Holy Hitchens!

From SLATE; I usually don't like Hitchens' work, but I agree with his essay, here...

God Is Not Great
Was Muhammad epileptic?
By Christopher Hitchens
Updated Thursday, April 26, 2007, at 10:28 AM ET

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From: Christopher Hitchens
Subject: Religion Poisons Everything
Posted Wednesday, April 25, 2007, at 1:31 PM ET
There are four irreducible objections to religious faith: that it wholly misrepresents the origins of man and the cosmos, that because of this original error it manages to combine the maximum of servility with the maximum of solipsism, that it is both the result and the cause of dangerous sexual repression, and that it is ultimately grounded on wish-thinking.

I do not think it is arrogant of me to claim that I had already discovered these four objections (as well as noticed the more vulgar and obvious fact that religion is used by those in temporal charge to invest themselves with authority) before my boyish voice had broken. I am morally certain that millions of other people came to very similar conclusions in very much the same way, and I have since met such people in hundreds of places, and in dozens of different countries. Many of them never believed, and many of them abandoned faith after a difficult struggle. Some of them had blinding moments of un-conviction that were every bit as instantaneous, though perhaps less epileptic and apocalyptic (and later more rationally and more morally justified) than Saul of Tarsus on the Damascene road. And here is the point, about myself and my co-thinkers. Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely solely upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason. We may differ on many things, but what we respect is free inquiry, openmindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake. We do not hold our convictions dogmatically: the disagreement between Professor Stephen Jay Gould and Professor Richard Dawkins, concerning "punctuated evolution" and the unfilled gaps in post-Darwinian theory, is quite wide as well as quite deep, but we shall resolve it by evidence and reasoning and not by mutual excommunication. (My own annoyance at Professor Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, for their cringe-making proposal that atheists should conceitedly nominate themselves to be called "brights," is a part of a continuous argument.) We are not immune to the lure of wonder and mystery and awe: we have music and art and literature, and find that the serious ethical dilemmas are better handled by Shakespeare and Tolstoy and Schiller and Dostoyevsky and George Eliot than in the mythical morality tales of the holy books. Literature, not scripture, sustains the mind and—since there is no other metaphor—also the soul. We do not believe in heaven or hell, yet no statistic will ever find that without these blandishments and threats we commit more crimes of greed or violence than the faithful. (In fact, if a proper statistical inquiry could ever be made, I am sure the evidence would be the other way.) We are reconciled to living only once, except through our children, for whom we are perfectly happy to notice that we must make way, and room. We speculate that it is at least possible that, once people accepted the fact of their short and struggling lives, they might behave better toward each other and not worse. We believe with certainty that an ethical life can be lived without religion. And we know for a fact that the corollary holds true—that religion has caused innumerable people not just to conduct themselves no better than others, but to award themselves permission to behave in ways that would make a brothel-keeper or an ethnic cleanser raise an eyebrow.

Most important of all, perhaps, we infidels do not need any machinery of reinforcement. We are those who Blaise Pascal took into account when he wrote to the one who says, "I am so made that I cannot believe."

There is no need for us to gather every day, or every seven days, or on any high and auspicious day, to proclaim our rectitude or to grovel and wallow in our unworthiness. We atheists do not require any priests, or any hierarchy above them, to police our doctrine. Sacrifices and ceremonies are abhorrent to us, as are relics and the worship of any images or objects (even including objects in the form of one of man's most useful innovations: the bound book). To us no spot on earth is or could be "holier" than another: to the ostentatious absurdity of the pilgrimage, or the plain horror of killing civilians in the name of some sacred wall or cave or shrine or rock, we can counterpose a leisurely or urgent walk from one side of the library or the gallery to another, or to lunch with an agreeable friend, in pursuit of truth or beauty. Some of these excursions to the bookshelf or the lunch or the gallery will obviously, if they are serious, bring us into contact with belief and believers, from the great devotional painters and composers to the works of Augustine, Aquinas, Maimonides, and Newman. These mighty scholars may have written many evil things or many foolish things, and been laughably ignorant of the germ theory of disease or the place of the terrestrial globe in the solar system, let alone the universe, and this is the plain reason why there are no more of them today, and why there will be no more of them tomorrow. Religion spoke its last intelligible or noble or inspiring words a long time ago: either that or it mutated into an admirable but nebulous humanism, as did, say, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a brave Lutheran pastor hanged by the Nazis for his refusal to collude with them. We shall have no more prophets or sages from the ancient quarter, which is why the devotions of today are only the echoing repetitions of yesterday, sometimes ratcheted up to screaming point so as to ward off the terrible emptiness.

While some religious apology is magnificent in its limited way—one might cite Pascal—and some of it is dreary and absurd—here one cannot avoid naming C. S. Lewis—both styles have something in common, namely the appalling load of strain that they have to bear. How much effort it takes to affirm the incredible! The Aztecs had to tear open a human chest cavity every day just to make sure that the sun would rise. Monotheists are supposed to pester their deity more times than that, perhaps, lest he be deaf. How much vanity must be concealed—not too effectively at that—in order to pretend that one is the personal object of a divine plan? How much self-respect must be sacrificed in order that one may squirm continually in an awareness of one's own sin? How many needless assumptions must be made, and how much contortion is required, to receive every new insight of science and manipulate it so as to "fit" with the revealed words of ancient man-made deities? How many saints and miracles and councils and conclaves are required in order first to be able to establish a dogma and then—after infinite pain and loss and absurdity and cruelty—to be forced to rescind one of those dogmas? God did not create man in his own image. Evidently, it was the other way about, which is the painless explanation for the profusion of gods and religions, and the fratricide both between and among faiths, that we see all about us and that has so retarded the development of civilization.

The mildest criticism of religion is also the most radical and the most devastating one. Religion is man-made. Even the men who made it cannot agree on what their prophets or redeemers or gurus actually said or did. Still less can they hope to tell us the "meaning" of later discoveries and developments which were, when they began, either obstructed by their religions or denounced by them. And yet—the believers still claim to know! Not just to know, but to know everything. Not just to know that god exists, and that he created and supervised the whole enterprise, but also to know what "he" demands of us—from our diet to our observances to our sexual morality. In other words, in a vast and complicated discussion where we know more and more about less and less, yet can still hope for some enlightenment as we proceed, one faction—itself composed of mutually warring factions—has the sheer arrogance to tell us that we already have all the essential information we need. Such stupidity, combined with such pride, should be enough on its own to exclude "belief" from the debate. The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species. It may be a long farewell, but it has begun and, like all farewells, should not be protracted.

