"Avoid history at all costs"

Gary Kamiya wrote a prescient article just prior to the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, entitled Sleepwalking to Baghdad: ". . . we have gone from being in a political moment to a historical one. I use the words somewhat eccentrically, to distinguish between events that are simple enough to be fully explicable ("political") and those that are too complex to be defined ("historical"). The war against Afghanistan took place in what I am calling the political realm: It had a clear, limited and achievable goal, one understood by all -- and widely supported around the world. The impending war against Iraq, on the other hand, is a historical event. It cannot be explained or defined. When it comes, it will simply exist, with the opacity of history. Its outcome is not foreseeable. The distinction also has a moral dimension. To exist in history is to have passed beyond the pieties and slogans of the political. History is tragic: politics is not. History is glorious. It is also fatal. The two great competing ideologies of the 20th century, fascism and communism, were both self-consciously historical movements. As Czeslaw Milosz brilliantly noted in his classic study "The Captive Mind," it was precisely the abstraction of communism, its claim to have attained the summit of morality and to have incorporated into itself all possible contradictions, that made it so meticulously horrifying. In similar fashion, fascism contained a kind of blankness at its core: the self-glorifying violence of the state simultaneously concealed and revealed the emptiness of its founding concept, the national tribe. The lesson every government should have learned from the bloody 20th century, one written in blood across the tortured soil of old, very old Europe, is very simple: Avoid history at all costs. History is too big, too abstract, too dangerous. Avoid men with Big Ideas -- especially stupid men with Big Ideas. Take care of politics: let history take care of itself. In a word, don't play God."
Well, they didn't let history take care of itself, and Bush did play God. Now Kamiya writes about the results: American nightmare. He concludes "A pious, foolish and poorly educated man, surrounded by zealots and knaves, dreamed of smiting the evildoers, but instead put a sword into their hands. He imagined that by invading a state in the heart of the Arab world, he would cut through the Gordian knot, but he entangled his army in writhing coils. He fantasized that an all-powerful America would stand atop a grateful world, but he made his nation despised everywhere, and particularly in the one region of the world where it is most important that we not be despised. This is the world Bush left us. We must make a new one."

Kerry - EV 290

Well, here's the CathiefromCanada prediction. Not mathematically precise, I know, but I think it will be 290 or higher for Kerry.
Today's electoral vote predictor has Kerry at 298, not including New Mexico.
I was talking today with an American professor who had voted absentee and was worried that Kerry hadn't "closed the deal". Well, its always easier to vote for someone who is 60-40 rather than 48-48, of course -- but I remembered something that either Churchill or Eisenhower said before D-Day -- that the chance of D-Day success was about 50-50, and it had taken four years and the combined might of the free world to get that single 50-50 chance.
Various bloggers have said this already, but let me chime in -- what Democrats and progressives have achieved, in less than two years, is magnificent.
Following the mid-terms, Democrats were in total disarray, demoralized, disorganized, half-caught by Bush's charm, impressed by his political performance at the UN and in Congress, and ensnared by the patriotic idea that anyAmerican Leader should be supported after 9/11. Then came Howard Dean, proving that the Beltway pundits were getting it wrong about how Bush and his war in Iraq were universally beloved and supported. Then came the nine Democrats, who had to vie for the nomination by out-democrating each other. Finally out of the pack came John Kerry, a fighter, principled, a leader. And his Democrats are organized, on message, enthusiastic, and getting to the polls already in record numbers.
So maybe its still a 50-50 chance, but you created that chance for yourselves with your hard work and dedication to democracy. I congratulate you and I will be cheering for you tomorrow.

First the astrologers, now the Redskins -- its a Kerry win for sure!

