Haunted House

Sorry to have been silent for a few days. I've been contemplating the future of America, and also the ambiguous numbers in the competitive Senate races, and thinking about the relationship between liberals and business. And I'll talk about that subject one of these days, but right now, I have to tell you, I've got the blues.

Why, you ask? Why the blues? Look at the excellent polling numbers! Webb has tied up the race in Virginia! Smile, smile! Well, yes, those are good things. But I have papers to grade, and when you have papers to grade you can't ever really be happy. I worry about my students, I have to say. The other day, one of them mentioned, before class started and by way of chit-chat, that he didn't think sensory deprivation constituted torture. I explained that he might feel differently if it were inflicted upon him with an unknown duration of, you know, months, as opposed to being an imagined experience that he was conjecturing with an idea of knowing how long it would last, and implicitly with the idea of trying it out voluntarily. There is nothing worse, I said, than being left completely alone with one's thoughts; and you could consider the entirety of human history as the single-minded avoidance of exactly this condition. Why else do we consider hermits to be such freaks? Why else do I have my TV, cell phone, radio, and computer on at all times, and a book always at my elbow? Because I'm afraid of myself, like any right-thinking person.

So I asked the students about waterboarding, and was met with a blank stare. No one had ever heard of it. Well, I said, we're doing it, so you'd better know what it is. And I explained, with an emphasis on what I consider to be the scariest part of the whole thing: the emphasis on technology; the slow, deliberative, methodical inflicting of the most immediate kind of pain. Look at the picture above, and shudder.

We produce sensory deprivation by putting people in a smothery suit. We waterboard people with some ghoulish device over their faces, a kind of SaranWrap, that keeps them from actually drowning. When we send people off to Syria and Egypt to be tortured, those prisons helpfully construct little mini-cells, the size of a coffin, to hold them for years. Just ask the completely innocent Canadian guy who was just released after 10 months in one. There is, as there has always been, a deliberate technology to the administering of torture; and that technology has an interesting relationship to the public discourse.

Consider, for example, the wise words of Steve Moore from the Wall Street Journal and the Club for Growth, who said on Bill Maher's show the other week that he would like Jack Bauer to head the CIA. You know, Jack Bauer. The guy Kiefer Sutherland plays on 24. He beats people up, I gather. So for Moore, what we need is a guy who knows how to throw a punch. The idea of the mechanisms of torture is nowhere to be seen.

Or, take John Yoo's new book, which I have not and will not read. In the review of it in the Times today, we see Yoo's wisdom on the subject of Abu Ghraib:

Of the Schlesinger report on the Abu Ghraib prison, Mr. Yoo says it found that the abuses there "resulted not from orders out of Washington, but from flagrant disregard of interrogation and detention rules by the guards." He does not grapple with those portions of the report that found "there is both institutional and personal responsibility at higher levels."

John Yoo can say this because the Abu Ghraib abuses were so low-tech, not because they were uncoordinated (which they quite obviously weren't); it's the same explanation Rush Limbaugh gave for these events: frat house hazing, Middle East prison-style. Totally unpremeditated, completely impromptu. Our failure to face how we administer torture when we are doing it as part of a deliberate plan allows Yoo and Limbaugh and everyone on the right to perform a placatory double-speak, simultaneously saying that torture is ok, and, in the instances where we actually get to see it, that it didn't happen and would be unacceptable if it did. Everyone can feel ok, and still permit these things to happen.

And that, in turn, brings us to Cheney, where all roads eventually seem to lead. You probably heard about Cheney's gaffe on Hannity's show, where he said that dunking someone in a little water was a "no-brainer" from his point of view if it would lead to busting up a terrorist plot. And you probably heard about it because Tony Snow immediately had to play a stupid game of pretending that Cheney wasn't talking about waterboarding, but was instead, preposterously, talking about just, you know, dunking someone in water. Like at the fair. Maybe they even throw a baseball at a target.

Look. Of course Cheney was talking about waterboarding. But that's not the point. The point is that the Right will push us toward torture by never specifying what they mean by it -- precisely because it would then materialize from a vague concept to a list of highly imaginable, and terrifying, methods. So the question for Cheney isn't "did you mean waterboarding?"; it's "how can you possibly make light of a technique that involves deliberately tying a person to a table with his head lower than his feet, and covering his face with a plastic device that prevents him from breathing, and then pouring water onto his face such that he has the sensation of drowning and can't get his breath, and giving him the impression that you will not let him get his breath, so much so that he may actually pass out or even die; well, whatever that is, Mr. Vice-President, surely it is not a no-brainer?"