The argument with faith is the foundation and origin of all arguments, because it is the beginning—but not the end—of all arguments about philosophy, science, history, and human nature. It is also the beginning—but by no means the end—of all disputes about the good life and the just city. Religious faith is, precisely because we are still-evolving creatures, ineradicable. It will never die out, or at least not until we get over our fear of death, and of the dark, and of the unknown, and of each other. For this reason, I would not prohibit it even if I thought I could. Very generous of me, you may say. But will the religious grant me the same indulgence? I ask because there is a real and serious difference between me and my religious friends, and the real and serious friends are sufficiently honest to admit it. I would be quite content to go to their children's bar mitzvahs, to marvel at their Gothic cathedrals, to "respect" their belief that the Koran was dictated, though exclusively in Arabic, to an illiterate merchant, or to interest myself in Wicca and Hindu and Jain consolations. And as it happens, I will continue to do this without insisting on the polite reciprocal condition—which is that they in turn leave me alone. But this, religion is ultimately incapable of doing. As I write these words, and as you read them, people of faith are in their different ways planning your and my destruction, and the destruction of all the hard-won human attainments that I have touched upon. Religion poisons everything.

Sure, they weren't politically motivated. (rolling eyes)

Scumbags!

GOP firing scandal widens.

Everything they do is politically motivated.

The Real Voter Frauds

The real voter frauds:

the GOP

In using their unfounded allegations of widespread voter fraud to try to suppress Democratic voter turnout. There's nothing beneath these pigs, really, in their drive for one-party rule.

CPU

From today's NYT about the Communist Party USA donating a ton of old records to a library...

stern commands about how good party members should behave (no charity work, for instance, to distract them from their revolutionary duties).

That line is very revealing, showing the inversion of radical values for ideological gains.

As he leaves the Kremlin, Minor notices two men drive up in limousines. “A few months ago they were ‘bloodthirsty minions of predatory capital,’ ” he writes, “But now they are ‘people’s commissaries’ and ride in the fine automobiles as before, live in the fine mansions.” They rule “under red silk flags to protect them from all disorders. They have learned the rose smells as sweetly under another name.”

And the above should have been more apparent to more people. Hell, I realized that as a teenager, how the "classless" society actually had a political class and the workers -- just as supposedly democratic America is similarly deceived; we're no more democratic than the USSR was classless.

Anarchists wrote about this in the 20s, but nobody paid them attention. Hopefully this record dumping will reveal the hypocrisy of the Communists.

Shitquita slips on a banana peel

Emphasis added...

Chiquita Admits to Paying Terrorists
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By MATT APUZZO Associated Press Writer

March 19,2007 | WASHINGTON -- Banana company Chiquita Brands International admitted in federal court Monday that, for years, it paid terrorists to protect its Colombian banana-growing operations.

The company pleaded guilty to one count of doing business with a terrorist organization. The plea is part of a deal with prosecutors that calls for a $25 million fine.

The agreement ends a lengthy Justice Department investigation into the company's financial dealings with right-wing paramilitaries and leftist rebels the U.S. government deems terrorist groups.

Prosecutors say the Cincinnati-based company and several unnamed high-ranking corporate officers agreed to pay about $1.7 million between 1997 and 2004 to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, known as AUC for its Spanish initials.

The AUC has been responsible for some of the worst massacres in Colombia's civil conflict and for a sizable percentage of the country's cocaine exports. The U.S. government designated the right-wing militia a terrorist organization in September 2001.

Prosecutors said the company made the payments in exchange for protection for its workers. In addition to paying the AUC, prosecutors said, Chiquita made payments to the National Liberation Army, or ELN, and the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, as control of the company's banana-growing area shifted.

Chiquita stock has risen sharply since the deal was announced last week. Company shares were trading down 6 cents at $13.46 in midmorning trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

Scandal-go-round

Wow, so much rotten stuff is going on right now, it's hard to keep up, so I'm just going to eat popcorn and watch. I posted my tart GOP circular trust on Salon today, for fun, basically lampooning how the reactionaries operate on issues:

1. What can't be forgotten gets refuted.
2. What can't be refuted gets ignored.
3. What can't be ignored gets challenged.
4. What can't be challenged gets distorted.
5. What can't be distorted gets forgotten.

Repeat as often as necessary, until the offending reality goes away. They apply that to everything in the service of their ideology. It plays into that great line from awhile ago...

...According to Mr. Suskind, "The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' " The aide told Mr. Suskind, "That's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act we create our own reality."

Might Makes Right, 21st Century-style!

Tweedledum and Tweedledumber

Democrats roll over, play dead with war provisions, while Republicans stand tall, ignoring reality.

Dems Abandon War Authority Provision

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By DAVID ESPO and MATTHEW LEE Associated Press Writers

March 12,2007 | WASHINGTON -- Top House Democrats retreated Monday from an attempt to limit President Bush's authority for taking military action against Iran as the leadership concentrated on a looming confrontation with the White House over the Iraq war.

Officials said Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other members of the leadership had decided to strip from a major military spending bill a requirement for Bush to gain approval from Congress before moving against Iran.

Conservative Democrats as well as lawmakers concerned about the possible impact on Israel had argued for the change in strategy.

The developments occurred as Democrats pointed toward an initial test vote in the House Appropriations Committee on Thursday on the overall bill, which would require the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq by Sept. 1, 2008, if not earlier. The measure provides nearly $100 billion to pay for fighting in two wars, and includes more money than the president requested for operations in Afghanistan and what Democrats called training and equipment shortages.

The White House has issued a veto threat against the bill, and Vice President Dick Cheney attacked its supporters in a speech, declaring they "are telling the enemy simply to watch the clock and wait us out."

House GOP Leader John Boehner of Ohio issued a statement that said Democrats shouldn't count on any help passing their legislation. "Republicans will continue to stand united in this debate, and will oppose efforts by Democrats to undermine the ability of General Petraeus and our troops to achieve victory in the Global War on Terror," he said.