On Friday's Countdown, Keith Obermann said the one invariable election predictor for the last 70 years has been whether the Washington Redskins win their last game before the election -- if they win, so does the incumbent President or party; if they lose, then the challenger is voted into power.
So today, the Green Bay Packers defeated the Redskins 28-14.
Here is a quote describing the teams from the Comments of the MyDD post about this. And if you replace "Redskins" with "Bush" and "Green Bay" with "Kerry" you get a pretty accurate summary of this year's election campaign too, I think:
"Green Bay, which was widely considered to be a Super Bowl contender before the season started, had a surprisingly bad stretch where they lost 4 games in a row early this season. But they looked far better in their last two games, winning each of them comfortably with huge numbers on offense, 38 and 41 points in those two wins. The Redskins have one of the best ranked defenses in the league, but their offense is mind-numbingly bad, no more than 18 points in any game all year. The Packers' defense has been their undoing in most of their losses, but Washington's offense is so bad that it's hard to see where the Redskins can find an advantage. They've had a terrible season, and few people think they can beat the Packers today. Anything can happen in sports, as the Red Sox just demonstrated, but we're talking about a pretty sorry bunch of underachievers in the Redskins, and a pretty confident Packer team that's plenty motivated to continue turning their season around. "
Pretty goofy, eh?

Heading for the rapids

Billmon has a couple of new posts about American fascism. The incidents he reports perhaps could have happened during any recent (last 20 years) American election campaign -- except maybe for the Bush Loyalty Oath stunt.
I'm not surprised that one person quoted in the Goldberg article thought that Kerry had a gay daughter, not Cheney -- its a typical kind of misinformation fog that affects a lot of people who really don't pay a lot of attention to the news, debates, etc. This is why advertisers warn against negative product comparison ads -- people viewing them with half an eye can easily attribute all the negative stuff they're hearing to the wrong product, the advertisers product.
But this is what makes the fascism stuff a little more chilling, too -- it can creep up on you because people aren't really paying attention. Billmon concludes "even as these people move, like sleepwalkers, towards a distinctly American version of the cult of the leader, most of them honestly appear to have no idea what they're doing, or creating. I'm not even sure the Rovians themselves entirely understand the atavistic instincts they've awakened in Bush's most loyal followers. But the current is running now, fast and strong. And we're all heading for the rapids."

This is the dawning of the Age of ...Kerry

Astrologers for Kerry! The Planets Have Made Up Their Mind: Kerry Wins What a goofy story, but the tune floating through my mind was "When the moon is in the seventh house....."

Brer Bin Laden "Oh please, oh please don't vote for Bush"

I've been trolling the right-wing blogs to see what they are saying about the Bin Laden video. The answer is, not much -- strangely, they're not objecting to any of Bin Laden's references to Bush's cowardice and mishandling of 911, except for obligatory flailing of Michael Moore.
Instead, there is an undercurrent of worry about the election -- they're still trying to reframe last week's explosives story once again, they're reassuring each other how good their polls are, and they're writing myths about how Bush will increase his minority vote.
Kos, on the other hand, has a great post about how a Bush strategist is quoted in the New York Daily News as saying the video is a "little gift" for Bush -- is there NOTHING in the world that offends or shames these people?
This reminded me of Bush's offensive "trifecta" reference, in which he asserted how lucky he was that 9/11, the recession and the war had let him off the hook in balancing the Social Security budget.
And here is a great column from the Chattanoogan, which I presume is a Tennessee paper: Osama, My Pajama Its the second story on the Google list of more than 3.000 stories now running about the Bin Laden video.
Author Bart Whiteman starts by saying "Some people are suggesting, and I am not sure what corner of their diminished brain capacity they are getting this from, that if John Kerry is elected, Osama bin Laden will be eating dinner at the White House. Well, fine and good. Then we can catch him (finally) because we will know where he is."
Continuing, he reaches this point: "The fact that Al Qaeda would be rooting for Kerry is ridiculous. Bush is their man. Bush has been the best thing to happen to them in a long time. They are taking Bush to the bank. With Bush, they know what they have. With Bush, the next four years are entirely predictable. More of the same. And the same means more recruits for Al Qaeda every day. The same means continued sinking of American esteem internationally. We are probably at the lowest level of international support and reputation than we have been at since we our history began. And this is no mean feat. With Kerry, they don't know what they will have. Things will be unpredictable. And that is what is lacking in our current military deployment. "
He concludes: "Yeah, Al Qaeda fears Bush just the way Brer Rabbit feared the briar patch. “Oh, please, oh, please don’t vote for Bush.” We give them Bush, and they’ll be singing songs of six pence. We give them Kerry and they will have to re-group and wait and see what’s coming."
And I've thought a little more about Bin Laden's ceasefire offer -- I wonder whether he's thinking that Bush and America have had enough of the Middle East and that a reelected Bush would be willing to pull out in exchange for Al Qaeda guarantees, rather than continue fighting, especially since the US is losing Iraq anyway? Powell's trip this week to the Far and Middle Easts resulted in little American coverage, but Al Jazeera reported on Thursday that Powell had warned Israel against using force to attack Iran's uranium projects and other news stories reported Powell's praise for Israel's Gaza pullout. From the ground in the Middle East, maybe it looks as though Powell is being firm with Israel, while Bush just wants to find some of the good old 'peace with honour'?