If the Dems take a House on November 7th, there will be a lot of talk about exactly what to have hearings on first. And there's a long list, and it should be used wisely. And I'm not sure the torture thing will play as well as hearings on, say, war profiteering in Iraq. But I am sure that this little rhetorical game needs to end. We'd better get clear about what we're doing to other people. And we need to get clear by getting graphic. So Dems, do me a favor: get so graphic that even my lackadaisical students will know about it.

Interlude

I know that I promised to post on the subject of labor and health care -- but there's something I have to get off my chest first. I am a perennial watcher of the Daily Show, as I hope we all are, and while I love the show, and have Jon Stewart on my list of "The 5 People I'd Most Like to Meet" (other contenders, in case they're reading: Anthony Lane, Bill Clinton, and two that I refuse to identify because of my deep fear of commitment) -- well, I've noticed a little problem. To whit: there are almost never female guests on the Daily Show.

Certainly, Stewart is drawing from the population of those who write books and columns about politics, and women don't seem to be very heavily represented in those circles. I hate that, of course, as should every right thinking person; and I hope that Stewart hates it, too. But what the hell is up with that? Why do women think they can't opine on things? And, let's be clear, it's just the opining -- there are plenty of female reporters, and they have, many of them, legendary status. Think of Silvia Poggioli, and swoon. Think of Judy Miller, and barf a little.

But go watch, for example, Bill Maher's HBO show "Real Time". He does better than most at getting female guests on a regular basis -- but never more than one woman at a time on his weekly three-person panel. And when there is a woman, she is always, regardless of her political affiliation, seated in the middle, between the two men. Apparently, we never graduate from the boy-girl seating that we had forced upon us in the first grade.

In the American Prospect the other day, this question (women in politics, not seating charts) got a full treatment (the piece is problematic but worth reading) -- complete with the wisdom of Maureen Dowd, who predictably enough thinks that this entire effect can be attributed to the fact that women are shy about their opinions because they're too concerned with being liked. Coming from her that makes sense, because her columns reek of exactly that concern. The most offensive thing about the fact that the Times has one regular woman op-ed columnist isn't that there's only one -- it's that the one is Maureen Dowd. If you're going to have one woman columnist, why does it have to be someone who constantly backs off her words by being "funny"? And the "funny" is in quotes because she isn't even that -- she routinely structures her column around a pun (famously, the lowest form of humor) and then works that pun redundantly for the first two paragraphs, and extends it further into the body of the piece. Yuck, yuck, yuck. No wonder she, and everyone else, thinks women are scared to hold forth on politics -- she's demonstrating precisely that concern in every column.

Of course, I am a) a woman, and b) a woman who likes to be funny; but ask around, and you'll find out that I am also c) a woman who is quite happy to be hated. Frankly, I have no idea why women aren't better represented in political analysis in this country, nor does anyone else. The reasons are, I'm sure, all the things you'd expect, but as to the recipe -- that's anyone's guess. But so what? If, as the American Prospect suggests, the issue is that women just don't get in the game enough, then my answer is: Here I am! Given the current state of misinformation and sheer ignorance flourishing among the male punditry, I really don't see how I can go very wrong. So, can I go on the Daily Show now??


Just as an aside: there was a British study earlier this year demonstrating that men are not attracted to funny women. Aside from explaining my entire life, this study also indicates that Maureen Dowd is probably using the wrong strategy in her whole "please like me" effort.

The Plan II: Pull the Plug

I have dispensed with the Iraq issue in the last post -- and thank god, because it just keeps getting crazier. So far this week: no more "stay the course", timetables for Iraqis to meet goals, changing tactics but not our goals, stupid rhetoric, stupid rhetoric, stupid rhetoric (and by the way, I hope you heard that in the middle of the Khalilzad/Casey press conference to announce that the Iraqis are up to the challenge of standing on their own -- you know it -- the power went out). Thank goodness I've already spoken on the subject.

