When Torture Is "Right"

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Wednesday May 13, 2009 · 9:11 AM PDT

2009/05/13 · 09:11

Some seem to think that Eugene Robinson trumped Liz Cheney yesterday on Morning Joe, but I think she thrashed him (in TV terms) – perhaps not surprising, given that she was apparently allowed to engage him in an unscheduled debate. Still, even given all this, Robinson gave an astonishingly flat-footed performance. It’s kind of infuriating to look at parts of the exchange; rather like watching glib idiot David Brooks debate the pitiful dumbass Mark Shields. I almost find myself shouting at the screen, something like "If you can’t do better than that, stay off the goddamn TV!"

I’d like to offer some talking points to Mr. Robinson and anyone who finds himself or herself debating the torture issue with Cheney’s defenders.

Morning Joe

Kalkaino

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Monday January 19, 2009 · 12:48 PM PST

2009/01/19 · 12:48

Back in 1985 and 1986, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Ollie North and various others illegally and secretly sold over 2000 surface-to-surface missiles to the same Iranian Islamists who blew up our Marines in Beruit and used the loot from these sales to illegally fund the Contras, their pet right-wing terrorists in Nicaraugua. Ron Reagan's Solicitor General at the time of Iran-Contra was Charles Fried, whom even Supreme Court conservatives thought besmirched his office with his partisanship. Fried was recently billed only as 'Harvard law professor' in the New York Times, though he has clearly been a lifelong mouthpiece for the Republican racist/sexist talking points, and advocate for the imperial powers of Republicans in the White House. In his recent New York Times Op-Ed he serves as defender of the Bush Syndicate, and in that capacity argues that there should be no accountability whatsoever for the war crimes committed by the Bushies.
New York Times

Kalkaino

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Sunday December 21, 2008 · 11:06 AM PST

2008/12/21 · 11:06

The Washington Post continues to smear itself with feces, somewhat in the manner of the terminally insane -- witness the latest from Ruth Marcus, wherein she reminisces, on the occasion of Mark Felts' death about her heady days as cub hack:

I happened, as a young reporter, to cover some of the Felt and Miller trial and remember feeling torn about the case -- revolted by their actions but sorry at some level for the actors.

In the current unspooling, I unexpectedly find myself more in the camp of Reagan than Nields. I understand -- I even share -- Nields's anger over the insult to the rule of law. Yet I'm coming to the conclusion that what's most crucial here is ensuring that these mistakes are not repeated. In the end, that may be more important than punishing those who acted wrongly in pursuit of what they thought was right.

Having covered "some" of the trial she feels qualified to tell us that Ron Reagan's pardon of the F.B.I. Agents Miller and Felts, for breaking the laws they were sworn to uphold was, on balance, a good thing.

Kalkaino

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Saturday June 21, 2008 · 11:04 AM PDT

2008/06/21 · 11:04

Like millions, I’m sure, I’m really angry over the Democrats cave on FISA and telecom immunity. The other day I was so angry about the impending debacle that I did a rash thing, when Barack Obama’s robot e-mailed me to ask for another contribution, I wrote back that, because the candidate wasn’t leading on this issue, I was giving money instead to ActBlue’s fund for punishing the architects of the "compromise." And then I did exactly that. I still desperately want Barack to win, and plan to help, but I think it’s healthy to express support and displeasure as concretely as possible.

Yesterday I saw what I (among thousands of others) had wrought when Hullabaloo previewed an ad slated for a full page of Thursdays’ Washington Post. There it is intended to bother the great compromiser and Maryland Congressman Steny Hoyer. I quickly wrote to Act Blue to ask, "Can I get my money back?"

Hullabaloo

Kalkaino

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Thursday June 19, 2008 · 2:31 PM PDT

2008/06/19 · 14:31

When you get that e-mail from Barack announcing his withdrawal from public funding and asking for your support, don’t send money, instead reply with a message that even the most venal, calculating creep in his campaign bank can understand: say something like, ‘I contributed all right, to the people standing up against telcom immunity, and its whitewashing of Bush junta crimes. When you do, I’ll think about contributing to you again. Until then, my money goes to them."

That, my friends, is how to get their attention.

them

Bush's Principles: Undying Zombie Lie

Kalkaino

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Saturday May 03, 2008 · 11:56 AM PDT

2008/05/03 · 11:56

One of the most cherished zombie lies of the last decade is: "Bush has principles." The fact that this nonsense flies at all is vivid proof of our time’s moral bankruptcy. Today the Washington Post ran that lie up the flagpole on the front page, in article headlined:

For Bush in Last Year, It's the Principle
As Influence Wanes, He Stays Resolute

article

Kalkaino

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Sunday April 13, 2008 · 11:00 AM PDT

2008/04/13 · 11:00

Just as Leni Riefenstahl would have found Dick Cheney a poor excuse for a Fascist, Niall Ferguson doesn’t find Philip Bobbitt to be a Neo-Con, despite that writer’s advocacy for the Iraq war. No, in today’s New York Times Book Review, Bobbitt is just Ferguson’s kind of guy, what with his several professorships and trans-oceanic lecturing – they have that in common. They also seem to have in common a knack for disregarding brute facts in favor of academic arcana and facile contrarianism, or at least it sounds that way from the front-page review of Bobbitt's Terror and Consent.

