Oh, say can you see by the dawn’s early light
at Camp No near the base where they’re helplessly screaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars now mock all human right,
O’er the TV we watched were so emptily streaming
And the talk shows that scare, the thugs who don’t care
gave proof of our fright and our morals so bare
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er a land no longer free and the home of the knave?

From Waterboarding For Dummies (Mark Benjamin, Salon.com, 3/9/2010):

Self-proclaimed waterboarding fan Dick Cheney called it a no-brainer in a 2006 radio interview: Terror suspects should get a “a dunk in the water.” But recently released internal documents reveal the controversial “enhanced interrogation” practice was far more brutal on detainees than Cheney’s description sounds, and was administered with meticulous cruelty.

Interrogators pumped detainees full of so much water that the CIA turned to a special saline solution to minimize the risk of death, the documents show. The agency used a gurney “specially designed” to tilt backwards at a perfect angle to maximize the water entering the prisoner’s nose and mouth, intensifying the sense of choking – and to be lifted upright quickly in the event that a prisoner stopped breathing.

The documents also lay out, in chilling detail, exactly what should occur in each two-hour waterboarding “session.” Interrogators were instructed to start pouring water right after a detainee exhaled, to ensure he inhaled water, not air, in his next breath. They could use their hands to “dam the runoff” and prevent water from spilling out of a detainee’s mouth. They were allowed six separate 40-second “applications” of liquid in each two-hour session – and could dump water over a detainee’s nose and mouth for a total of 12 minutes a day. Finally, to keep detainees alive even if they inhaled their own vomit during a session – a not-uncommon side effect of waterboarding – the prisoners were kept on a liquid diet. The agency recommended Ensure Plus. [...]

The CIA’s waterboarding regimen was so excruciating, the memos show, that agency officials found themselves grappling with an unexpected development: detainees simply gave up and tried to let themselves drown.

1. Magnolia trees do not do well in heavy snow.  If 10 inches or more of snow are forecast, consider chopping down the tree, most of it’s coming down anyway.
2. Vintage Comfortmaker gas furnaces are sentient, know the difference between good and evil, and have chosen evil.  They do this by arranging for their ignition devices to fail the morning after a blizzard makes your house and neighborhood inaccessible to repair technicians.
3. To relight a vintage evil Comfortmaker (non-pilot light) gas furnace:
   1. turn the thermostat to its lowest setting
   2. go to the basement,
   3. return to the dining room for a flashlight
   4. return to the basement, turn off the electricity to the furnace and basement lights.
   5. wait 5 minutes.
   6. squeeze through a six inch opening to a 18 inch space behind the furnace, remove panel
   7. light a candle.
   8. yell upstairs to set thermostat to 65.
   9. repeat request loudly but without yelling because you don’t need to yell
   10. light wooden kebab stick in candle flame, wait
   11. when you hear a ‘click’ put lit kebab stick above burner-looking things where you hope gas will be pumped in 5-10 seconds.
   12. wait 15-20 seconds; relight kebab stick quickly at least once.
   13. second 21: FWOOMP.  Resolve not to peer in quite as closely next time.
   14. Since ignition device is still broken, set heat to 78; the furnace will go out, the house will cool, and you can repeat steps 1-14 whenever you’re cold enough.
4. The co-op will have everything you need that you spent three hours buying inadequate substitutes for at Safeway.
5. While deep snow is your enemy, it is also your friend, cushioning falls from ladders.
6. Try not to use ladders any more than necessary.
7. A cat staring at a door for five minutes is unnerving.
8. When released into conditions of deep snow, cats will either
   • retreat immediately
   • vanish for unpredictable lengths of time
9. When you look for a cat in deep snow, the cat will appear at the front door either
   • just after you’re done suiting up to go outside to look for her again dammit
   • just before you return from looking all over creation for her dammit
10. When removing ice dams from a roof gutter, avoid being swept off your ladder by an avalanche of snow no longer blocked by those ice dams.  One way to do this is by not removing ice dams in the first place.
11. When snow first falls, take time to really enjoy the serene beauty of the scene.  It’s the last time you’ll feel that way for days.

Governors Proposing New Round of Cuts for 2011; At Least 43 States Have Already Imposed Cuts That Hurt Vulnerable Residents

With tax revenue still declining as a result of the recession and budget reserves largely drained, the vast majority of states have made spending cuts that hurt families and reduce necessary services. These cuts, in turn, have deepened states’ economic problems because families and businesses have less to spend. Federal recovery act dollars and funds raised from tax increases are greatly reducing the extent, severity, and economic impact of these cuts, but only to a point.

