Month: December 2006

A sobering critique from Snapping Turtle.

A reader makes a smart observation:

Do Bush’s moves lately look like the results of a carefully laid out plan?

If Bush thought the Republicans would lose either the House or the Senate, would he have made some moves earlier? Fire Rumsfeld earlier? Cut Bolton loose earlier? Anything to de-alienate some of us very disgruntled Republicans?

But in not making what should have been obvious moves, Bush appears to have genuinely thought the election was going his way – just like Rove told him and the country before the election with "the math".

His post-election strategy looks no different than his post-invasion strategy in Iraq. He planned for neither.

He plans for nothing. He must be one of the most reckless and feckless men ever to have held his office.

Oviedo, Florida, 9 am.

An "action alert" from the American Family Association:

1. Send an email asking your U.S. Representative and Senators to pass a law making the Bible the book used in the swearing-in ceremony of Representatives and Senators.

The ADL has something to add as well.

The Weekly Standard dumps on Rumsfeld thus:

For years, Rumsfeld pursued his own agenda in Iraq. He denied things were getting worse. He ignored calls for more troops and dismissed those critical of his conduct of the war. Rumsfeld now suggests that the US “go minimalist” in Iraq. Unfortunately for the president, his defense secretary has followed a “minimalist” approach in Iraq since March 2003. And here we are.

Sounds like me, doesn’t it? With the obvious exception that, er, how do I put this so the good folks at the Weekly Standard can get it into their skulls?

Rumsfeld offered to resign three times three years ago.

The president refused. Where we are is not Rumsfeld’s responsibility. It’s Bush’s. He’s the president. It’s been his non-strategy all along. And yet the WS did nothing but back him, lionize him and enable him. Do they really think that if the GOP had won the last election, Bush would be pouring more troops into Iraq, as they and I would have liked three years ago? Or have they really lost their minds?

This Arianna smackdown of Hillary made me smile.

Here’s a fascinating montage of 1993 AT&T ads predicting a technological future.

A reader comments:

It’s really interesting how their vision of the future included so many things that actually did come to pass. Except AT&T brought us none of them.

The video file itself came on a CD-ROM I got in 1993 called "Newsweek Interactive". It was a CD-ROM based interactive multimedia experience; a relic of a time just as computers matured but just before the web. It was supposed to be the first issue of a CD-based edition of the magazine. Some of the technologies they showcase came about a couple years later (e.g. EZ-Pass) and some are only now becoming commonplace (e.g. In-dash navigational systems).

One of my favorite parts is right at the beginning, when the kid reading a book over the network is staring at a screen image of the actual book with a video feed pointed at it. Keep in mind, when these ads were made, Web browsers were still a year or two away.

If other readers have YouTubes of old video that predicts the future shockingly well, send them in and I’ll post. Misfires are also welcome, of course.

There are few more symbolic ways in which a country can demonstrate its own desire to stigmatize people with HIV and AIDS than in its immigration policies. Until last week, the Bush administration made it technically illegal for any HIV-positive non-American to even enter the country. Yep, you couldn’t attend an AIDS conference in the US if you were HIV-positive, without a special waiver. When the First Lady recently sat down with African women dealing with HIV for a photo-op, the press did not tell you that the White House had first to secure that waiver to even allow those women into the country, let alone the White House. We spend billions on AIDS drugs for Africa, but the survivors are barred from ever entering America. How does that make any sense?

This policy, mind you, was initiated under president Clinton, a man now devoted to doing out of office on HIV/AIDS what he refused to do while in office. And it is to the Bush administration’s credit – and to the great credit of the new Global AIDS coordinator, Mark Dybul – that Bush has now issued an executive order making it unnecessary for HIV-positive visitors and tourists to seek a special waiver to enter America. Dybul said: "This administration is very serious about fighting discrimination on AIDS." Well, if it is, the Bush administration now has a chance to prove it beyond this tiny, if welcome, gesture. A legislative effort to remove HIV as a barrier to American citizenship and residence is long overdue. HIV is not a communicable disease like malaria or TB. It poses no similar public health threat and no other civilized country treats it the way the U.S. does. The law was passed at a time when ignorance of HIV and deep sigmatization of it were common. But the panic and fear of the 1980s and early 1990s has no place in a sane policy for the 21st century. We have come a long way, and this administration deserves kudos for helping remove some of the stigma. Just not far enough.

Maybe the outrage will build. A reader writes:

My god! What a coward this man Bush is. What cowards his enablers are. This guy has no idea the precedent he is setting. He is spitting at the grave of Jefferson, Madison, Washington, and Franklin. How the f*** does he not have a problem with American citizens being held without charge and under those circumstances? I knew he was an idiot frat boy with a tiny sadistic side, but this is unreal.

Yes, it’s unreal. Here is what Padilla’s lawyers claim was done to him:

"Isolation; sleep and sensory depravation; hoodings; stress positions; exposure to noxious fumes; exposure to temperature extremes; threats of imminent execution; assaults; the forced administration of mind-altering substances; denial of religious practices; manipulation of diet; and other forms of mistreatment."

Padilla, by the way, was not captured on a "battlefield." He was detained in Chicago. He has a U.S. passport. This could happen to any American anywhere this president decides to call an "enemy combatant." To be kept in the dark in solitary and treated the way Padilla has been treated without charges being brought … until four years later. It’s unconscionable.

And then you realize … Karl Rove was intending to use this issue as a way to win the election. He was going to brandish the suspension of habeas corpus as an election gambit. That’s who we have in the Oval Office.

Kansas City, Missouri, dawn.