Iran, Iran so far away

I just heard on NPR that they're doing a story about how a big chunk of the Iranians involved in that country's nuclear program were trained in the US in the 70s, back when Shah-ruled Iran was effectively our "51st state." So, once again, our ridiculous Cold War policies bit us on the ass.

Again, you ask? Yes. Consider that our funding of the Afghan rebels against Russia in the late 70s and early 80s created what eventually became Al Qaeda, it's another example of policy run amok, and coming back to hurt us. What next?

"Bitch Gene" Isolated?

I'm sure people will be all over this, trying to create a happy pill...

'Angry Gene' Could Help Spur Hostility
Women with this DNA more likely to feel, express anger, study finds
By Randy Dotinga, HealthDay Reporter

FRIDAY, March 9 (HealthDay News) -- A new study suggests that a variation in their genes could make some women more angry and hostile, potentially leading to medical problems such as heart disease.

The research, which looks at genes that affect the brain, is still in its early stages. But the study's lead author said it could help scientists get a better handle on how genetics, emotions and health are connected for both women and men.

"We are attempting to put together a thousand-piece puzzle regarding heart diseases," said Indrani Halder, a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Pittsburgh. "This study identifies one component of this puzzle -- that higher anger and aggression could partly be genetic."

In the study, Halder and colleagues tracked 550 women of European descent, looking for connections between a gene connected to serotonin levels in the brain and their levels of hostility and anger.

Halder is scheduled to report her findings Friday at the annual meeting of the American Psychosomatic Society, in Budapest, Hungary.

The researchers found that the angriest women were most likely to have variations in a gene that affects serotonin receptors on brain cells. "In essence, this gene makes an important protein that helps nerve cells communicate," Halder said.

Other studies have suggested that human emotions are affected by genes that control other aspects of the brain's processing of serotonin, noted Dr. James Grisolia, a neurologist at Scripps Mercy Hospital in San Diego.

"Serotonin function within the brain has many effects, both in men and women," Grisolia said. "Serotonin plays a key role in sleep, emotional state and physical well-being. Men and women walk into my office on a daily basis with anxiety, depression or physical complaints such as insomnia, dizziness, or memory loss that respond to selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors [SSRIs], Prozac being the most famous and Lexapro the most currently prescribed, that functionally increase serotonin activity."

What about a genetic treatment -- maybe even a pill -- that would make women (and men) less angry and hostile?

"As with any other genetic study, our results need to be replicated in other larger samples to make definitive conclusions," Halder said. "The same gene may also be important for understanding anger and aggression in men. But men have only one X chromosome -- where this gene is located -- compared to women, who have two X chromosomes."

Edward C. Suarez, an associate research professor at the Duke University Health System, said the research suggests that "elevated levels of hostility and aggression are associated with genetic variations that may play in a role in the development of some chronic medical conditions."

Overall, "our understanding of the role genes play in behavior and personality is in the early stages of research, and the true picture is likely to reflect a complicated network comprised of both genetic and environmental influences, along with gender, age and other factors," Suarez added. "The results of this study are a step toward unraveling these associations. [But] it is likely that no one gene determines how we behave or determines our personality."

Gorillas in the Midst

The NYT has a great article...

In Lice, Clues to Human Origin and Attire

Now, the article mostly focuses on how humans have three lice species: head, body, and pubic, and how the body louse points to the gradual loss of human fur, and how that led to the body louse's evolution, since it shelters not in skin, but in clothes.

But, and the NYT kind of skips around this delicately, I find it most interesting that the gorilla louse and the human pubic louse are related, given the rather intimate way that this louse is passed from host to host.

Even bleaker for the human reputation, the pubic louse, which gets its dates and residence-swapping opportunities when its hosts are locked in intimate embrace, does not seem to be a true native of the human body. Its closest relative is the gorilla louse (Don't even think about it.)

...

"The transfer doesn't have to be sexual," he said, "but presumably it does require a reasonably blose contact."

Yes, it would appear plausible that our ancestors were the bitches of gorillas, gentle reader. If being descended from apes (or, as they like to say, "monkeys") isn't enough of an indignity for the fundamentalists, then being the possible fuckbuddies of gorillas has to be even worse a blow to the pride of the human species.

I think it's funny. The article points out that our head lice are apparently related to the chimp louse, and our pubic lice to the gorilla louse, with the body louse being our own special type that adapted to our relatively furless biological real estate.

So, our heads belonged to the chimps, but our asses apparently belonged to the gorillas. Which makes sense, really -- gorillas are far stronger than humans, way stronger than our ancestors would've been. Bahaah!

Music: Suede, "Animal Nitrate"

Don't Spit On Me

SLATE keeps writing about the apocryphal accounts of returning Vietnam War soldiers getting spat on, trying to get to the bottom of it, like whether it actually happened or not. Turns out, despite it being "common knowledge," it's a harder story to unravel than it would appear to be, given how widespread awareness of it is.

That's what makes it suspect to me. There are a couple of ways to go with it, and SLATE is going at it in one direction, trying to determine if it's an urban legend or if it actually happened. But what I think is more interesting is this: assuming it actually happened, who did it, and why?

The assumption, of course, is that it's those nasty left-wingers who did it, like hateful, uhhh, hippies -- little Mansonian wannabes spitting on the babykilling troops the Right faithfully supported in the Vietnam War. That itself is an urban legend, this faithful support of the Right, where the troops are concerned. It seems that the Right loves war, and is less fond of soldiers. At least that's how they conduct themselves in practice.

And what makes me think this is the conduct of the Right with regard to the current War in Iraq.

For all of their cries to "Support the Troops" it's abundantly clear that the Republican leadership tried to wage this war on the cheap, and despite all of the money they've greenlit for the Pentagon, it appears that a lot of it is ending up in contractors' pockets (sometimes literally!) instead of going to support the troops in the field. The Walter Reed scandal that's brewing reveals that the GOP leadership (and keep in mind that these wrongs were known well before the 2006 elections) has been screwing over the troops who've returned, offering them substandard care when it's offered at all.

What's more, their vicious, partisan attacks on John Kerry, Max Cleland, Al Gore, and other Democratic veterans' records -- really, any Democrat veteran of prominence has had their courage and experience challenged, with cruelty and brutality. Never mind that the current GOP leadership is packed with chickenhawks -- men with deferments piled up like their rivals' Purple Hearts, men who evaded service in the Vietnam War. They are as shameless as they are ruthless in their attacks on the patriotism and valor of Democrats who actually served in the Vietnam War.