The cuts enacted in at least 43 states plus the District of Columbia in 2008 and 2009 occurred in all major areas of state services, including health care (29 states), services to the elderly and disabled (24 states and the District of Columbia), K-12 education (28 states and the District of Columbia), higher education (37 states), and other areas. States made these cuts because revenues from income taxes, sales taxes, and other revenue sources used to pay for these services declined due to the recession. At the same time, the need for these services did not decline and, in fact, rose as the number of families facing economic difficulties increased.

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Lyrics in the left column are of “Down Here Below”, by Steve Earle on the album “Washington Square Serenade.”
The Pale Male photo is at and links to the excellent palemale.com site maintained by Dr. Ward Stone.

To make a long story short, Wieseltier’s delicate political instrumentation detected tell-tale traces of anti-Semitism in Sullivan’s throwaway Auden quote, and Wieseltier implied that was of a piece with stronger indications yet elsewhere in Sullivan’s writings.

To make it a bit longer, re Auden and the Trinity, Wieseltier presented himself at considerable length as just the kind of  “stiff-necked”, “rational,” and “Jewish” (his words) person who is proud neither to understand the doctrine of the Trinity nor to aspire to do so.*  And of course all right thinking folk who wish not to ponder arcane theological disputes say it’s a free country, more power to him, and why don’t we order lunch now.  Unfortunately, Wieseltier closes Section Roman Numeral One of his wrathful reflections with the ominous words

…when [Sullivan] piously implies that the orbit of The New Republic is immune, or hostile, to the eternal verities of Christianity, he is baiting another class of people, and operating in the vicinity of a different canard.

As blanching readers immediately suspected, Sections Roman Numeral II, III, IV, and V would prove to be considerably nastier bits of work, however tendentiously based on reeds as slender as the Auden quote.  Wieseltier’s next and primary exhibit was from a January 13 post by Sullivan in which Sullivan wrote that

Most American Jews, of course, retain a respect for learning, compassion for the other, and support for minorities (Jews, for example, are the ethnic group most sympathetic to gay rights).  But the Goldfarb-Krauthammer wing–that celebrates and believes in government torture, endorses the pulverization of Gazans with glee, and wants to attack Iran–is something else. Something much darker.

Wieseltier, primly: “I was not aware that they comprise a “wing” of American Jewry, or that American Jewry has “wings.” According to Wieseltier, Sullivan was “dividing the American Jewish community into good Jews and bad Jews–a practice with a sordid history.” Not only that, but

“…his assumption, in his outburst about “the Goldfarb-Krauthammer wing,” that every thought that a Jew thinks is a Jewish thought is an anti-Semitic assumption, and a rather classical one.” (emphasis added)

The thing is, of course, that Sullivan’s statement plainly didn’t assume any such thing.  (Indeed, it was a reaction to a far more sweeping claim by one Jennifer Rubin about why Sarah Palin is unpopular among Jews.)  Sullivan wasn’t suggesting something about every thought by every American Jew, but about many thoughts by two particular American Jews, and those who agree with them.  He was suggesting that Goldfarb and Krauthammer are two relatively well known (and in their own way powerful) American Jews who have attitudes he reasonably considers to be at odds with other, more tolerant attitudes statistically prevalent among American Jews.  Perhaps “wing” was not the very best choice of words, but it will do as shorthand for some other kind of political entity (cough AIPAC cough).

What’s especially irritating is that what Wieseltier saw as anti-Semitic sin in Sullivan (ascribing thoughts and motivations to Jewishness) was something Wieseltier did himself a scant two paragraphs earlier, in ascribing Krauthammer’s motives for supporting things like torture or the rocketing of Gaza to “deep and sometimes frantic concern” for, inter alia,  Israel’s security.**

Echoing Nixon’s dictum, Wieseltier seems to hold that it’s not anti-Semitism when Wieseltier does it.  Perhaps not, of course; after all — who knows — perhaps Wieseltier suspects Krauthammer’s “deep and sometimes frantic” concern for Israel’s security is based on its command of prime eastern Mediterranean fishing waters, or on his admiration for Knesset parliamentary procedures.

