Trying to bribe bloggers -- THAT'S the story

Digby gets it.
Forget ethics paradigms and Zephyr and Kos and MyDD. The media, for all the trashing we give them, have actually focused on the meaningful news story here: that Dean's presidential campaign tried to bribe left-wing bloggers to support him.
Zephyr, who started all the brouhaha, now writes "We were paying him [Jerome Armstrong of MyDD] in part because WE hoped that he, and Kos, would blog positive things about Dean, but that was never explicit or implicit in the contract. This has to do with OUR motives, not some contract, and no compromise on their part." And she's now preaching about how bloggers need to have ethics! Well, duh!
It doesn't matter now how clumsy and unsuccessful the bribery attempt was -- Armstrong actually shut his blog down while he worked for Dean, while Kos noted it prominently on his site and on every Dean-related post he wrote. So it didn't work.
I suspect, actually, that the bribery idea never occured to Dean himself -- sounds to me like it was Trippi, now turned pseudo-journalist on MSNBC, and the fair Zephyr who thought this one up all by themselves. What did Trippi say the other day, something about that he couldn't support Dean for DNC chair because Rosenberg would do a better job of pulling the party together? Yeah, Dean just made too many poor decisions, didn't he, like hiring Trippi and Zephyr to work for him in the first place.
Poor Rosenberg, I'll bet he thought it was a real feather in his cap when Trippi endorsed him four days ago. Little did he know. It will be interesting to see whether this story, in the end, turns against Dean or against Trippi, but I know who I think should get the blame for it.
And personally, I hope Dean wins the DNC chair, and cleans house with a mighty broom. He knows who his friends are now, and his enemies, too.

Maybe it really does all come down to manners

Giving Good Behavior a Sporting Chance Every now and then, Miss Manners get a little..., well,... political, in a polite sort of way.

It's just an impression, but Miss Manners has the idea that there is more rude behavior associated with professional basketball than with, say, national spelling bees.
Could it be the difference in maturity of the participants? The society's adulation of physical triumphs and suspicion that there is something weird about mental success? The cumulative influence of an educational system that deemphasizes disparity in intellectual achievement on the grounds that it is discouraging to others, while maintaining rigorous standards for being allowed to play school games?
Or is it that Miss Manners has not seen enough of either activity to be aware of how softhearted athletic stars really are and how viciously competitive the spellers?
Fortunately for her, it is not necessary to dig into a morass of social issues to discover why people so often behave badly in competitions. They do so because it is only natural, and they have not been required to be unnaturally polite. On the contrary, the belief lingers, in spite of massive evidence to the contrary, that it is good to get rid of ugly feelings by expressing them.
Perhaps; but there is still a difference between sneezing into one's handkerchief and sneezing into other people's faces.
The sad part is that it was once the world of sports that did a good job of teaching civilized competition. The very name of good sportsmanship was used in other contexts to define propriety under adversarial circumstances. A situation in which the sides have no real quarrel but are merely testing their more-or-less evenly matched skills in repeated contests is ideal for teaching the kind of restraint that is required to settle serious differences. The restraint involved is key in conducting conflicts -- military, legal and political, among others -- that do reflect deep differences.
It is then that most people have to be reminded that no matter how bitter the contest, the boundaries of civilized behavior must be respected. This is crucial not only to preserving our humanity but also to preserving the possibility of resolving the conflicts and returning to peaceful coexistence. Nothing can be settled otherwise, unless one side is able to prevail by utterly destroying the other.
That is seldom possible, much less desirable, even in outright warfare. Yet that is the spirit in which even games are now conducted. Etiquette rules are tossed aside on the grounds that they interfere with expressing the pure enmity that is felt -- which is exactly what these etiquette rules are designed to do. Far from paving over the source of the conflict, etiquette enables the opposing sides to deal with those sources instead of their scorn for one another.
Miss Manners has never shared the naivete of believing that it is the task of athletes to live their lives as roles models of character and propriety. All she would hope is that they conduct their own business of playing sports in such a way as to again provide their fans, as well as people in other adversarial situations, with the example of good sportsmanship.

Humble pie

Yahoo! News - Bush Admits Misgivings About Famed Phrases
Well, finally -- its not the end, or the beginning of the end, but it may be the end of the beginning.
"I don't know if you'd call it a regret, but it certainly is a lesson that a president must be mindful of, that the words that you sometimes say. ... I speak plainly sometimes, but you've got to be mindful of the consequences of the words. So put that down. I don't know if you'd call that a confession, a regret, something."
This story exposes Bush as a teenager -- one of the characteristics of "teenager thinking" is their idea that they nothing they say or do has any real effect. Thus, they can grump and scowl and scream insults at their mothers, then be sincerely amazed about "why was Mom so mad at me?" Thus they can get drunk and drive, and then be sincerely incredulous that the police think the car accident was their fault.
And so now we have Bush, a grown man and the president of the United States, announcing solemnly that presidents have to be careful about what they say. Well, I guess it only took five years for him to learn that -- he'll grow up someday, don't worry!
It may be just an act, though, because Bush is usually very careful about what he says, so that he can mislead people without technically lying.
UPDATE: This Iraqi resistance video is dated Dec. 10 and refers to the "bring it on" remark in particular. I wonder whether this had any connection to Bush's semi-apology?