And those attacks aren't even confined to Democratic veterans -- think of how viciously the GOP went after John McCain, who was a POW, for God's sake, and who clearly suffered during his time in captivity. The Bush League went after McCain ruthlessly, and McCain himself is not popular with the GOP rank-and-file. Passing odd for people who supposedly "support the troops."

Now, the GOP has been haunted by the so-called Vietnam Syndrome, the reluctance of the US to engage in foreign wars, because of the resultant social unrest caused by them. To the Right, Vietnam "spoiled" American war-making, perhaps irrevocably. Given that their foreign and domestic policy has increasingly been focused around enemy imagery (Communists, Liberals/Progressives, Unionists, Secularists, Terrorists, in rough chronology since the early 50s), war-making is absolutely central to their conception of politics. That's how they end up "strong on defense" and are habitual funders of Big Military, at least on the contractor level. Maybe it's the dominance of Leo Strauss's approach to ideology in their elite ranks.

Given the Rightist Cold War rhetoric about "losing" countries to Communism (as if they were theirs to lose), I can't help but think that the Right had to have been unfuriated by the failure of the US to win the Vietnam War, which would've flown into the face of every doctrine of American exceptionalism that the Right holds dear -- in fact, in some circles, it still pisses them off, gets them saying that the war wasn't lost, that the US actually won, or that the Left sabotaged support for the war, leading to the failure of the objectives. Vietnam is still very much with us, even as we slog on in Iraq. George Bush I was convinced he'd licked the Vietnam Syndrome in Gulf War I, and George II was apparently motivated to finish the job in Gulf War II.

Someone had to be blamed for the failure to win in Vietnam. The GOP is notorious for its "Blame the Victim" politics -- ideologically, it does this across the board, time and again: the poor are to blame for their poverty, women who're raped had it coming, countries that get ravaged by free market economics are the fault of their stupid populaces, and so on. Defend the ideology, blame the victim; that is their approach. The prison abuse scandals were another example of this, really -- the GOP sought to protect the framers of the prison abuse policy, while punishing the practitioners of it, the ground-level troops who actually did it. Deniability at the top, responsibility at the bottom. That is the GOP way.

So, you have Vietnam veterans returning from a failed war, and you have pissed-off Rightists who're angry at them for blowing the war, you have a movement that is centered on hatred, warmongering, enemy imagery, and blaming the victim -- the returning veterans would have been a target of opportunity for angry reactionaries: "You lost us the war; you let Vietnam go Red! You failed us! You worthless pinkos!" *spitooey*

It's logical to me, it makes sense.

The antiwar movement, also known as the peace movement, was largely sympathetic to the plight of the soldiers, wanted them to be brought home in a war that they thought shouldn't have been fought to begin with. It was the prowar Right who thought the Vietnam War was justified, not the antiwar Left -- so the motive is there for the Right to have taken out its anger on returning veterans, whereas the Left would've seen the veterans as victims of a bad policy. See the difference? If the policy isn't bad, then you have to blame the people who carried it out for screwing up -- that's the Right's view: somebody's to blame, because our motives are unassailable. From the Left's more rational perspective, if the policy was bad to begin with, then blaming the soldiers is useless -- you have to put pressure on the policymakers, where it belongs.

And that's exactly what the Left has been doing in the Iraq War. They've been putting the focus again and again on the leadership of this war, while expressing tireless and vocal support for the troops. People on the Left were hostile to LBJ and Nixon in their conduct of the Vietnam War, while people on the Right were hostile to the peace movement and, I suspect, to the soldiers for "losing Vietnam." The Right has been saying it supports the troops, but its actions have put the lie to that statement, in their understaffed, undersupported, overcontracted war of opportunity in Iraq. And what's more, the Right has defected in its support of the war -- but only because we're not winning it. The (unfortunately largely ineffectual) Left opposed the war from the outset, while the (unfortunately politically dominant at the time) Right only opposed the war in Iraq when it was clear that the war was not being won. Sunshine patriotism reveals itself once again.

The interesting thing to me is that the antiwar movement for Iraq is tiny compared to the prowar movement that currently exists, so the Right won't be able to blame the Left for sabotaging the war effort, because the Press was on board for the war, the Left was nearly nonexistent and marginalized, and the Democrats were mostly meekly on board with Bush's War, at least until 2006. So, who will the Right blame this time around for the failure to win in Iraq? That remains to be seen.

But with regard to Vietnam, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that, if any spitting on veterans was done, it was done by reactionaries who spat, and not liberals, not progressives, not hippies, not peace activists. They did it to communicate their contempt for the troops for losing a front in the War on Communism that was central to their ideology.

And there's one more point that's almost overlooked because of its conspicuous absence: given the shamelessness of the American Right in political warfare, fabricating whatever it can't find, trumpeting what it does find -- the Republican Noise Machine, right? How is it that these apocryphal and seemingly widespread spitting on the troops accounts aren't at all well-documented? If they actually happened, I think the Right would be parading them out endlessly. But instead, the Right isn't doing that.

That is terribly suspect to me, because if it was an actual weapon they could use against the Left, they would use it. That is how they work.

But they don't do it -- rather, it just sort of exists in the pop culture, without support. And so I think, if it happened, then either: 1) if it was perpectuated by the Left, it wasn't widespread, and was blown way out of proportion by the Right wing as a way of attacking the Left's patriotism; or 2) it was perpetrated by the Right wing themselves, and they know this, which is why they haven't run with that football to the endzone.

To my eyes, the Right had the motive to take it out on the returning Vietnam veterans for losing the war in Vietnam.

The GOP pursues a very kiss up/kick down kind of policymaking, and I can see their rank-and-file taking it out on returning vets far more than I can see some rabid flower children going after them.

Anyway, that's my thought on that.

This is huge. Arlen Specter

From SLATE...

Specter Detector
U.S. attorney scandal update: Who's to blame for those alarming Patriot Act revisions?
By Dahlia Lithwick
Posted Monday, March 5, 2007, at 6:58 PM ET

The U.S. attorneys purge scandal is heating up. The House and Senate have convened hearings for Tuesday, promising an orgy of named names and pointed fingers. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., now admits what he once denied: that he may have had a hand in the removal of New Mexico's U.S. attorney. And the senior Justice Department official who personally canned the U.S. attorneys has just announced the date of his resignation.