Sullivan has defended himself in dignified fashion.  For my part, I agree with the many writers weighing in on Wieseltier’s piece (see “19 Pundits on the Sullivan Wieseltier Debate” in AtlanticWire***) — many conservatives among them — that whatever else you think of Sullivan, he’s no anti-Semite.

But that faint praise will not do either.  Sullivan, to my mind, has been no weathervane, as the reliably and entertainingly acidulous Justin Raimondo would have it, but has instead moved away, step by painful, reasoned step from things he once said and political attitudes he once defended. And on the issue of torture, Sullivan has been one of the preeminent voices of well informed, persuasive and engaged opposition right from the start, all in the face of many readers and erstwhile allies howling their disapproval.

It was around then, it seemed to me, that his support for conservatism as it is practiced today, and to our various wars as they are waged in reality, began to crumble.  It was similar (not the same, just similar) for me.  We all start from somewhere, and politics for most of us (as I am personally all too aware) is a process of mistakes and revisions in our political attitudes, decisions, and allegiances.  The issue is whether we try to honestly see what is going on and honestly revise our views to reflect the facts.  Sullivan has done that.  His notorious “fifth column” item after 9/11 remains a rather disgraceful episode he can’t undo. But it is past, and he has reconsidered and changed.  One can not ask more.  Wieseltier’s present screed, by contrast, is an embarrassment even to a declining, verbose, slack-witted writer such as himself,  and renews doubts about the magazine he continues to inhabit.

It will no doubt compound the defeat Wieseltier has earned in the eyes of the public and his colleagues that his or anyone’s next unwarranted, vague, nebulous charge of “anti-Semitism” will be tougher to sell: whether it’s for daring to question Israeli policies or America’s near-unconditional support for them, for criticizing writers like Krauthammer, for noting the ongoing undefeated streak at AIPAC, or for suggesting attacks on Iran might not be the best nonproliferation strategy.  “Something much darker,” I hope, will suffer the worst fate any writer can envision: it will have precisely the opposite effect its author intended.

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* Like Mr. Wieseltier, I suppose I find the doctrine of the Trinity somewhat difficult to grok in its divine entirety — that is, when I think about it at all, which has been roughly never.  I figure it’s (a) basically none of my business, (b) perhaps some kind of caterpillar/chrysalis/butterfly description of different forms of the same thing; as a layperson I hold this to be a nice thought, since I like baby Jesus, because I like babies, so that I think it’s touching and good that a god should be said to have taken form as one; however, perhaps terribly grave theological chain-of-divinity difficulties ensue, so that (c) mainly, again, it’s none of my business and of little concern to me.  So Auden got at least one former New Republic reader right.
** Remarkably, Wieseltier follows his “sometimes deep and frantic” description of Krauthammer by saying Sullivan merely “presents feelings as ideas”, while Krauthammer is “coldly clear, and may be engaged analytically.” I suppose there’s some way to be coldly clear, deeply frantic, and analytically engageable all at the same time, but it makes Krauthammer more of a curiosity than a writer to be very concerned about.
*** Links to Sullivan’s own responses are supplied in this article as well.

Indeed, at times in her speech, Palin sounded like the second coming of Huey Long. “While people on Main Street look for jobs, people on Wall Street — they’re collecting billions and billions in your bailout bonuses,” she said. “And everyday Americans are wondering: Where are the consequences? They helped to get us into this worst economic situation since the Great Depression. Where are the consequences?”

Obama, meanwhile, is Mr. Nuance on the latest set of bonuses paid out to the Masters of The Universe.  From an interview yesterday on Bloomberg.com, via Zack Carter of Alternet:

Q: Let’s talk bonuses for a minute: [Goldman Sachs CEO] Lloyd Blankfein, $9 million; [JP Morgan CEO] Jamie Dimon, $17 million. Now, granted, those were in stock and less than what some had expected. But are those numbers okay?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, look, first of all, I know both those guys. They’re very savvy businessmen. And I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That’s part of the free market system. I do think that the compensation packages that we’ve seen over the last decade at least have not matched up always to performance. I think that shareholders oftentimes have not had any significant say in the pay structures for CEOs.

Now to be fair, there’s more in Obama’s comments about reforms he’d like, etcetera.  (To continue being fair, Obama also makes an inane comparison with million dollar baseball players who don’t make the World Series.)