So now I can move on to National Security in general. There is an idea out there, you may have noticed, that Democrats are not credible on National Security. Bush said it today, in fact -- Democrats only want to react to attacks after they happen, not to prevent them. Now, you could argue, given that he spent almost all the time before 9/11 cutting brush in a place designed to be fully covered in brush; and given that his V-P's Terrorism Task Force never bothered to meet; and given that his record is 0 wars pre-9/11 vs. 2 wars post-9/11 -- as I say, you could argue that the same accusation could be pretty effectively levelled at him.

But that's not really where I'm going with this. Rather, I am going to suggest that Dems get good on National Security precisely by pointing out that it is we, and not Republicans, who can best prevent the next attack, because we are not in the pocket of the oil companies. It needs to be pointed out, every day, constantly, that Republicans are in bed with the enemy in the Middle East. It is ridiculous -- ridiculous -- to publicly decry the behavior of countries to whom we are on a daily basis funelling what little is left of our wealth. On this -- and possibly only on this -- I am with Thomas Friedman at the Times, who points out pretty consistently that if Americans weren't so desperate for oil, the Iranians wouldn't have carte blanche to behave like raving lunatics. As Friedman says, eliminate the market for his oil, and see how fast Ahmadinejad decides that maybe the Holocaust did happen, after all.

We need to cut these people off, stop funding their deplorable governments, and force them to a more serious bargaining table. But as long as we are dependent on their oil -- and on the prices they set by controlling supply -- we have absolutely no leverage of any credibility. I know I've joked that we're going to invade Iran -- and I do tend to think that if Iraq were going any better we might -- but we had better understand that if we do invade Iran, all the Iranians have to do is -- not to send a missile our way; it is not to firebomb our troops; it is simply to cut off the movement of oil out of the Persian Gulf, and thus to send oil over $200 a barrel, and thus to send absolutely everyone except the oil companies into the kind of economic tailspin that will render the Carter years a nostalgic dream, and will turn Hugo Chavez -- himself an America-hating nutbag -- into the crack dealer for the world, selling us oil at prices that will give him the nerve to call Bush things a lot racier than just "the devil". That's the irony of the whole Iranian nuclear threat: as things stand now, the Iranians don't even need a nuke; they just need for us not to smarten up.

We had better get it straight that we are not going to stop Muslim extremists, at least not through military action. Arab countries are going to have to stop them. And we are in no position to bargain these nations toward desirable outcomes as long as we are indebted to countries like Iran (enriching uranium), Iraq (the oil will pay for the war! oops! -- Ok, protect the oil fields first! oops!), Saudi Arabia (home to 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11), Venezuela (devil-baiting president), and -- worst of all -- Sudan, from whom we receive very little or no oil but from whom the Chinese import a lot, and we can't bully them not to, because we're in the same boat.

So, if you want to do something for your country, stop with the fossil fuels.

And, Dems might point out, alternative energies are the greatest economic opportunity of the 21st century, and we are in the middle of pissing it away. Alternative energies are exactly like the record companies and the ipod. The record companies fought digital music like it was going out of style. They wanted no part of the whole thing -- and it was inevitable that there would be digital music -- and now Apple is raking it in with the ipod and itunes, and the record companies are sitting around going, oops. My friends, it is over. There will be alternative energies. We can either import them from Europe and Japan, and slowly suffocate. Or we can design them ourselves and export them at a massive profit. This is an idea about American entrepreneurial ambition -- the way it was before we got so scared of our own shadow, so, dare I say, conservative.


Next up: I outline a plan for an American New Labor, and beg for affordable health care.

The Plan I: Inauspicious Beginnings

As I hope you noticed, I'm quite delayed with my much-anticipated Plan For Democrats. This is because I had intended to start out with a real barn-burner, a page-scroller, a manifesto of great promise: I was going to solve Iraq. I had a plan, stolen from people who've actually been there and who know stuff. I was ready to articulate this plagiarized plan for you, my readers, who have better things to do than peruse the latest books on the Iraq nightmare. So, what went wrong? Iraq went wrong. All week. In the most extraordinary ways. And so I have been bereft of a post with which to launch my agenda.

Let's start with the plan that I was going to offer, which is the plan outlined, in different forms, by Peter Galbraith and also by Joe Biden. This is the plan whereby we partition Iraq into three pieces, leaving the Kurds the north, the Shiites the south, and the Sunnis the middle. In the interests of providing originality, my plan has US troops patrolling the borders of the different sectors and keeping everyone in their own area, but no more than that. And then we do some diplomacy or something to get some help with all the patrolling. I haven't quite worked that part out, since I don't think we actually have enough troops to patrol such lengthy borders. Not that it matters, because this week has rendered my lovely plan obsolete.