But as the political scandal spreads, the question at its heart gets less and less public attention: Who changed the Patriot Act to make it easier to replace U.S. attorneys without oversight, and how did it happen with nobody looking?

U.S. attorneys are well aware that they serve at the president's pleasure, but new wording in the Patriot Act made it worth the president's while to fire a big, fat lot of them and hire a group of new ones. And while certainly half the scandal is that the Justice Department did that—let eight U.S. attorneys go, seemingly for no reason—we seem to have forgotten that even without the mass firings, this law had been changed in the sneakiest way imaginable.

The background: When Congress reauthorized the Patriot Act last year, it included little-noticed language that changed the way U.S. attorneys would be appointed if their predecessors were removed in the middle of their term. Under the old regime, interim U.S. attorneys needed to be confirmed by the Senate after 120 days. If they weren't, federal district judges could select their replacement. The new language removed both judicial and congressional oversight of the interim U.S. attorneys, letting DOJ anoint them indefinitely. This served three important goals: consolidating presidential power, diminishing oversight, and ensuring that "interim" prosecutors had permanent jobs.

On Feb. 6, when the Senate held hearings on the issue of prosecutorial independence, former judiciary committee Chairman Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., proudly claimed to have been as clueless as the rest of us. Denying New York Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer's claim that he or his staff had "slipped the new provision into the Patriot Act in the dead of night," Specter asserted, "The first I found out about the change in the Patriot Act occurred a few weeks ago when Sen. [Dianne] Feinstein approached me on the floor."

Specter added that he only looked into how the provision was altered after Feinstein told him about it. As he explained, "I then contacted my very able chief counsel, Michael O'Neill, to find out exactly what had happened. And Mr. O'Neill advised me that the requested change had come from the Department of Justice, that it had been handled by Brett Tolman, who is now the U.S. attorney for Utah, and that the change had been requested by the Department of Justice because there had been difficulty with the replacement of a U.S. attorney in South Dakota."

Thus, at least according to Specter, O'Neill had merely been following orders from the Department of Justice when he snuck new language into the Patriot Act that would consolidate executive branch authority. Huge relief there.

Now, it's not necessarily outrageous that Sen. Specter didn't know what his subordinate slipped into the legislation. The Patriot Reauthorization was a long and hotly debated bill. While one might hope that the committee chairman would have read the legislation, you can understand that he might skip a clause or two in the melee. But this was not some minor technical amendment. It was a substantial enhancement of executive power. So, Specter now finds himself in an exceedingly strange position: His staff either lied to him or misled him about what he acknowledges to be a significant legal change. He himself observed at that same hearing: "I did not slip it in and I do not slip things in. That is not my practice. If there is some item which I have any idea is controversial I tell everybody about it."

So, Specter concedes that the item is controversial. He denies knowing about it. That implies it was O'Neill who slipped the new language in, and misled Specter and the Senate. And yet, at least as far as I can tell, nobody in power has said a word about O'Neill's conduct, and not one iota of blame has been laid at his doorstep. Joe Conason noted in Salon last month that 1) O'Neill is a former Clarence Thomas clerk, and 2) he joined Specter's staff at the same time Specter was fighting accusations of being wobbly in his fealty to the White House.

The Justice Department has been quite clear that this change was needed to do away with judicial incursions into an executive function: They felt it improper that judges were effectively making executive-branch appointments. And it now seems that either the DOJ snookered O'Neill, O'Neill snookered Specter, or Specter snookered his colleagues. But any way you slice it, the executive seems to have encroached on congressional turf in order to expand executive turf.

Whether Specter actually knew that O'Neill was carrying water for Karl Rove and turned a blind eye, or whether he was duped by O'Neill may never be known. But either way, it seems to me that Specter's office has done terrible damage to the very notion of independent and co-equal branches of government in this affair, and has yet to be called to account for it. Given that respect and esteem for co-equal independent branches of government is one of the senator's sacred cows, it's doubly ironic that no one has questioned him on this.

It's a good thing that the ousted U.S. attorneys will testify before the House and the Senate. It will clear up a good deal of confusion about the Justice Department's claim that there was something wrong with their job performance. But it seems to me that that's precisely 50 percent of the scandal here. And there are some other folks deserving of subpoenas as well. Mr. O'Neill and Mr. Tolman spring to mind. The outrage isn't merely that the Justice Department abused its power to hire and fire. The real scandal is that it rewrote federal laws to do so, yet nobody seems to know who did it or why.

The World is Watching

And it doesn't like what it sees. We outscored North Korea, for god's sake! Also, this is serious for Israel. The greatest way to secure our countries is through our global reputation, not through militarism. That's why we need to pursue healthy economic power and diplomacy -- soft power, in other words, versus the dead-end of endless military spending.

Of course, the insane neocons will take these poll results as "proof" that the world is screwed, and the US policy is sound, blah blah blah. But they're totally wrong.


U.S. Draws Negative Ratings in Poll
- - - - - - - - - - - -

March 05,2007 | LONDON -- Israel, Iran and the United States were the countries with the most negative image in a globe-spanning survey of attitudes toward 12 major nations. Canada and Japan came out best in the poll, released Tuesday.

The survey for the British Broadcasting Corp.'s World Service asked more than 28,000 people to rate 12 countries -- Britain, Canada, China, France, India, Iran, Israel, Japan, North Korea, Russia, the United States and Venezuela -- as having a positive or negative influence on the world.

Israel was viewed negatively by 56 percent of respondents and positively by 17 percent; for Iran, the figures were 54 percent and 18 percent. The United States had the third-highest negative ranking, with 51 percent citing it as a bad influence and 30 percent as a good one. Next was North Korea, which was viewed negatively by 48 percent and positively by 19 percent.

Canada had the most positive rating in the survey, with 54 percent viewing it positively and 14 percent negatively. It was followed by Japan and France.

Respondents were also asked their views of the 27-member European Union; 53 percent saw it as positive and 19 percent as negative.

Britain, China and India were viewed more positively than negatively, while Russia had more negative than positive responses. Opinion on Venezuela was evenly split.

"It appears that people around the world tend to look negatively on countries whose profile is marked by the pursuit of military power," said Steven Kull, director of the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes, which conducted the research along with pollster GlobeScan.