But of the two, Palin’s statements convey more anger and emotion about the Great Recession, and more directness — however dishonest, however  shortlived — about its origins than Obama’s unspeakably stupid, tone-deaf opener “first of all I know both those guys.” Next he’ll be telling us how deeply he’s looked into their eyes.  But the real problem is claiming they are beneficiaries of a “free” market.  As Paul Krugman points out in his reaction to Obama’s interview (”Clueless”),

“these bank executives are not free agents who are earning big bucks in fair competition; they run companies that are essentially wards of the state. There’s good reason to feel outraged at the growing appearance that we’re running a system of lemon socialism, in which losses are public but gains are private.”

For a variety of reasons, I’ve given up caring why Obama says the things he says or does the things he does.  Maybe he was a community organizer once; he walked away from that a long time ago.  And I was barely interested in whether the Democratic Party still has a pulse a year from now.  It stood for civil rights and prosperity for a growing middle class once — and it didn’t just stand for those things, it enacted them.  Now it’s a wretched, hollow shell of an organization, unable to parlay a majority in the House, a (now vanished) supermajority in the Senate, and an electoral landslide for the White House into the accomplishment of its alleged number one goal: meaningful health care reform.  Ever since the Massachusetts Senate race loss and the health care reform doldrums, I’ve felt like David Mamet’s line: these guys could f**k up a baked potato.

Now someone like Sarah Palin — a far more dangerous, instinctively able, Nixonian politician than she’s given credit for — is bidding to wrest the populist torch away from the none-too-resisting hands of Obama and the Democrats.  And Palin is good enough at what she does to succeed overtly at what Brown did more or less covertly in Massachusetts — assuming the mantle of change, and conveying the hope of momentum for disaffected, fickle, “independent” voters who are rightly bummed and rightly want to throw the bums out.  If she isn’t, others are.  And Obama, the Democrats, and progressives and liberals who tied their hopes to them will have forfeited the very hope and change that seemed to be the wind in Obama’s sails one short year ago.

Andrew Leonard defends Obama’s performance, complaining: “We’ve got a guy in the White House capable of more nuance than anyone in recent memory, and a political culture that can’t deal with any nuance at all.” Look: nuance and a dollar fifty will buy you a cup of coffee. We don’t need nuance.  We need action.  We need jobs, we need homes saved, we need health care that doesn’t threaten us with choosing between ruin and death, and oh, we need to get out of a couple of wars and stop the ice caps from melting. The question is how, at what cost - and whether we can believe the people we hire to do the job.

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UPDATE, 2/12: Full Business Week/Bloomberg interview here, via John Judis of The New Republic, who points out that Obama’s choice of known union-basher and FedEx CEO Fred Smith as a CEO he “admires” is pretty disappointing too. Judis: “Overall, the impression the interview leaves is of a president surprisingly oblivious to the fury that is sweeping the nation. Obama has occasionally attempted to speak to it, or read speeches that address it. But this interview shows that, in the choice between Main Street and Wall Street, his natural inclinations lie more toward one side—and it ain’t Main Street.”
UPDATE, 2/14: In a similar vein: Frank Rich NYTimes op-ed Palin’s Cunning Sleight Of Hand.

Campaign web site here. We are the change we’ve been waiting for.

The Obama administration plans to ask Congress for an extra $33 billion to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to an Associated Press report.

The $33 billion would be on top of a record request for $708 billion for the Defense Department next year.

Compare the outlays Obama wants for Haiti:

The United States armed forces are also on their way to support this effort. Several Coast Guard cutters are already there providing everything from basic services like water, to vital technical support for this massive logistical operation. Elements of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division will arrive today. We’re also deploying a Marine Expeditionary Unit, the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, and the Navy’s hospital ship, the Comfort.

And today, I’m also announcing an immediate investment of $100 million to support our relief efforts. This will mean more of the life-saving equipment, food, water and medicine that will be needed. This investment will grow over the coming year as we embark on the long-term recovery from this unimaginable tragedy.

These are great things. I was pleased, even downright proud that Obama deployed so much so quickly to help Haitians, and knew he could count on everyone’s support to do so. (Well, almost everyone’s.)

But that impressive sounding $100,000,000 is a mere 0.3 percent of the $33,000,000,000 amount we’re going to add to the financial sinkholes and military quagmires called Iraq and Afghanistan.

Question: wouldn’t it be safer, smarter, cheaper, and even (dare I say it) just a lot more fun and more satisfying to divide the Afghanistan/Iraq outlay by, say, 4, and multiply the Haiti commitment by as much?