It is now evident that the Shiites are killing each other and killing Sunnis. Amara, in the south, was, as I'm sure you've heard, briefly taken over by one of the competing Shiite militias dominating the area -- an area theoretically so thoroughly pacified that it was transferred from British control to the Iraqis. So it is fairly obvious that even locked up in their own sections of the country, these people are determined to kill each other, and no amount of sending them to their separate corners is going to stop them.

So I don't know what to do. But let us remember: Democrats are probably going to win this election in a landslide, and they are going to do so in large part because Americans are sick of the war. I personally think the Foley thing is overrated; I actually contend it just reminded people of how much they hate the war. At any rate, if/when we win this election, we inherit Iraq. By controlling the budget, we will have the ability to pull all of the troops home simply by starving the war over Bush's objections.

Beware, beware. I have never bought the concept of the "War on Terror", first because I think all ideological wars are total bullshit, and second because I have no idea what "Terror" is. It's obviously nonsense that "the terrorists" are going to follow us home. What is going to happen, though, is that Iran will take up the task of stabilizing Iraq -- for a price. This is apparently part of the anticipated Baker/Hamilton plan, if you can believe it; no wonder they're holding it until after the election. That's going to go over huge. So that's bad; but the worst of it is that, until and unless the Iranians clean up our mess, we are going to have to stomach hundreds of thousands of deaths, over a period of years, while the Iraqis fight it out -- and if you think those deaths will be credited to the Republicans, you have to lay off the crack. I don't know if I can stomach watching that mayhem unfold, and getting blamed for it. And I really can't stomach the idea that Democrats are once again going to get tarred with the pussy label. So I'm just going to advise that we not pull out of Iraq precipitously. It would probably be better to start talking to the Syrians and Iranians first, since they're going to own it once we leave, and it would be nice if we had a little leverage.

I know; it's not much. But has anyone got anything better???? Apparently even Bush is now reduced to contemplating possibly surrendering to the Sunni insurgency (the linked blog is an absolute must-read, by the way). And for what it's worth, while I can't solve the war in Iraq, in my next post I will explain how Democrats can win the War on Terror. Whatever the hell that is.


One more thing: whatever vocabulary wizard recently taught Bush the word "caliphate" must be found and shot.

Impeach Who?

Ok, people! Looks like we’re going to win us some congressional houses, so we’d better strategize. About what, you ask? Impeachment, of course! Republicans are terrified we’re going to impeach Bush, which just goes to show you how stupid they are. Because of course we’re not going to impeach Bush – perish the thought . Do you want to see President Cheney? Ouch! My eyes! They’re burning!!

Right, so no impeaching Bush – at least not right away. But do not despair, for I have a plan. The older crowd (Dad, Half-full, I’m lookin’ at you) may want to tune out for a while. I’m going to explain to the kids all about history and the Constitution. You may remember a man named Richard Nixon, and his kleptomania problem. And you probably remember that Spiro Agnew was his Vice President. And that Gerald Ford was eventually President after Nixon resigned. And maybe you know that Ford was a member of the House of Representatives, and a Republican. And so you might have thought (as I used to, and as even good old Al Franken apparently still does) that this means that if the President and Vice President are both incapacitated or, you know, crooks, the Speaker of the House or House Majority Leader or someone becomes President. But aha! It is not necessarily so!

In fact, according to the 25th amendment to the US Constitution, the Speaker of the House takes over if both the President and Vice President are incapacitated – but not if they go out one by one, with the Veep going first. For instance, look at how Ford got to be president: it turns out, and I can’t be the only person who had forgotten this since high school civics class, Spiro Agnew was discovered to be a crook in his own right before Nixon. Illegal land deals in Maryland or something. Without a V-P, the Pres. gets to appoint someone to the post. So Nixon chose Ford, who was House MINORITY Leader, to be V-P, and then when Nixon himself had to step down, Ford became President.