Ceasefire?

CNN.com - Bin Laden's message is not a threat, its a cease-fire offer. The translation ends "Any nation that does not attack us will not be attacked" -- if accurate, there is an implicit promise here that Al Quaeda will stop its attacks on the west if the west no longer "spoils" Islamic secutiry. "We want to reclaim our nation" he says -- its not clear whether he means an actual nation-state, like Afghanistan, or the "nation" of Islam. He blames Reagan (Lebanon) and Bush Senior as well as W for the motivation for 9/11, and implies the attack was easier because of US corruption and its impact was worse because W did not respond quickly enough.
Bush should have caught Bin Laden two years ago but has outsourced the job to Pakistan. Its been stated around the web that Bush and his administration are still thinking of terrorism as a threat only when it originates from a nation-state, like Afghanistan or Iraq, and so they took their eye off Bin Laden as soon as his based in Afghanistan was destroyed. Its clear that Bin Laden thinks of himself as the leader of Islam, state-based or not. Kerry is right that he should be America's top priority. But I think the ceasefire offer was the most interesting aspect of the video -- and I wonder how America will respond?

ENCORE - Saskatchewan's Dinner Party

A friend of ours, who is a director on the Flax Council, invited us to this event tonight -- ENCORE - Saskatchewan's Dinner Party -- what a terrific evening it was. And do try the recipes -- delicious.

Mosh

I just watched Eminem's Mosh at MTV.com - Eminem - powerful stuff. The lyrics are here - some excerpts:
"We gonna fight, we gonna charge, we gonna stomp, we gonna march
Through the swamp, we gonna mosh through the marsh
Take us right through the doors (c'mon)
. . .
Imagine it pouring, it's raining down on us
Mosh pits outside the oval office
Someone's tryina tell us something,
Maybe this is god just sayin' we're responsible
For this monster, this coward,
That we have empowered
. . .
Maybe we can reach alqueda through my speech
Let the president answer a higher anarchy
Strap him with an Ak-47, let him go, fight his own war
Let him impress daddy that way
No more blood for oil, we got our own battles to fight on our own soil
No more psychological warfare, to trick us to thinking that we ain't loyal
If we don't serve our own country, we're patronizing a hero
Look in his eyes its all lies
The stars and stripes, they've been swiped, washed out and wiped
And replaced with his own face, Mosh now or die
If I get sniped tonight you know why,
Cause I told you to fight.
And as we proceed,
To Mosh through this desert storm,
In these closing statements, if they should argue
Let us beg to differ
As we set aside our differences
And assemble our own army
To disarm this Weapon of Mass Destruction
That we call our President, for the present
And Mosh for the future of our next generation
To speak and be heard
Mr. President, Mr. Senator
Do you guys hear us...hear us.."

"I've always believed him."

Anyone who still supports Bush should read this - Believe. Thanks to Kos.