New York Times Book Review

Kalkaino

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Friday March 14, 2008 · 11:17 AM PDT

2008/03/14 · 11:17

The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson finds the Spitzer scandal right in his banal wheelhouse. He thunders:

I believe we can confidently imagine what was on New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer's mind as he allegedly booked "dates" with $1,000-an-hour prostitutes: I'm entitled. I'm above the law. I'm so smart that I'll never be caught. Nobody gets hurt if nobody ever finds out.

We can practically see Spitzer twirling his waxed mustache, but is this at all a likely subjective characterization? It makes a monster of the man, leaping to the conclusion that all his motives were wicked or stupid. This is almost never a safe, accurate or fair assumption. Still, it is a very popular one in this case. I’m astounded by how little imagination nearly everyone, from the pundits to the people around me, has brought to bear on this matter.

Kalkaino

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Monday February 04, 2008 · 7:45 AM PST

2008/02/04 · 07:45

In Sunday’s Washington Post "Book World," UCLA’s Michael Mann reviews Jonah Goldberg’s excremental Liberal Fascism, and he does a good, if unenviable job. But he errs badly in his third sentence, asserting that, "Hurling the calumny ‘fascist!’ at American conservatives is not fair." In this he echoes Ezra Klein’s recent assertion, in his otherwise cogent American Prospect response to Goldberg, that "The contemporary right is not fascist." Both men are dead wrong. It may not be fair to call today’s "conservatives" conservative, but it is certainly fair to call them fascist.

Washington Post

Kalkaino

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Wednesday January 16, 2008 · 1:45 PM PST

2008/01/16 · 13:45

I had not thought that Jonathan Schell, author of Fate of the Earth, would ever be fluffing George Bush, but these are strange times. William Kristol is writing for the Times, Jonah Golbderg is besmirching the Post, and now, in the latest Harper’s Schell pens a hideous "Notebook" essay. Starting with its cliché title, "The Moral Equivalent of Empire," it is the single worst thing I have ever read in that usually excellent magazine. Schell starts by putting the Iraq war into historical context with concerns about nuclear proliferation – about which he is so expert. He does an excellent job reminding us of recent history, reminding us of the lost opportunity and dire example to the world when we did nothing really towards nuclear disarmament, even after the need for mutual assured destruction disappeared with the U.S.S.R. But then he goes off the trails, seeming very oddly amnesiac about more recent events. Indeed he seems to have been in a bomb shelter since about 1999, and there to have gotten his only news from FoxThe Moral Equivalent of Empire

Kalkaino

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Thursday January 03, 2008 · 10:56 AM PST

2008/01/03 · 10:56

In my other less secret, less spandex-clad life I sometimes review books and movies and I had thought about reviewing Jonah "Chickenhawk" Goldberg's just released work, Liberal Fascism, but that would require me to actually read it, or some of it anyway. My feelings about that prospect are aptly caught in the phrasing of the Right's leading thinker, "So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?"

Kalkaino

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Monday November 26, 2007 · 10:40 AM PST

2007/11/26 · 10:40

Perhaps it used to be that journalists felt a duty to tell the truth, or even, as the cliché has it, to "speak truth to power," but clearly, in the day of 500 cable-channels and corporate consolidation of all the mass media, the M.O. of the "journalist" is more ‘selling bull to the gullible’. In the heady days Woodward and Bernstein the Washington Post organization might have actually investigated unindicted co-conspirators like Karl Rove; today they put them on the payroll. Now that the watchdogs of the democracy have become the ladogs of the kleptocracy, journalism has devolved into the broadcast of whatever fluff will distract the public, crowding genuine revelation off the pages and screens while masquerading as reportage, and above all, carefully avoiding offense to the corporate overlords. In perfect illustration of this degeneration, an otherwise utterly banal piece in Sunday’s Washington Post achieves a form of distinction as the quintessence of today’s lazy, mendacious – and worst – cowardly journalistic practice.
journalistic practice

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When Torture Is "Right"

Charles Fried: Harvard's Shill for Brownshirts

Ruth Marcus at Bitburg

Does Karl Rove Have a Mole in ActBlue?

Boycott Obama Until He Comes Through On FISA

Bush's Principles: Undying Zombie Lie

Niall Ferguson Parrots Nazi Trope in NY Times

In Defense of Eliot Spitzer

"Conservative": racist, sadist, police-statist -- fascist

Jonathan Schell Craptacular!

Liberal Fascism

The Truth About Lying by Omission (Corrected!)