Look, I’m furious. And ashamed, and bewildered, and just about anything else you can say about yesterday’s performance by the Democrats.
And yet.
And yet, we simply have no choice. We can indulge our anger to the point where we’re paralyzed - and boy, won’t that make Karl Rove happy! Or we can push on and fight harder.
Ours is not a generation known for patience. We do love the sprint, but we’re not so good on the long haul. Grow up, guys - reclaiming our country is a very long haul. These bastards are dismantling everything, regardless of merit. Should we let them continue? Are you okay with bad schools, poisoned food, unsafe workplaces and a stagnant wage in an economy where we’re supposed to be grateful for a job, any job? If you’re so morally opposed to torture, is your solution to sit on your hands and let it continue?
Is your need to punish the Democrats worth that? Some slippery ideals, there.
Something I failed to make clear in my earlier post is that the Dems’ complete failure on the torture vote—silence the week before; no filibuster; split voting; general timidity against this astounding rubbish—makes me loathe to accept the premise that, even if the Dems win one House of Congress, they’ll deliver on the gossamer promise to stop this madness in its tracks.
The argument for tactical voting is predicated on the assumption that the Dems will do what we hope—block outrageous SCOTUS appointments, restore the rule of law, guarantee fair elections, etc.—but what if they don’t? That question is haunting me today in a way it hasn’t before, explicitly because of their performance regarding the torture bill.
I think that I fall somewhere between Susie and Shakes: I will, as always, vote for a full slate of Democrats in November. Despite the evidence before us, I do believe that they will fight the Bush Administration if and when they have the power to do so.
But I’m finding myself less than inspired to do any volunteer work on their behalf. Democrats have accomplished the unthinkable: in a year when the actions of the Bush Administration should have had the Party faithful on fire, the Democratic Party has succeeded in demoralizing its base.
Doesn’t it go against the spirit of randomness for the Random Ten to appear on the same day every week?
To play, put your digital music player on shuffle, click play, and list the first ten songs that show up. Leave your list in comments or trackbacks. If you click past the bad or embarrassing songs, you just might have the moral fiber necessary to be a U.S. Senator.
This bill is a stain on the honor of our nation, a moral and ethical outrage that strains the credibility of our country. I am embarrassed to call myself an American on this day.
I’ve been teaching Frederick Douglass recently. In his famous anti-slavery speech, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”, Douglass writes that “We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and to the future.” Though his subject, in the passage below, is slavery, it is to that institution of the past, and its effects on American society, that the base, outrageous, shameful, and inhumane practice of torture in the present should be compared.
Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution, is wrong? No! I will not. I have better employments for my time and strength, than such arguments would imply.
What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman, cannot be divine! Who can reason on such a proposition? They that can, may; I cannot. The time for such argument is past.
At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation’s ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.
What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.
Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.
You can try to find the word “torture” in this New York Times article on the Republican “Detainee Bill,” but you won’t be able to locate it. You’ll see only vague wording about “a new approach” and “wring[ing] information from terrorists.”
Hey — if the senators voting on this bill aren’t going to think about what it really entails, why should journalists have to?
T.O.’s attempted suicide has many of us scratching our heads. It’s hard to know what to make of it.
But it has been obvious, for a long time, that T.O. is a troubled man. On WIP, Philadelphia’s sports-talk radio station, mid-day hosts Anthony Gargano and Steve Martorano have done an impressive job of framing the issue and discussing it in a responsible way. After interviewing several psychologists who spoke about bipolar depression, they asked former Eagles player Hugh Douglass whom T.O.’s friends were when he played for the Eagles. Douglass mentioned that Jeremiah Trotter was his closest friend, but said that even Jeremiah was not that close to him.
Today, it seems to me that T.O.’s famed hyperbaric chamber is an apt symbol of his troubles: isolated from his teammates, T.O. lived under the constant pressure of media scrutiny. He courted that scrutiny, and in some ways seemed lost without it. But he wouldn’t be the first person who sought the look of the cameras because the alternative — standing alone in his room and looking at his face in the mirror — scared him.
Let’s hope that he’s able to get the help that he so desperately needs.
Some weeks ago, I posted a Diary, The Abramoff 64 + 34 Competitive Races = BIG GOP Trouble. At the time I feared that I was missing somebody.
I was.
I forgot Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania.
Now it is The Abramoff 65.
Turns out that Abramoff billed the Mariana Islands for two meetings with little Ricky in 1996, then his team billed the CNMI for an event, hosted by Santorum’s PAC just before the 1996 GOP convention. This was the meeting where Team Abramoff introduced the sweatshop owners to the Republican Conservatives. Attending for the Tan Family was Willie Tan, Ben Fitial and Eloy Inos. And as a gesture of gratitude, the sweatshop owners of Saipan gave Santorum’s PAC a $10,000 donation. . .
When you get right down to it, the integrity of our voting system is the single most important issue in the coming elections. The will of the people doesn’t mean squat if the votes of the people can be stolen.
Sadly, this video from The Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University reveals just how easy it is to hack a Diebold touch-screen voting machine. I meant to post this a few weeks ago (and many of you have likely seen it already), but I post it now because the problem persists:
Once you’ve watched the video above, the question becomes: what can be done about the problems it exposes?
I wish that there was a simple answer to that question, but it seems that the best course of action is to stay informed about the issues and to contact your local, state, and federal representatives to demand accountability.
You can stay informed by reading The Brad Blog. Brad Friedman, who runs the site, has worked tirelessly on the issue of election fraud over the past few years.
As he points out in his latest post, changes are beginning to occur. An article in the New York Times highlights a piece of emergency legislation that would reimburse states for providing paper ballots. It seems unlikely to pass. But, as Brad notes, it’s a step in the right direction.
You know, as the Torquemada Republicans make torture a national priority, I can’t help thinking that we would be better off if Mr. T were running things.
Seriously: you don’t have to be wearing camouflage shorts, knee-high socks, or forty gold chains to know that this torture bill is wrong, wrong, wrong.
Stay in school. Don’t do drugs. Treat your mother right. And, fer chrissakes, don’t torture people!
The “compromise” will, as I predicted, allow the “tough interrogations” by amending the war crimes act. And they will reportedly create a new JAG office to review classified information and determine if terrorist suspects can see it if it’s being used against them in a trial. We already know they have devised some habeas corpus loophole to keep innocent people imprisoned without any due process.
Democrats allowed this to happen by not calling attention to the fact that the McCain-Graham-Warner bill did away with habeas corpus for terror suspects. Interested more in the spectacle of Bush being handed a “defeat” by members of his own party than they were in critiquing the flaws in the actual piece of legislation M-G-W proposed, they stood silent. They forgot that Cheney-Bush-Rove never truly compromise: they ask for everything they want, knowing that they’ll wind up with most of what they want. And, as Digby notes, they look all the better for having “compromised” to get the legislation through.
The words “habeas corpus” were not even part of the public debate.
Now we are going to be, by fact and law, a nation of torturers. The day that bill passes will be a day of infamy not soon forgotten.
Update: Amid the despair we feel today, it’s important to remember this:
The Democrats have largely stood silent and allowed the trio of Republicans to do the lifting. It’s time for them to either try to fix this bill or delay it until after the election. The American people expect their leaders to clean up this mess without endangering U.S. troops, eviscerating American standards of justice, or further harming the nation’s severely damaged reputation.
The bill is not yet law. There is still time for action. What will Democrats do to stop it, and what will we do to support them?
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