"Countries that relate to the world primarily through soft power, like France and Japan and the EU in general, tend to be viewed positively," he added.

Pollsters questioned about 1,000 people in 27 different countries, including the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China, India, Brazil, Mexico and Australia; as well as four predominantly Muslim countries: Egypt, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Indonesia; and two countries with large Muslim populations: Lebanon and Nigeria.

The respondents were interviewed in person and over the phone from November to mid-January. The margin of error ranges from 3.1 percent to 4.9 percent, depending on the country.

Impeach Bush, Already

I agree with this essay in the Nation. Seems like so many Americans either embrace an ideological view of democracy, like America(tm) -- that is, that America is inherently democratic (a very, very dangerous sentiment, very easily manipulated), or else an uninformed, apathetic view (very postmodern, no?) that those in power won't listen to us. But sovereignty lies not with the representatives, or the parties, but with the people. And if the people are unhappy with what's going on, they can do something about it.

I suspect an honest, bottom-up drive for impeachment would find the various power brokers in America(tm) getting very pissed off. Of course the White House would object, but Congress, and certainly the Media and perhaps Lobbyists would all close ranks. Given how tainted the Supreme Court has been by Federalist Society judicial hacks, I doubt they'd get behind any kind of impeachment move.

So, there'd be the people, with whom sovereignty resides, and all the insitutions of governance and power factions that have benefited from the status quo. An interesting fight, if an uphill battle for the people. We may see fights like that increasingly over time, as the disconnect between the political class and the populace it rules grows ever wider.

As much as economic class is overlooked in American society, the existence of a political class (which is inextricably tied to economic class) -- anyway, that makes people uncomfortable. We're moving past a time when the two-party duopoly can honestly be expected to cover all political opinions. The two parties basically ignore what they can't co-opt or embrace. The liberals are taken for granted by the Democrats, just as much as the fundamentalists are taken for granted by the GOP. If those groups still stay within the existing parties and expect change, they're largely fooling themselves.

Anyway, I think any impeachment effort against Bush will be doomed, but it's just another example of the sickness of our system-as-is, versus health -- more so that people think that impeachment somehow threatens this country, when it's exactly the other way around. If somebody's not following the Constitution that they swore to uphold, it's time to impeach them, already.

Boy, George

You know things are bad for the Bush League when they toss out a press release showing that Bush is capable of changing his mind.

Bush Isn't an Idiot, No, Seriously, He's Not

Whatever.

Those darned ultranationalists

Normally I don't like posting news articles in lieu of a regular post, but this is very typical of classic US Cold Warrior policy; I may pepper it with bracketed comments...

CIA papers reveal 1950s Japan coup plot
By JOSEPH COLEMAN, Associated Press WriterWed Feb 28, 6:52 PM ET

Declassified documents reveal that Japanese ultranationalists with ties to U.S. military intelligence plotted to overthrow the Japanese government and assassinate the prime minister in 1952.

[I can't remember if I've written about it here or elsewhere, but "ultranationalist" is one of those euphemisms they use for "fascist" -- drives me bananas, because it camouflages the reality of the policies. The US doesn't support fascists! We support ultranationalists!]

The scheme — which was abandoned — was concocted by militarists and suspected war criminals who had worked for U.S. occupation authorities after World War II, according to CIA records reviewed by The Associated Press. The plotters wanted a right-wing government that would rearm Japan.

The CIA files, declassified in 2005 and publicized by the U.S. National Archives in January, detail a plot to oust the pro-U.S. prime minister, Shigeru Yoshida, and install a more hawkish government led by Ichiro Hatoyama.

The CIA, in papers released under an act of the U.S. Congress to declassify documents related to Japanese war crimes, said the plotters were led by Takushiro Hattori, a former private secretary to Hideki Tojo, the wartime prime minister hanged as a war criminal in 1948.

Two CIA documents said the plot reportedly had the support of 500,000 people in Japan, and that the group planned to use a contact who controlled a faction inside the National Safety Agency — a precursor to the Defense Ministry — to help launch the coup.

The files reviewed by the AP strongly suggest the Americans were unaware of the plot until after it had been dropped. The plot was developed after the U.S. postwar occupation of Japan ended in April 1952, and the CIA files say American financial support for Hattori's group had dried up by then.

Still, the documentary evidence of the plot illustrates the violent potential of the right-wing, anti-communist cabal that had worked under the U.S. occupation authority's "G-2" intelligence wing in the early days of the Cold War in the late 1940s and early 50s. The CIA operated separately from the G-2.

"Since the beginning of July 1952, plans for a coup d'etat have been initiated among a group of ex-purgees including former military officers. The leader of the group is ex-Colonel Hattori Takushiro," said an Oct. 31, 1952 report, which claimed "this report is the first to mention a definite rightist plan involving violence."

[Ironically, this kind of cabal was very similar to the various dictatorial regimes the US fostered, protected, and promoted throughout the world in its Cold War.]

"The original plan of the group was to engineer a coup d'etat, including the assassination of Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru on account of his hostile attitude toward depurgees and nationalists," the CIA document said.

According to the document, Hattori colleague Masanobu Tsuji talked the group out of the coup, urging it to focus instead on countering the Socialist Party. The files say the group then decided it would not stage a coup as long as Yoshida's conservative Liberal Party remained in power.

However, the group still considered violence an option, the files say.

"The group is considering the possibility of some minor assassination attempt in lieu of a coup d'etat," the Oct. 31, 1952 document said.

Hattori and others had worked under the aegis of Maj. Gen. Charles Willoughby, the anti-communist G-2 chief. During the occupation, Willoughby was considered the second most powerful American after his boss, Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

Some group members were considered choice war crimes trial targets after the war.

Tsuji had been wanted for involvement in the Bataan Death March of 1942, in which thousands of Americans and Filipinos perished. Another group associate was Yoshio Kodama, a war profiteer and mob boss who was deeply involved in procuring materials — often illegally — for the Japanese military machine.

[These were guys we were working with. Nice.]

Neither of them was prosecuted for war crimes.

The Japanese militarists joined U.S.-supported missions to spy on communists in Japan, infiltrate agents into Soviet and North Korean territory, and recruit Japanese mercenaries to protect Taiwan from communist forces in mainland China, declassified documents show.