Cattle cull?

Added to my update on the BSE story - CTV.ca | Mad cow owner points to suspect cattle feed- comes the discussion further down the story about Ralph Klein's call for a cattle cull -- ie, slaughtering of all cattle over six or seven years of age.
Such a cull would be difficult and expensive and painful. But Ralph is likely right that a cull may be the only solution -- the thousands of animals we now have over six are, I would think, virtually worthless now anyway and their continued existence jeopardizes the perception of safety so important to the industry. How to undertake the cull is also a terrible problem - from the radio discussion I heard today, our processing plants just don't have the capacity to process such a large number of animals quickly, so burning the carcasses may be the only option.
So to satisfy that greater beast, The Market, we slaughter thousands of healthy animals whose only crime was to be born too early, or too late, and we waste their meat while millions starve around the world.
That cracking sound you hear is the hearts of hundreds of cattle ranchers, breaking, as they contemplate the prospect.

What the Salvadoran Option really means

Thanks to the link at True North, I found that Billmon just couldn't stand it anymore. Hearing the news about the Pentagon's latest death squad fantasy wet dream, the "Salvadoran option", he gathered and posted without comment a brilliant series of descriptions showing just what the "Salvadoran option" means.

Hell and damnation!

Oh, damnit! I was afraid of something like this: Mad cow disease resurfaces despite feed restrictions
On CBC tonight, it was reported that cattle breeders may not have been discarding their old feed when the feed rules were changed in 1997.
And for this, I blame the anti-government politicians, usually right-wingers like Social Credit and Conservatives (disclosure - I worked for the SoCreds in BC, so I know them!) who have made partisan hay over the years by ranting about how useless government is and how bloated and stupid the government bureaucracy is.
Not that governments themselves don't reinforce this type of thinking when they embroil us all in bloated and stupid programs like the gun registry.
But as a result, there are bunches of people today who don't take any government rules seriously and who think government regulations are all just meaningless BS. And farmers are among the worst offenders (more disclosure - my dad was a farmer who didn't think this way, but most of his neighbours did).
So when the government tells folks like these that their cattle feed is dangerous and should be thrown away, they tend to think --oh what do they know anyway, its just more of those useless civil servants talking, my cattle are all fine and besides I can't afford to just throw all that feed, expecially when I got the last batch from the feed company at such a good price!
I just hope the US politicians won't seize on this to make their own political hay, to keep the border closed. But what are the chances?
UPDATE: Well, the rancher says it was fresh feed for this lot of cattle - so the story gets mysteriouser. Maybe the feed company? Or maybe some environmental cause?

"Is it safe?"

When I saw the announcement on TV today about Michael Chertoff's nomination for Homeland Security czar - Nominee Criticized Over Post-9/11 Policies - the pictures of Chertoff rang a bell.
That white hair, those hollowed cheeks, those burning eyes - who oh who did that remind me of?
And then it hit me -- its Lawrence Olivier's evil Dr. Christian Szell from Marathon Man. Here's an Olivier photo -- not from Marathon Man, but it shows the resemblence.
And the big question is the same for both Szell and Chertoff -- Is it safe?

People's choices are Michael Moore and Ellen Degeneres

The 31st Annual People's Choice Awards gave Michael Moore the nod for best film for Fahrenheit 9/11.
And Ellen Degeneres won two awards, for daytime talk show host and funniest female star, while Will and Grace won for best sitcom
So much for the pro-Bush, anti-gay "mandate".
Won't it be interesting to see what happens at the Oscars? Nominations announced Jan. 25.

Williams blinks first

Maple Leaf flies again over Newfoundland
Williams is quoted as saying "Not everyone may have agreed with our decision, but we were able to focus the attention of the country on our issue." Yeah, sure. The issue everyone is now paying attention to is why Newfoundland and Labrador elected a loud-mouthed schnook as premier.

Kill them all except six, for pallbearers

Remember John Le Carre's January 2003 op ed piece The United States of America has gone mad? Remember Margaret Atwood's April 2003 Letter to America ? Atwood wrote "If you proceed much further down the slippery slope, people around the world will stop admiring the good things about you. They'll decide that your city upon the hill is a slum and your democracy is a sham, and therefore you have no business trying to impose your sullied vision on them. They'll think you've abandoned the rule of law. They'll think you've fouled your own nest. "
Now read Newsweel's latest scoop -- the Pentagon and the CIA want to set up death squads in Iraq and going into Syria too, and the only argument appears to be over which agency will get to do the dirty work -- like two little boys fighting over a new toy, they both want it first.