Finally, the beginning of justice for Neil Stonechild

Here are the Summary findings of the Stonechild report today. If you haven't heard of this before, the Globe story provides the background to the case.
Justice Wright says:
"1. Neil Stonechild [a 17-year-old Aboriginal boy] was the subject of two complaints of causing a disturbance [due to drunkenness] on the evening November 24, 1990.
2. Constable Bradley Senger and Constable Larry Hartwig, members of the Saskatoon Police Service, were dispatched at 11:51 p.m. to investigate a complaint about Neil Stonechild at Snowberry Downs.
3. Hartwig and Senger arrived at Snowberry Downs within minutes and carried out a search of the area. In the course of doing so, they encountered Neil Stonechild.
4. The constables took Stonechild into custody.
5. In the early morning hours of November 25, 1990, Stonechild died of cold exposure in a field in the northwest industrial area of Saskatoon.
6. Neil Stonechild’s frozen body was found in a field in the northwest industrial area of Saskatoon on November 29, 1990.
7. There were injuries and marks on Stonechild’s body that were likely caused by handcuffs.
8. The Saskatoon Police Service carried out an investigation. The preliminary investigation properly identified a number of suspicious circumstances surrounding the death.
9. The principal Investigator assigned to the case, Morality Sergeant Keith Jarvis, carried out a superficial and totally inadequate investigation of the death of Neil Stonechild.
10. Jarvis was informed by Jason Roy that Neil Stonechild was in the custody of the Saskatoon Police Service when Roy last saw Stonechild on the night of November 24/25, 1990. Jarvis did not record this important information in his notebook or Investigation Report.
11. Jarvis and his superior, Staff Sergeant Theodore (Bud) Johnson, concluded the investigation almost immediately and closed the file on December 5th, 1990, without answering the many questions that surrounded the Stonechild disappearance and death.
12. Jarvis dismissed important information provided to him by two members of the Saskatoon Police Service relating to the Stonechild disappearance and death.
13. In the years that followed, the chiefs and deputy chiefs of police who successively headed the Saskatoon Police Service, rejected or ignored reports from the Stonechild family members and investigative reporters for the Saskatoon StarPhoenix that cast serious doubts on the conduct of the Stonechild investigation. The self-protective and defensive attitudes exhibited by the senior levels of the police service continued, notwithstanding the establishment of an RCMP Task Force to investigate the suspicious deaths of a number of Aboriginal persons and the abduction of an Aboriginal man. These same attitudes were manifested by certain members of the Saskatoon Police Service during the Inquiry."
The full report is here. I haven't had a chance to read it all yet -- note that Justice Wright was to find out why Stonechild died, but not to express "any conclusion or recommendation regarding civil or criminal responsibility of any person or organization." The Summary is devastating, however, clearly demonstrating Wright's opinion that police officers were criminally responsible for Stonechild's death because they abandoned him in a field in the middle of winter, and that much of the department was engaged in a cover-up -- during the inquiry hearings, police denied everything in the findings except 1, 2 and 6.
Whether there will ever be enough evidence to take someone to trial, however, is unknown -- unless someone now talks.
I listened to Stonechild's mother on the radio after this report was released -- she talked about forgiveness, but also said how much she still missed her boy. But can we ever forgive ourselves for how we have treated Aboriginal people in this province? It's been a trail of tears for more than a century.

Finally, an environment policy story

But its an odd headline MSNBC - Bush, Kerry styles clash on environment - for an equally odd story.
First, I didn't realize that environmental policies were a matter of "style" rather than of substance.
And here's one of the odder paragraphs: "Bush took office without an extensive environmental record, but he has made his mark by reversing several Clinton administration initiatives, such as barring road-building and logging on nearly 60 million acres of public land and choosing to use market strategies to achieve environmental goals."
Its a funny way of saying that Bush's environmental record is abysmal and primarily negative. Instead, the story goes on a great length about Bush's "market incentives" approach, only noting at the end that environmental critics are panning Bush's approach -- "This administration has walked away from environmental protection at the level that was advanced by presidents of both parties in the past." and Interior's conservation projects are described as "a nice little program, but it's a fig leaf in the context of the larger scheme of what we need to conserve in important public and private lands."