Well, you know where I’m going with this. Let’s start by impeaching Cheney, which is actually the easiest since he is such a giant lying corrupt sack of stinking shit. Remember, he’s polling at –12%. He’s a sitting duck. Sorry -- quail. Bush will have to appoint a successor, and you can pretty well guess who it will be, within limits. He only knows about 5 people. Rumsfeld, Rove, whatever. Now, this appointment is subject to senate approval – which we just withhold until we get someone malleable. Then we impeach Bush, and we’ve got a new, better president.

Of course, none of this will happen. But I’m sick to death of the “Impeach Bush!” bumper stickers around here. We’re not impeaching him, more's the pity. I’d settle for a few congressional hearings in which the Democratic members manage to utter coherent sentences (and now, Madame Boxer, I’m lookin’ at you).

This post is purely a prelude. Having dispensed with the impeachment issue, I intend to dedicate the next few posts to outlining a plan for the Democrats after the election. It will be deep. It will be right. It will be, where appropriate, funny. Tune in.

Assembly Required

Perhaps you have heard the good news that the army met its recruitment goals for this year -- 80,000. Maybe we'll get to that great big military force McCain wants after all. Though do remember that from those 80,000 are pulled all the truck drivers, food handlers, machine greasers, and other kinds of people that make an army run -- it's not like they're all or even most going to go fight on the line, or whatever the hell you call it. And, if we do manage to recruit that great big new army it's mostly because we now admit people who once wouldn't have gotten in -- for their own good. As evidence, I offer the testimony of Reader J, who works in a medical capacity at the Veterans' Administration. She tells me that many of the Iraq vets are ... um ... well, just dumber than the vets of other wars. Perhaps the grenade launchers can be made with those pictorial instructions the Ikea people use. We can turn the international visual language of furniture into the language of war, and be happy, because we have a great big army, and no draft.

Ask an Expert

Reader K writes today to ask a question: "I'm sorry, but didn't Hastert totally cover shit up?!" She writes this in response to this piece in the New York Times, which she found confusing. Happily, I can clear this matter up for her: Yes, Reader K; yes, he did.

In the piece mentioned above, the New York Times today reports that Hastert says that the first he heard about the Foley affair was "last Friday" (really the Friday before last, eh, Denny?) when it broke in the press. He has done everything right since then. His staff has done everything right -- unless, of course, one of them covered up the scandal, in which case that asshole is fired.

This is a classic tactic, of course. Those who performed the indignities at Abu Ghraib will be punished -- just not those who knew about it and didn't prevent it. This most recent example of pretending to take responsibility by passing it on to subordinates is especially interesting, though, since I take Hastert to mean three things by it:

1. He hopes you won't notice the fact that people had been wearing a track through his office's carpet for years trying to tell him about Foley. I think here he's not just hoping you'll buy that none of them ever actually told him -- he thinks you might not know that anyone ever even told his staff.

2. He hopes that if you know that his entire staff, their spouses, lovers, children and dogs all knew -- oh, and most of Congress, too -- you will believe that no one ever told him. These are odd grounds on which to keep one's Speakership, since they demand that you trade in the idea that he's corrupt for the idea that he is completely out of touch. Is either really a good quality? Isn't the Speaker, more than anyone else in the House, supposed to know what's going on with the various members? Isn't it almost as bad if he didn't know? Given that in that case he would have been pretty much the only one who didn't?

3. He really hopes you don't know, and won't find out, and are too polite to comment upon the hilarious fact revealed by Lawrence O'Donnell on the Huffington Post, that Hastert lives with his Chief of Staff -- a guy named Scott Palmer. That's them in the picture, sharing an intimate moment. Now, apparently shared quarters among the legislators are quite common in DC. But living with your Chief of Staff is very, very rare. You'd think, given how homophobic these people are, they'd be more careful about giving the appearance of being gay. And let's go ahead and assume that Hastert (former wrestling coach...) isn't living in a glass house. But surely you live with your chief of staff so that you guys will have the opportunity to talk? So if you're not talking, and sharing information that has been repeatedly passed on to your office, what the hell are you guys doing? Hmmmmm?

So, Reader K, I think I can pretty confidently tell you that yes, Hastert has been and is still covering shit up. My deep wish is that he is forced to say that he couldn't keep an eye on Mark Foley because he was busy having a love affair with his chief of staff. But I'd settle for less.

Keep those reader questions coming! Our only aim is education.