Secrets and lies

Another great post on Guantanamo torture at Digby's Hullabaloo
So today I'm reading a second-hand bookstore book - John R Maxim's 1989 book The Bannerman Solution-- and I come across this paragraph, describing how the hero cop is figuring out who the bad guys are:
"So the former FBI guy is now probably CIA and has some new secret job . . . almost everything is secret with those assholes. Even the time of day is on a need-to-know basis. The real reason everything's a secret is that hardly anything they plan ever works the way they meant it to and hardly anything they ever find out ever matters a good goddamn in the long run and if they didn't keep it all secret everyody else would know that too."

Added to Bartletts

To "Now, watch this drive" can be added "Get some devastation in the back".

Torture update

Balkinization's Marty Lederman, who worked in the Office of Legal Council office from 1994-2002, provides a series of posts on all of the torture laws and prohibitions and to whom these do or do not apply, in the Bush administration's previous and recent opinions. I found this from the link at Tapped via Liberal Oasis.

Senate "approved torture" -- NOT!

So I kept hearing on the talk shows last night that Reagan and the Senate endorsed torture in the 1980s -- well, NOT!
Its just another damned Republican Talking Point, ginned up to confuse the masses and confound the talk show hosts, who were caught flatfooted by these bald statements.
Here is the August 2002 memo which defined "torture" and "not-torture". Torture, according to the memo, means "that the victim must experience intense pain or suffering of the kind that is equivalent to the pain that would be assoiated with serious physical injury so severe that death, organ failure, or permanent damage resulting in a loss of significant body function will likely result. . . [mental suffering] must cause long-term mental harm."
So things like sticking burning cigarettes in someone's ear, or chaining someont to a stool for hours, or incarcerating someone in a hot room, or pretending to execute someone, or threatening to send them to jail in Egypt, and so forth, fall into the category of "not-torture".
The memo also notes that, in 1984, Congress criminalized torture to fulfill US obligations under the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. At that time, torture was defined only as severe pain or suffering intentionally inflicted.
So here we are: by parsing the definition of "torture" so narrowly, and by noting that "torture" was what Congress criminalized in 1984, the Talking Point can be stated that Congress, in effect, approved all the other actions which the memo defines as "not-torture". Neat reasoning, huh? How clever! Oh, those lawyers sure can write good!
The Talking Point demonstrates exactly the same kind of contorted, convoluted, ammoral, slippery thinking that is demonstrated in the memo itself.
And there also seems to be another Talking Point that the Senate in the 80s approved Reagan's decision to torture terrorists. Well, again, this doesn't appear to be the case. There were two additional Geneva Convention Protocols adopted by an intergovernmental conference in 1977, designed to deal with terrorism and its targeting of civilians. Reagan decided in 1987 that he would not ask Senate to ratify Protocol I (Victims of International Armed Conflicts) -- Reagan said Protocol I gave too much protection to terrorist groups -- and Senate apparently decided not to ratify Protocol II (Victims of Non-International Armed Conflicts) until Protocol I was revised, which it hasn't been.

The medium is the message

The Smirking Chimp writes about the Guantanamo message to America:
"The prison facility at Guantanamo Bay is the brightest star in the Bush firmament. It towers over the political landscape like a monument to human cruelty . . . What is it that we fail to grasp about Guantanamo? Are we so blinded by the assuring narrative of democracy and personal freedom that we don't recognize the symbols of tyranny when we see them? The reality of Guantanamo is quite stark; a dull-gray world of cinder-block and wire situated beyond the reach of any law or regulation. Is their some doubt about what this really means? . . . Guantanamo is a deliberate effort to overturn every legal protection that safeguards the individual from the arbitrary actions of the state. Simply put, it is the end of the law . . . The Gulag at Guantanamo casts a pall over American political life. It illustrates a seismic shift in our fundamental values as Americans and a wholesale betrayal of our commitment to human rights. Concentration camps are anathema to democracy and Guantanamo is asphyxiating the promise of American justice. Institutions that once were counted on to protect the individual have been casually discarded by the perpetrators of the most despicable crimes against humanity. The Bush administration has assumed the role of Grand Inquisitor; dispensing 'cruel and inhuman' punishment without remorse or hesitation. They've elevated injustice to a level of state policy. "
I never understood Marshall McLuhan's statement "the medium is the message" until I considered Guantanamo -- it was built as just another prison, sure, but one consciously designed to subvert constitutional due process and prisoner of war conventions. In just three years, it has distorted American thinking to the point that the US now has a nominee Attorney General who supports presidential rule by divine right and who endorses torture - and the lock-step Senate Republicans, and probably a few Democrats also, will likely vote for him.
Maybe with the Patriot Act vote they had some excuse in 911 panic. And maybe with the Iraq War vote they had been sandbagged by mushroom cloud scenarios.
But with Gonzales, they will know exactly what they're voting for -- government of the gulag, by the gulag and for the gulag.