Honour missing, but not stolen

Looks like the Sinclair broadcast was actually OK for Kerry -- along with parts of Stolen Honor they also broadcast parts of Going Upriver, apparently a much stronger documentary. Here is the description from someone at Kos who watched what was actually broadcast:The Sinclair Protest Worked Turns out that the Fox station we get from Michigan must actually be a Sinclair station, because I noticed this was on the TV - but I couldn't bring myself to watch it, expecting it to be just too biased.
Media Matters has factchecked the broadcast and found some errors rebutted and some not. But over at Powerline it says readers are describing the broadcast as a Kerry campaign commercial. So it must have been OK.

A strange disconnect

MSNBC - Campaigns tangle over who can keep Americans safer
I guess Bush has decided that a secret trip to Afghanistan wasn't going to do it for him -- earlier this week, bloggers were commenting on Bush's announced intention to "take Saturday off" and speculating that something was up because no campaign, 10 days before the election, would take a day off.
Personally, I thought Bush likely intended a quick trip to Kabul for photos with the newly-elected president and the American troops there. I guess they decided it was either too dangerous, or would just highlight the Taliban resurgence -- better to let the media continue not reporting on THAT story.
One noticeable aspect of this campaign is the disconnect between what the media are reporting and what is actually happening. The national US media stories focus almost exclusively on what they can see in a quick web scan -- dueling speech quotes, meaningless and contradictory national polls, and a few gonzo stories about Kerry carrying his duck. Their 'reporting' consists of constantly interviewing other reporters, rather than talking to real people like, say, actual voters or civic leaders or 911 widows or former governors or scientists or diplomats or military commanders (and I note in passing how many of these real people have declared their support for Kerry.) Oh, and they also treat campaign ads as breaking news.
What they are not reporting is what is actually happening:
- tens of thousands of people are turning out for Kerry's speeches while Bush and Cheney continue to speak to small hand-picked audiences
- Bush STILL needs to shore up his base while Kerry can take his base for granted and can reach out now to conservative voters (witness the duck hunt). The GOP spun the media coverage of the puppies ad into another Reagan comparison, but it only highlights how clumsily Bush is trying to play the fear card.
- momentum is building as the battleground states turn decisively for Kerry. Kerry is winning the newspaper endorsement battle. His domestic policies, particularly on health care, are so clearly superior to anything the GOP can offer that Bush isn't even talking about them anymore.
- the Nader factor is disappearing as a negative for Kerry. When I saw Nader on Countdown last week, I thought he was delusional in talking about how conservative republicans would be voting for him instead of Bush, but apparently some polls are now backing this up.
- and forget about those mythical millions of evangelicals who supposedly did not vote last time. They live in Alabama and Texas anyway, where Bush doesn't need them. The democrats have registered millions and millions of their own new voters in the battleground states and are determined to get them to the polls.
The GOP knows all this, which is why their focus now is on hindering the voting itself. Why doesn't the national media?

Believe

It was the bottom of the ninth and the Yankees were ahead 4-3, three outs away from sweeping the Sox out of the World Series. But, in the stands, there still were the Boston fans, hearts on their sleeves, waving their little homemade cardboard signs - Believe!
I was touched by their steadfastness, their faith in a team which seemed so demoralized from last year's finish that they apparently had decided, subconsciously at least, that this year they could just save themselves a lot of pain by losing four straight. The team may have given up, but their fans never did - they still believed!
Then the Sox reached deep inside themselves and started the greatest comeback in sports history. It was magnificent - courageous pitching, intense batting, confident fielding. And now they're in the series opening tonight. I don't think the Yankees choked, not really -- it was just one of those rare times that no combination of pitching and hitting could overcome the Sox' absolute determination to win those games.
And as far as I am concerned, it all started with the fans.