Gone Army

One thing that drives me absolutely batshit is the ongoing discussion of whether we should have more troops in Iraq. Everyone mentions it at some time or another -- Kristol conceded the point a couple of months ago on Charlie Rose, shrugging his shoulders like the draft dodging pussy he is and saying it would take "maybe 40,000", like he knows anything about it; Thomas Friedman acted like he invented the concept in a New York Times column last year, demanding 300,000 (or so -- I can't remember the exact number) additional troops; and now Andrew Sullivan seems to think that John McCain is terribly brave for making the same suggestion. McCain wants 100,000 more troops in the military. That McCain, he is just so brave. I doff my hat, sir. Verily, I doff it.

Could we please be spared this? There are no more troops. I repeat, THERE ARE NO MORE. The Army can't meet their own recruitment goals unless they lower those goals first -- as they did last year. And for fiscal 2005, they couldn't meet their adjusted level of 80,000 new recruits. So how, exactly, are they supposed to get 100,000 and maintain that level?

So let's just shut up about it. Would more troops help? Of course. But the failure of the Bush administration to admit that more troops would do a better job isn't just about a perverse devotion to the Rumsfeld doctrine over the Powell doctrine. It is, rather, itself a method of distraction, keeping us discussing the silly issue of "would more be better" instead of confronting the fact that, if you want more troops, you are going to have to draft them.

Draft is the one word you absolutely cannot say in American politics. I asked my students the other day if they thought there would ever be a draft, and they were shocked at the question -- they'd clearly never thought about it. One of them said that there would be a revolution in this country before a draft -- and a revolution is really the most unimaginable thing. Contrast this with the fact that when we invaded Grenada, I was briefly convinced that my father would be drafted and taken away. I can only imagine how odd my mother found explaining to an 11 year old why her middle-aged father would not be going to the world's shortest and stupidest military action. Once upon a time, a draft was a realistic possibility, within the territory of recent memory.

I don't want a draft, of course. But I would like for the left to constantly point out to the Bush administration that the problem isn't that they're not using all of the resources at our disposal -- it's that they are dishonest even at the level of acknowledging just how limited those resources are. If you want to wage three wars, stop pretending you've got an army three times larger than the one you have.

PS Yes, the third war is the one we're going to have with Iran.

La Donna Fortuna

Obviously, the Foley scandal is the greatest thing ever. It hits Republicans where they live -- their idiotic values -- and the GOP response (blaming George Soros and calling Dems homophobes) is the worst kind of disorderly crackpot nonsense. I don't want to break up the party -- and it's a huge party, just take a look over at Talking Points Memo -- but there's something I'm a little worried about here.

On Sunday, the New York Times Magazine ran a profile of Howard Dean, and his efforts to create a 50 state party infrastructure, rather than a purely battleground-state theory of political action. Dean essentially thinks that Democrats can't be a national party if they continue to concede entire states, or everyplace that there's not a competetive race. And he's right. And, as the Times points out, this particular race isn't likely to turn on Dean's recent efforts:

With polls consistently showing voters to be deeply nervous about a protracted war, high gas prices and stunted wages, this is that rare election that should turn less on tactics than on fundamental choices about the direction of the country; in other words, this election season is about the fear and fury of the electorate, not the addition of a few more door-knockers in New Haven or some negative 30-second spot broadcast in Columbus. As the Democratic strategist James Carville told Al Hunt, the Bloomberg News columnist, in August, “If we can’t win in this environment, we have to question the whole premise of the party.”

I've been thinking a lot about that Carville quote, especially in light of this Foley mess. If, given the state of the war and the economy AND on the heels of this fiasco, the Dems fail to take back either house of Congress this November, then we have to do more than question the whole premise of the party. We have to start over from scratch, and an important part of that needs to be a purge of absolutely all of the leadership of the party, with the possible exception of Dean, Emanuel and Shumer. Pelosi's gotta go. Reid, too. I have more ideas about what a reconfigured Democratic party might look like, that I'm still trying to articulate, and I'll write about that some other time. But that's not what worries me. What's actually starting to worry me is what happens if the Foley thing does what it looks like it will, and brings down those crucial few extra seats, such that the Dems get a thin lead in one or both houses. Then what?

