Month: October 2008

Things Mike Johanns Quit

Check out Things Mike Johanns Quit…, a hilarious new site on the Republican Nebraska Senate candidate who has a nasty reputation of quitting on the job. Here’s one example:

The Unfinished Death Star

That’s right. A little known fact about Mike Johanns was that as Secretary of Agriculture for the Bush Administration is that he was charged with construction of the a weapon so powerful even Dick Cheney trembled at its sight.

However, with only months left until the project was completed, Mike Johanns vacated his post to run for United States Senator leaving an opening for the Rebel Alliance to destroy the unfinished Death Star and defeat the Empire once and for all.

Hopefully, Mike Johanns will have failed us for the last time.

I’ve also heard that Mike Johanns quit moving the Dodgers back to Brooklyn, quit mending that fence over there, and gave up solving the Jack the Ripper murders.

Happy Branchflower Report Day!

Independent investigator Steve Branchflower is due to turn in his report on Sarah Palin’s suspected abuse of powers in Troopergate today. After he delivers the report to the Alaska state legislature, the body will vote on whether or not to release it to the public. Progressive bloggers in Alaska have been campaigning for weeks to get the legislature to release the report. The whole affair, particularly post-Palin’s pick as McCain’s running mate, has rankled legislators on both sides of the aisle in Juneau. The McCain-Palin campaign has sent lawyers up to Alaska to stonewall, trying for most of September to kill the investigation and simultaneously paint it as a partisan witchhunt. Which of course it’s not; the bipartisan Legislative Council voted unanimously to start the investigation early this summer.

This is probably the single funniest headline and lede I’ve read this year. From Matt Apuzzo of the AP:

Palin pre-empts state report, clears self in probe

By MATT APUZZO – 8 hours ago

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Trying to head off a potentially embarrassing state ethics report on GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, campaign officials released their own report Thursday that clears her of any wrongdoing.

It’s good to see that the writers at The Onion now have opportunities to ply their work in McCain’s campaign.

Marcy Wheeler points out that the McCain campaign’s preemptive “report” magically proclaiming Sarah Palin totally innocent of all charges (I was surprised that the report didn’t demand Branchflower and Hollis French pay $1,000,000,000 in restitution) also goes so far as to argue that John McCain actually isn’t qualified to be President:

But did you know they rationalized their concern by describing Mike Wooten’s–Sarah’s former bro-in-law–“long history of unstable and erratic behavior”?

Although the report describes Wooten as a separate issue, the McCain campaign goes into great detail about the “rogue” trooper and his “long history of unstable and erratic behavior.”

So in case you’re wondering, the McCain camp agrees that the guy with the long history of unstable and erratic behavior is a menace to society.

In the pursuit of the presidency and vice presidency, John McCain and Sarah Palin have demonstrated a willingness to say and do whatever it takes, regardless of principles or facts. Evidently their ambition goes so far as to not be internally logical, but I don’t think this surprises anyone.

Palin’s Radical Pals

David Neiwert and Max Blumenthal have an intense investigative piece on Salon about who Sarah Palin has been pallin’ around with: radical right wingers and separatists. It goes far deeper into both the secessionists she has worked closely with for the last fifteen years or so and what their relationships have looked like.

This isn’t the only issue floating towards home plate at batting practice speed that could further derail McCain-Palin (Troopergate & Palin’s unpaid taxes are out their too), but it is certainly made more important by the McCain-Palin campaign’s decision to turn their events into Tour de Hate ’08, which has (un)hinged on attacks on Ayers and Wright.

SFT Olympics Actions

Students for a Free Tibet has put together a great video of their nonviolent direct actions protesting the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Awesome recap of a tremendous global campaign – give it a look:

In the lead up to and during the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Students for a Free Tibet (SFT) carried out several creative, powerful, and ambitious actions at strategic locations in Beijing and around the world to show China’s current and future leaders that Tibet is an issue of global significance that must be resolved before China will truly be accepted and respected as a leader on the world stage. 

My action in Hong Kong is about 7:10 into the video.

American Anti-Intellectualism

My friend Josh Schrei recently launched The Schrei Wire and is kicking things off with some searing commentary on the McCain-Palin ticket and the dangerous encroachment of outright anti-intellectualism at the highest levels of American politics.

There’s a simple reason why the years after anti-intellectual purges aren’t fun. Because intellectuals matter. It really shouldn’t even need to be said, but frighteningly in the current political climate, it does.

Obviously no-one in the United States is overtly advocating violence against the intellectual elite, but in metaphorical and increasingly real terms, the Republicans are waging a war pitting middle American ‘Joe Six Pack’ and ‘Hockey Moms’ against coastal elitists with Harvard degrees. Sarah Palin is the personification of this, taking George Bush’s strategy of ‘everyday speak’ to even greater heights (or lows) than George ever did. Apparently, in the Karl Rove strategy book, ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’, so much so that now the war of ‘everyday America’ vs. ‘the smart people’ is absolutely central to Republican electoral strategy.

There should be no underestimating how dangerous and toxic this strategy is. By simultaneously gutting the very educational and social programs that support and sustain ‘Joe six pack’ with one hand and with the other creating a vitriolic culture in which those who actually are educated are seen as ‘other’ and therefore not worthy of governing, the Republican party is toying with the future of this country in ways that can and will cause irrevocable damage.