[The usual American faustian bargain -- forgiving fascists if they'd work for us against those pesky communists!]

The CIA files, however, say the operations were riddled with intelligence leaks, hobbled by a lack of competent agents, and deeply compromised by rivalries among the rightists themselves. The agents' top priorities, the documents say, were profits and an eventual resurgence of a militarist Japan.

The assassination plot detailed in the CIA files came at a difficult time for Hattori's group.

The departure of Willoughby from Japan in 1951 as the U.S. occupation wound down deprived the rightists of their leading American patron and paymaster. Meanwhile, Yoshida was openly hostile to Hattori's push for rearmament.

"The government attitude toward the Hattori group has been increasingly antagonistic, and the group has lost influence since the departure of General Willoughby," said a CIA document dated April 18, 1952.

[Wow! You mean the exit of the American presence weakened the coup plotters' position? Wow.]

Yoshida was pushed out of office peacefully in 1954 and replaced by Hatoyama, but the ultrarightist dream of resurrecting a militarist Japan never happened. The 1947 pacifist constitution bars Japan from warfare and has never been amended.

[I imagine the Cold Warriors would've rather had a militarized, neo-fascist Japan as a buffer against China and Russia. Creeps. Glad their scheme didn't work out. And look how Japan improved by NOT embracing the usual American coup-and-assassination-centric approach to governance in client countries!]

Neo-Fascist CNP Can't Find a Candidate for '08

Haha! The evil Council for National Policy can't find anybody to support! Bahahaahahahah! May the marginalization of the bogus "Christian Right" movement continue. Good riddance. Another 25 years and they'll be like the John Birch Society, a place for dead-end wannabe fascists to nurse their grievances over steaks and cigars. Once they're not able to deliver elections to the GOP, they're going to be ever more marginalized! Of course, they're well-heeled, so they'll be around for longer, still -- rich Christians? Yeah, they're for real. Hah. They're theocratic fascists.

NYT
February 25, 2007
Christian Right Labors to Find ’08 Candidate
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

WASHINGTON, Feb. 24 — A group of influential Christian conservatives and their allies emerged from a private meeting at a Florida resort this month dissatisfied with the Republican presidential field and uncertain where to turn.

The event was a meeting of the Council for National Policy, a secretive club whose few hundred members include Dr. James C. Dobson of Focus on the Family, the Rev. Jerry Falwell of Liberty University and Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform. Although little known outside the conservative movement, the council has become a pivotal stop for Republican presidential primary hopefuls, including George W. Bush on the eve of his 1999 primary campaign.

But in a stark shift from the group’s influence under President Bush, the group risks relegation to the margins. Many of the conservatives who attended the event, held at the beginning of the month at the Ritz-Carlton on Amelia Island, Fla., said they were dismayed at the absence of a champion to carry their banner in the next election.

Many conservatives have already declared their hostility to Senator John McCain of Arizona, who once denounced Christian conservative leaders as “agents of intolerance,” and former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York, a liberal on abortion and gay rights issues who has been married three times.

But many were also deeply suspicious of former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts; the council has been distributing to its members a dossier prepared by a Massachusetts conservative group about liberal elements of his record on abortion, stem cell research, gay rights and gun control. Mr. Romney says he has become more conservative.

And some members of the council have raised doubts about lesser known candidates — Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas and Representative Duncan Hunter of California, who were invited to Amelia Island to address an elite audience of about 60 of its members, and Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, who spoke to the full council at its previous meeting, in October in Grand Rapids, Mich.

Although each of the three had supporters, many conservatives expressed concerns about whether any of the candidates could unify their movement or raise enough money to overtake the front-runners, several participants in the meetings said.

Finally, in a measure of their dissatisfaction, a delegation of prominent conservatives at Amelia Island attempted to enlist as a candidate Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, a guest speaker at the event. A charismatic politician with a clear conservative record, Mr. Sanford is almost unknown outside his home state and has done nothing to prepare for a presidential run. He firmly declined the group’s entreaties, people involved in the recruiting effort said. A spokesman for Mr. Sanford said he would not comment.

“There is great anxiety,” said Paul Weyrich, chairman of the Free Congress Foundation and an elder statesman of the conservative movement. “There is no outstanding conservative, and they are all looking for that.”

Mr. Weyrich, a longtime member of the council, declined to discuss the group or its meetings. The council’s bylaws forbid members from publicly disclosing its membership or activities, and participants agreed to discuss the Amelia Island meeting only on the condition of anonymity.

For eight years and four elections, President Bush forged a singular alliance with Christian conservatives — including dispatching administration officials and even cabinet members to address council meetings — that put them at the center of the Republican Party.

But in the aftermath of the stinging defeats in the 2006 midterm elections, and with discontent over the Iraq war weighing heavily on the public, some Christian conservatives worry that they may find themselves on the sidelines of the presidential race.

Both Mr. McCain and Mr. Romney have worked hard to pitch themselves to Christians conservatives — Mr. McCain by delivering a speeches at venues like Mr. Falwell’s Liberty University or a recent abstinence-promotion event, Mr. Romney by leading the charge for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. But neither has won over many of the movement’s leaders.

The conservative concern may also be an ominous sign for the Republican Party about the morale of a core element of its political base. Conservatives warn that the 2008 election could shape up like 1996, when conservatives faced a lesser-of-two evils choice between a Republican they distrusted, former Senator Bob Dole, and a Democrat they disdained, President Bill Clinton. Dr. Dobson of Focus on the Family later said in a speech to the council that he voted for a conservative third-party candidate that year rather than pull a lever for Mr. Dole.

The Council for National Policy was founded 25 years ago by the Rev. Tim LaHaye as a forum for conservative Christians to strategize about turning the country to the right. Its secrecy was intended to insulate the group from what its members considered the liberal bias of the news media. In recent years the group has brought together a cross-section of the right from Edwin J. Feulner to Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association.

In addition to doubts about their ability to generate enough money and momentum, each candidate who addressed the group also faces initial skepticism from one faction or another on issues like immigration, trade, taxes and foreign affairs.

“Right now there is still a vacuum among conservative Republicans,” said Gary Bauer, a Christian conservative who was a Republican primary candidate in 2000. Conservatives, he said, “want a more provable conservative who also is demonstrating that they can put together the resources necessary to prevail.” He declined to comment on the Amelia Island meeting.