I agree, such a win, no matter how much attributable to the whim of fortune, is a desirable outcome from the point of view of stopping the total madness of the current administration. But that's just it -- it's only luck. You can't run a party by hoping a pedophile scandal breaks out right before every election. If Dems win this thing, and if it's largely attributable to the Foley mess, then we need to be grateful for our good luck, and still do the purging and re-thinking that I mentioned above. Your opponent shouldn't have to screw up this badly (and sometimes when I start thinking about how badly, I literally wonder if I'm dreaming) for you to be able to win elections. The worry to me is that Dems will take a victory as an endorsement of their platform and methods, and that I think would be a very bad outcome. Winning in 06 is nice, but I want a party in 08 that is lean and vicious, and that doesn't rely on micro-tax plans and fake invocations of family values as a platform. I want Dems to get a voice, goddamn it. So let's take the Foley thing for what it is -- good times -- and not get the idea that it proves that voters actually like Democrats as they are.

Republicans may be the party of corruption and hypocrisy; but we should be able to beat them in an election even if they weren't .

Tutorial: Drunk vs. Depraved

Mark Foley is off to rehab, to join Bob Ney and Mel Gibson. This seems to be developing into standard operating procedure for every publicly disgraced figure, and if that's going to be the case, I think we'd better get something straight about booze and behavior.

We are all familiar with the drunk email. Let's be honest, we've all done it. You know -- a late night, the easy access to the computer, the email you don't remember sending but that ruins the next day as its awful repurcussions become clear. For a while there, I had an even worse habit: the drunk Amazon. I would go out for drinks after work, come home, go on the computer and, because I was way too wise to email anyone, having learned that lesson the hard way, I'd go on Amazon.com and buy stuff. I can so vividly recall that sick feeling of coming home a few days later to find an unexpected, unremembered package on the front porch. That pit in the stomach. That "oh shit" moment. What the hell is in that box? What have I done?

In the box was almost always music. Punk music, to be specific. I've never liked punk music, but I've always wanted to be the kind of person who was literate in punk music. Someone familiar with the Sex Pistols' finer moments. Someone capable of distinguishing between the Sex Pistols' finer and lesser moments. Someone who would voluntarily listen to The Hives, even if no one was there to see it. Someone cool. Hence, the drunk Amazoning, and the shelf of unopened CD's, and the regrets.

But here's the thing -- when you drunk email, you email someone and tell them something a little too true. When I used to drunk Amazon (I've managed to quit, thank god), I ordered stuff I want but would, in sober mind, decide against. All of which is by way of saying, there are things that no number of Sidecars could get me to do. A short list:

1. Blame the Jews for all the wars.
2. Call another human being "sugartits".
3. Accept illegal kickbacks in exchange for earmarks to Indian tribes.
4. Go on any kind of trip with Jack Abramoff (and especially not a golf trip).
5. Engage in cybersex with teenagers.


I would not do these things because I have no desire to do them at any time. For the last time, alcohol doesn't make you do things you don't want to; it persuades you to do things that you would ordinarily think better of. The desire is in you -- you just wouldn't usually act on it. Booze didn't make Mel Gibson a bigot; it just let him act like the bigot he already was. Ditto for Bob Ney being a crook. Ditto for Mark Foley being a perv. In vino veritas, my friends.

Of course, I don't buy for a hot second that Ney or Foley is actually a drunk. Even Gibson is only a maybe. This is all public relations, and it's really insulting for these people to suggest that alcohol rehab is going to fix their moral failings. It's insulting precisely because it's so gutless -- if they were serious about pretending that a controlled substance was the root of their problems, they'd go to rehab for crack addiction. Now, that I'd believe -- that shit will make you do anything.

I Want Candy

Oh my god. It's like a candy store out there. I don't know where to -- and in fact can't -- start. The Foley scandal looks ripe to bring down Hastert. Woodward's book looks ready to bring down everyone. And in the Times, we get an account of the giant clusterfuck that is the Bush administration. Everyone is trying to blame someone else for 9/11, and they're like Cheney in a shooting gallery -- it's going everywhere. I promised myself I'd leave a short post today, so I'm going to limit myself, for the moment, to two comments.

1. Ok, so it is now confirmed that Condi Rice was briefed by George Tenet on the Al Qaeda threat in July of 2001, and happily forgot it. Then Woodward reminded her of it in his book and she denied it. Until it was independently confirmed. Oops. Read the summary here.
But it's worth pointing out that it was Bill Clinton who primed the pump for this discussion. Woodward's revelation came at the perfect moment, right after Bill schooled Chris Wallace on Fox, and explained that it damned well wasn't his fault that we didn't get Bin Laden. Enter Woodward for the kill. Partly I'd like to credit Bill's genius, however inadvertent. Partly I'd like to point out that the Bushies, had they half a brain, should have seen this thing coming, so wildly was its red flag flapping in the wind.

