whose reputation previous to this case was as a tough, conservative, tough on crime jurist, is still waiting for the reporter at WCAX-TV (Known here as WGOP) to apologize for telling the lie that created the phony, O'Reilly led media furor in the first place.

ABC's Gibson: The New York Times is "liberal"

From the September 28 edition of ABC's World News:



The New York Times led the bogus Whitewater "scandal" charge against the Clintons. A reporter for the The New York Times is one of the two who lied about Al Gore claiming to have invented the Internet, thus using a lie to brand HIM a liar. Judith Miller became the mouthpiece of the Bush administration during the run up to the Iraq war. Here's how it worked: A Bush administration official would give Miller a piece of information about, say hidden weapons of mass destruction. She'd repeat it verbatim in one of her "news" stories. Administration officials would then take to other media to claim that there were hidden WMD in Iraq, and cite Miller's story as "proof."

The New York Times is liberal? As a liberal, all I can say is "I wish."

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

PSA -- Protect Insurance Company Profits

Monday, September 14, 2009

Dick Morris is lying. What a shock



Dick Morris: "Nobody on the right wing has criticized Obama over race. There isn't a vestige of that"

How about Limbaugh playing "Barack the Magic Negro?" How about McCain hissing and spitting "THAT one!" during one of their 2008 debates? How about Limbaugh calling Obama a "Halfrican-American?"

How about this?

Said Limbaugh: "It is offensive to the sensibilities of millions of people to hear a member of the state-run media refer to a half-black, half-white human being with no experience running anything of substance referred to as a god. He may be president of the United States, but he's not a god."

Did you ever hear of Limbaugh calling someone an "all white human being?"

How about this?

Georgia Republican Rep. Lynn Westmoreland used the racially-tinged term "uppity" to describe Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama Thursday.

Westmoreland was discussing vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin's speech with reporters outside the House chamber and was asked to compare her with Michelle Obama.

"Just from what little I've seen of her and Mr. Obama, Sen. Obama, they're a member of an elitist-class individual that thinks that they're uppity," Westmoreland said.

Asked to clarify that he used the word "uppity," Westmoreland said, "Uppity, yeah."


Did you ever hear of a white person being described as "uppity?" That's a code word white people in the south use to describe blacks.

How about this?

U.S. Rep. Geoff Davis, a Hebron Republican, compared Obama and his message for change similar to a "snake oil salesman" [at a Northern Kentucky Lincoln Day dinner].
He said in his remarks at the GOP dinner that he also recently participated in a "highly classified, national security simulation" with Obama.

"I'm going to tell you something: That boy's finger does not need to be on the button," Davis said. "He could not make a decision in that simulation that related to a nuclear threat to this country."


Ever hear of any white MAN of Obama's stature being called "boy?" The term indisputably has a specific, negative racial context.

Morris is lying. Quelle Surprise.

Monica Crowley makes the wrong argument



Monica Crowley: "The things that we did" to detainees to extract information "happens everyday at an American fraternity"

I'm just so sick of these people. They're addressing the wrong issue.

It DOESN'T MATTER whether torture "worked" when the US did it on foreigners, although there's no reason to think it did.

The reason the US doesn't torture is that we don't want OUR OWN TROOPS to be tortured by our enemies.

If we torture, then anyone we perceive as a threat can justify torturing US military members.

If we don't torture, ideally our enemies will respond by doing the same -- NOT torturing American military members.

If the US doesn't torture, but our enemies do, then we still have the ability to point out THEIR bad acts, while they have nothing similar to point to on our side as a justification. That means we can make them look bad to their potential friends and allies, thus undermining the enemy's ability to keep fighting us.

The reason we do not torture is that "supporting the troops" means we cannot surrender the moral high ground.

When you maintain your ability to process facts and reach rational conclusions, it's clear that whether torture "works" is irrelevant.

Tuesday, September 08, 2009

Robert Reich -- the Public Option in less that 3 minutes



Clear, concise and compelling.

Al Franken -- smarter than your Senator

Al Franken did this at the Minnesota State Fair last weekend. I've seen it before. No matter how many times I've watched him do it, it never gets old.



Democratic Farmer Labor party fundraiser, 2007



Look at about 6:45 in this video of the old David Letterman program on NBC.

Understanding health care reform



In less than a minute.

Sunday, September 06, 2009

PLEASE stand and fight for SOMETHING

Glenn Beck released a statement, pledging to go after "other radicals in the administration":

The American people stood up and demanded answers. Instead of providing them, the Administration had (Van) Jones resign under cover of darkness. I continue to be amazed by the power of everyday Americans to initiate change in our government through honest questioning, and judging by the other radicals in the administration, I expect that questioning to continue for the foreseeable future.

David Weigel writes that Cass Sunstein is likely to be Beck's next target.


And THAT explains why Democrats are wrong to keep caving in and selling out. Whether it's health care reform, withdrawing troops from Iraq, or deciding who works for you, every time you give in to these jackasses, it only encourages them to keep it up.

Beck had lost about 60 advertisers after he called President Obama a racist. He was on the ropes. Now, because he's gotten what he wanted with the Van Jones resignation, he looks like he's on par with the President of the United States, and when he launches his next attack against another Obama subordinate, he'll have new found credibility.

People want to back Obama. We want to support a Democratic agenda. But how can we, when Obama, Reid, Pelosi and the rest won't draw a line in the sand and stand behind ANYTHING?

If Obama won't fight for his own staff, what will he fight for?

Rudy Giuliani -- wrong as always



From Think Progress:

Last month, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani endorsed former Alaska governor Sarah Palin’s ridiculous claims about “death panels” in health care reform, saying that “whether they will do that or not I don’t know. … People assume these death panels will be created.” On NBC’s Meet The Press today, Giuliani continued to give credence to the idea, saying that because Democratic health care reform proposals don’t include medical malpractice reform or “interstate purchase of insurance,” it became “impossible for most Republicans to figure out how you’re going to save the money other than pulling the plug on grandma.”

"Tort Reform" is BS, and yet alleged liberals like Obama and Kerry can frequently be found agreeing with Republicans on this issue.

95 percent of medical malpractice is caused by 5 percent of doctors. When the medical profession and the criminal justice system hold them accountable, and when health insurance covers all the conditions that a patient suffers as a result of malpractice, then maybe I'll listen to arguments for "tort reform." Until then, screw those guys.

And while I think of it, the notion that Republicans would support health care reform if only the Democrats gave them tort reform is ludicrous. Republicans have gotten over 160 of their amendments added to the Senate's health care bill, and yet none of them support the bill. In addition, McConnell, Kyl, Coburn, Gregg, Grassley, Enzi, Inhofe, Boehner, and Cantor have made made clear that Republicans are going to vote no on any health care reform, no matter what the bill contains. Since they don't bargain in good faith, Democrats should cut them loose and do what WE want. I say again, when it comes to obstructionist Republicans, screw those guys.