We all might laugh or cringe when Sarah Palin talks about being ‘five weeks on the job’ and bringing ‘Joe Six pack’ into the white house or describes herself as a ‘pitbull with lipstick.’

What we should be is very, very afraid.

…

A nation such as ours, founded on a very heady document written by some very smart and very well educated people, should never, ever shy away from electing scholars as president. We have, and we should, embrace it.

There are two saving graces here. One is that thinking Republicans are actually starting to realize the danger that Palin — and the campaign of class war that she represents — poses to their party and are becoming more and more vocal about it.

The other is that everyday Americans have suffered the most at the hands of the current administration and many of them realize it. Hopefully more will.

Schrei goes on to make a Tom Frank-esq observation that the end result of Republican driven popular anti-intellectualism is a negative impact on those who vote for it. He speculates that electoral defeat of Palinism at the hands of Barack Obama could recenter the Republican Party and renew their Party in a more thoughtful direction.

I am not optimistic that electoral defeat will derail the path the GOP is on. The Rove-Bush-Palin chain has been successful in energizing their base for eight years. In the face of a plummeting economy, there will be a greater value in political parties embracing populist rhetoric, not a reduced one. The GOP isn’t about to start winning elections talking about corporatism and increased global hegemony — they have to rely on the culture war. And in many respects, Palinism is the addition of a strong dose of anti-intellectualism to the traditional Republican sour brew of “God, Guns, & Gays.” If anything, I expect the GOP to stir the muck even more as they face off against President Obama. It will be ugly and I shudder to think as to how deep the rabbit hole (as Schrei describes in other countries) could really go.

They Write Letters

My friend Nima Taylor Binara gets a letter published in the Wall Street Journal:

Tony Blair Is Wrong In Approach to China

With due respect to Tony Blair (“We Can Help China Embrace the Future,” op-ed, Aug. 26), he wildly misses the mark when he suggests that because the Tibet issue relates to the “One China” policy, it is an “existential” threat to China’s modernization.

Frankly, it is insulting to the Chinese people to suggest that a modern China is incompatible with respect for minority rights or self-determination for colonized peoples. This paternalistic view dismisses the values of democratic pluralism and freedom that strengthen, not hinder, modern societies.

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd had it right when he said, in China, that true friends are not afraid to point out problems. If Mr. Blair genuinely wants to help China “embrace the future,” he could start by pointing out that in the 21st century, China’s ongoing, brutal colonization of Tibet is an unacceptable anachronism.

Nima Taylor Binara, Esq.
Board of Directors
Tibet Justice Center
Arlington, Va.

Well done, Nima.

DHS Study: Data Mining for Terrorists Not Feasible, Un-American

Yesterday Ryan Singel of Wired’s Threat Level blog posted a remarkable story about a Department of Homeland Security study which said that data mining for terrorists was not only unfeasible, but leads to un-American outcomes.

“Automated identification of terrorists through data mining (or any other known methodology) is neither feasible as an objective nor desirable as a goal of technology development efforts,” the report found. “Even in well-managed programs, such tools are likely to return significant rates of false positives, especially if the tools are highly automated.”

The 376-page report — entitled “Protecting Individual Privacy in the Struggle Against Terrorists” — comes as a rebuke to the Bush administration’s attempts to use high-tech surveillance and data-sifting tools to prevent another terrorist attack inside the United States.

…

In particular, the report continually stresses need for the government to follow the law — a none-too-subtle reference to the government’s secret warrantless wiretapping of Americans’ communications.

The committee was comprised of a number of technical and policy experts from government contractors, tech firms and academia. The group’s official name was the Committee on Technical and Privacy Dimensions of Information for Terrorism Prevention and Other National Goals.

The committee reiterated that the government should have useful tools to fight terrorism, but that they must be useful and respect Americans’ privacy.

Now would be a great time for Senate Homeland Security Committee Chair Joe Lieberman to call hearings and investigate whether any currently classified programs are relying on data mining techniques that this DHS commission says are neither effective nor produce results in line with American principles. Of course that’s not going to happen. Even as the Department of Homeland Security itself says data mining doesn’t work and only leads to violations of Americans’ rights, we cannot expect Lieberman and his Republican cohort to demand oversight.

Were Lieberman stripped of his Committee chairmanship, I believe Tom Carper of Delaware would be next in line to be Chair (Levin and Akaka both already chair committees). Would Senator Carper hold hearings on the federal government’s use of data mining? I don’t know. But the next Congress and the next administration owe it to the American people to start turning back the clock on the Bush administration’s abuses of surveillance powers.

The Bush administration and Republicans in Congress (with frequent assists from Democrats) have thrown a lot of dubious, illegal, and ineffective techniques at the problem of stopping terrorism since 2001. Data mining is one of the most odious and it’s way past time that the powers that be stop, look around, and realize that throwing everything but the kitchen sink at a problem doesn’t work. Massive invasions of American privacy and violations of American law don’t make us safer – they reduce who we are as a country, which is exactly what our enemies have sought to do for years. Fortunately some people at DHS have identified a problem area. It’s up to Congress and the next administration to rectify it.