2. At the end of the Times article I linked to above, they quote Cheney trying to pin the blame for the Iraq invasion on Tenet. The quote goes like this:

Mr. Cheney recalled during an appearance on “Meet the Press” on Sept. 10 of this year: “George Tenet sat in the Oval Office and the president of the United States asked him directly, he said, ‘George, how good is the case against Saddam on weapons of mass destruction?’ the director of the C.I.A. said, ‘It’s a slam dunk, Mr. President, it’s a slam dunk.’ ”

Now, we've all heard this one before. Tenet said it was a slam dunk, Tenet is an ass. But look at Cheney's words -- and this is self-reporting, so it's either true, or a good representation of how he thinks about things, or both. Cheney says the president says "How good is the case against Saddam?" Isn't that just so wrong? Here's a short list of better questions:

1. Does Saddam have nukes?
2. On a scale of 1 to 10, how sure are you that Saddam has anything dangerous?
3. Are you confident Saddam is really the biggest problem we face?
4. How skilled are the investigators providing this information?
5. Were any of these sources tortured?
6. What about Iran -- aren't they just as bad?

Oh, and I could go on. The phrasing as it is is devestating -- it reveals that they already meant to go into Iraq, they just needed to make a case; that they didn't care if it was true, they just cared if it was persuasive; that they thought of this as political theater. The phrasing demonstrates that they are all lying sacks of shit, which you already knew -- just as these guys thought they knew there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The difference is we have proof.

lol -- not

If you haven't had the displeasure, you might go read disgraced Representative Mark Foley's literary stylings to underage congressional pages. They're over atThe Huffington Post, and they're insane. There are two sets; one is the set of emails that first broke to the press, and that the page in question recognized as somehow off. The second is an IM conversation given to ABC news by a different page. Both are deeply creepy -- the IM version moreso, just by dint of its explicitness (there's a lengthy discussion of masturbation and erections).

Both the emails and the IM offer a pretty much textbook image of the pedophile/molester: he tries consistently to wheedle his way into these kids' confidences by trying to use language that he thinks is at their level. So, in the emails, there are colloquialisms and deliberate omissions of punctuation (describing New Orleans at 100 degrees: "wow thats really hot"), a total absence of capital letters, and the omnipresent technique of stringing together phrases with ellipses. All of these strategies are, in each email, bearing down on a final, monumentally disturbing question, for example, "how old are you now".

Yet the page in question is reassuringly articulate. His emails to his superior, revealing his concerns about Foley's behavior, contain such gems as the comment, referring to another page named Will, that "to me, he is the epitome of a narcissist." Not bad! From the page's emails, I get the sense that he is aware that part of what makes Foley's behavior creepy isn't just that he wants pictures of underage pages, it's that his tone is all wrong for a normal adult talking to young people. And he's right.

The IM exchange is a different, and much more disturbing matter. Here the page seems quite unaware of how deeply inappropriate the conversation is. And in the exchange, you can almost track the degree to which the teen's discomfort is displaced by the use of "lol". I admit it, I hate "lol". I have always hated it. I hate it because it is disingenuous, and therefore a waste of time and energy. People always write lol when they mean malbaoti,m -- which is an acronym I have just made up for "maybe a little bit amused on the inside, maybe." It does not mean laughing out loud, and in the case of this particularly noxious IM exchange, it gives a pedophile room to move. Here is a piece of the conversation in question:

Foley: did any girl give you a haand job this weekend

Kid: lol no

Nice. Is the kid lol-ing? Or is he sitting there going, what the FUCK? Who can tell -- the kid certainly keeps the conversation going -- but the lol's imply he thinks it's intended to be funny, without ever implying that it IS funny.

Needless to say, the Republican congressional leadership has some explaining to do on this one, given that they apparently knew about it for years. And we could obviously go on and on about the fact that it's always Republicans who do this shit, because repression breeds perverse expression. But on a sheer structural level, the emails offer a disturbing personal account of sexual predation in the technological age, operating entirely on the level of language. All of which is nothing to lol over.