A spokesman for Mr. Brownback said he would not comment on the senator’s presentation to the council, citing its rules about strict confidentiality. Several others who attended his speech said he received heavy applause for his emphasis on restricting abortion and amending the Constitution to ban same-sex marriage. But foes of illegal immigration objected to his support for a temporary guest worker program, and some faulted him for touching only briefly on the threat of Islamic terrorists, an increasingly central focus of the council and many social conservative groups since the Sept. 11 attacks.

(People who attended the Amelia Island event said Rick Santorum, the former senator from Pennsylvania, delivered a well-received address to the council about what he called the gathering threat of radical Islam.)

In an interview, Mr. Hunter, the ranking Republican on the House Armed Services Committee and a supporter of Mr. Bush’s plan to send more troops to Iraq, said the need for a strong national defense was the centerpiece of his speech. That defense, he argued, should include cracking down on illegal immigration, building a wall along the Mexican border and renegotiating foreign trade deals to protect American manufacturing. “We are losing the arsenal of the democracy,” he said.

But several people at the council meeting said his stance on trade alienated the business wing of the Republican Party, compounding his substantial fund-raising challenges.

Mr. Huckabee, a Southern Baptist minister who was the head of the Arkansas Baptist convention before becoming governor, has the advantage of strong personal ties to many council members. Many prominent evangelical Christians consider him a friend, and he has appeared several times as a guest on Dr. Dobson’s popular Christian radio program.

In an interview, Mr. Huckabee said he believed his roots in the evangelical world helped set him apart from his rivals. “I am not going to them,” he said. “I am coming from them.” He said he did not remember speaking about his opposition to abortion or same-sex marriage, “although I am sure that I must have.” He said he emphasized education, among other issues, and talked about a continuing war “with a radical form of Islamic fascism,” which he called “a bastardization of religion.”

But many conservatives, including several participants in the Amelia Island meeting, said Mr. Huckabee faced resistance from the limited-government, antitax wing of their movement. Some antitax activists fault Mr. Huckabee for presiding over tax and spending increases. (He says the only tax increase resulted from a public referendum.)

In the interview, though, Mr. Huckabee said he was now leaning toward signing a pledge not to raise income taxes that is presented to all the candidates by Mr. Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform.

Mr. Norquist said he remained open to any of the three candidates who spoke to the council or to Mr. Romney. He argued that with the right promises, any of the four could redeem themselves in the eyes of the conservative movement despite their past records, just as some high school students take abstinence pledges even after having had sex.

“It’s called secondary virginity,” he said. “It is a big movement in high school and also available for politicians.”

McCain't

This blurb is from the Washingpost...

SPARTANBURG, S.C. - Republican presidential candidate John McCain, looking to improve his standing with the party’s conservative voters, said Sunday the court decision that legalized abortion should be overturned.

“I do not support Roe versus Wade. It should be overturned,” the Arizona senator told about 800 people in South Carolina, one of the early voting states.

McCain also vowed that if elected, he would appoint judges who “strictly interpret the Constitution of the United States and do not legislate from the bench.”

He's definitely made his faustian bargain with the fundamentalists. What a creep. The "Dead Constitution" types just use that as a fig leaf for their reactionary agenda, as a way of sabotaging any non-reactionary issue that comes up. So long as the American government lives, as long as the American people live, the Constitution lives. Nice try, jerks.

Zodiac

So, I was looking at the Washington Post's website to see who voted how on the non-binding resolution, and I saw they had some widgets that broke down the vote, which included the usual breakdowns, but then had "by astrological sign" -- I was like, *buh?*

Astrological sign	Yes	No	Not Voting
Aquarius	20	18	0
Aries	19	10	0
Cancer	31	18	1
Capricorn	16	17	1
Gemini	23	27	1
Leo	24	11	0
Libra	20	19	0
Pisces	14	7	2
Sagittarius	16	14	0
Scorpio	21	12	0
Taurus	15	9	1
Virgo	27	20	0
Total	246	182	6

Is the Washingpost tipping its hat to Gen X or what? Did they do that for the 109th Congress, too? Or did the Post think it had to change its coverage to get more readers. Now we can see who dominates the House astrologically! Whoa!

And all in time for the coming release of Zodiac, no less!

Sigh

I'm a little ticked at the sudden "Airline Passenger Bill of Rights" idea invoked in the wake of the JetBlue stranded airlines fiasco.

Several things bug me about it: first, just like the overused "War on XXX" (War on Poverty, War on Drugs, War on Terror) I think invoking a Bill of Rights-style (Patients' Bill of Rights, etc.) concept cheapens the actual Bill of Rights. That's a seemingly stupid point, but it takes the fundamental freedoms that, bundled together, make America a desirable place to be, and transforms it into a euphemism for citizen outrage. I'm sorry people were stranded, but if there's an Airline Passenger Bill of Rights, then how about a Highway Commuter Bill of Rights, a Public Transportation Bill of Rights, and a Shopping Mall Consumer Bill of Rights, too? Lame! Seems to me that people should just be going after JetBlue and/or the FAA (or the TSA?) for boning up the process so that the passengers were stranded.

A second thing that bugs me is how quickly and vehement the response has been to these people trapped 11 hours on a plane. Again, it's lame and irritating, but I couldn't help but think of the hapless people in New Orleans, who had a helluva lot more going on than the JetBlue passengers, and where was the help for them? I think there's more than a little class and race bias in the publicity around the JetBlue thing, and the push for reform, compared to New Orleans, which is still a mess, and is likely to remain so for a long, long time, victim of not-so benign neglect (some of which created the problem to begin with). But inconvenience some airline passengers, and it's suddenly a big issue. Why? Because they had cellphones with cameras, captured those Kodak moments?

A third thing that pissed me off was how JetBlue's stock went up in the wake of the JetBlue fiasco! My rule of thumb about the stock market is this: if it's bad news for working people and consumers, then the stocks go up; good news for everyday people, and the stocks go down. That's common enough to be, in my eyes, almost a truism. Chrysler axes thousands of workers, and I bet its stock goes up. A company lets its workers unionize, its stock'll go down. So, we have JetBlue blowing it, utterly failing to do what people are paying it to do, and it gets rewarded on the stock market. It's that topsy-turvy kind of accounting that lets CEOs garner massive salaries and benefits packages even as their companies tank. Enough, already.