Question: Wouldn’t it make more sense to help rebuild a friendly nation close to our shores from natural catastrophe, than to rebuild ones on the other side of the planet after bombing and killing their inhabitants?

Question:Wouldn’t it make more sense to redeploy our servicemen and women out of countries where they’re not wanted, to a place where they’re wanted desperately?

Question: which makes us safer in the long run — to earn the thanks of a country for rescuing it from catastrophe in time of need, to put it back on its feet so its inhabitants don’t need to emigrate, or to earn the enmity of families who’ve lost children, husbands, fathers to a war we’ve brought to them?

My “favorite” part of the infamous Pat Robertson outburst on the terrible earthquake in Haiti was what’s her name next to him — pact with the devil!? how’m I supposed to react to that!? umm… disapproving little “hmm”, little concerned frown.

Her reaction wasn’t “oh my gosh a PACT with SATAN? we’ve got to DO something.” It was more like she she’d just heard from Heather that the Haitians hang out with the wrong crowd at her high school — so they should DIE.

And she half agrees, but she also half thinks maybe people are right and she’s teamed up with a nut.  But a nut who pays her salary. So: “hmm.”

= = =

Enough about Elmer and his sidekick.  We’ve given a couple hundred for Haiti now, I hope you’ll dig as deep as you can.  Lots of good groups out there, but one that keeps coming up is Partners in Health; see, for example, an op-ed in Thursday’s New York Times by Tracy Kidder (”Strength in What Remains”) mentioning them.  Also good, of course: Doctors without Borders, the Red Cross, and others.

Without it, it’s a giveaway!

Via Real News Network and brought to you by Billionaires for Wealthcare.

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UPDATE, 10/25: Enthusiastic review by Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, hilariously pinch-mouthed writeup by Garance Franke-Ruta in the Washington Post.

Nearly four months after Honduran President Mel Zelaya was forced from office, he retains considerable public support, according to a new survey by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner.

• By a large 22-point margin (60 to 38 percent), the Honduran public disapproves of the removal on June 28 of Zelaya as president.
• Two-thirds approve of Zelaya’s performance as president. Nineteen percent rated his performance as “excellent” and another 48 percent as “good.”

The national survey, which involved face-to-face interviews with 621 randomly selected Hondurans from October 9-13, found that Zelaya is considerably more popular than Roberto Micheletti, who has been serving as de facto president. By a 2-1 margin (57 to 28 percent), Hondurans have a negative personal opinion of Micheletti. And a slight majority gives Micheletti’s tenure as president negative marks.

The eight page “Frequency Questionnaire” (.PDF) shows that Hondurans favor holding an assembly to reform the Honduran constitution by 54 to 43 percent — compared to 72 to 27 percent disapproval of keeping Micheletti as president.  Similarly, a 55 to 43 percent majority favored amending the constitution to allow for re-election of presidents.  However, respondents were split 49 to 50 percent on Mel Zelaya’s resumption as president with full powers.  Interestingly — given that Zelaya is viewed by many on the right as a stalking horse for Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez — only 10 percent of a respondent split sample reported “warm” feelings towards Chavez, versus 39 percent towards Barack Obama.

The face to face interview survey sampled 621 respondents between October 9 and 13.  Judging by questions about age, educational attainment, and political views, the respondent sample was youthful and slightly pro-Zelaya in the 2005 election.

The poll is a useful supplement to an excellent Al Jazeera “Fault Lines” report on Honduras by Avi Lewis.  Both halves of the 24 minute report are embedded below.  Lewis concludes pessimistically,

“Through the clouds of tear gas and political spin, some clarity is emerging from this long crisis. Even with Zelaya back in the presidential palace, his time would be brief, his power minimal. Even with the de facto government gone, the coup successfully prevented any great challenge to the established order. [...] Whatever story the world hears about elections and the transition back to democracy in Honduras, there will continue to be struggle, resistance, and loss. And there will still be people here who are living in fear.”

Perhaps the poll will help restore some balance in coverage and understanding of the Honduran struggle.

–

(Via Nell Lancaster and Honduras Oye!)

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UPDATE, 10/23: Nell reminds me that there was a Honduran poll in late August (noted by her and republished by Al Giordano earlier this month) done by the Honduran firm COIMER & OP, with a larger sample (about 1500 people) and broadly similar results.