Torture Tape Update

A helpful official time-line from Scott Horton. Money quote:

The Bush Administration plan is simple: let’s think of this as a movie – Abu Ghraib, The Sequel. Instead of offering up a group of young grunts for the sacrifice, this time it will be a retired senior management figure at the CIA and some of his subordinates. And this sacrifice will, in the White House’s view, divert attention from the real source of both scandals, which is high in the upper reaches of the Executive Branch. Inside the White House, in fact.

Meanwhile, Back On Planet Earth

Goldbergmap

One antidote to campaign insanity is a brief purview of what on earth has just happened to the Middle East and what that might mean for the future. If that sounds worthy, you’re wrong. Jeffrey Goldberg’s new essay is one of those big, blue-sky think-pieces whose black humor actually made me laugh out loud at several points. Here’s a flavor from a Kurdish prison in Iraq:

The interrogator asked me if I had any questions for Omar. Yes, I said: Have you been tortured in this prison?

“No,” he said.

“What would you do if you were to be released from prison right now?”

“I would get a knife and cut your head off,” he said.

At this, the interrogator smacked Omar across the face with the Koran.

Omar yelped in shock. The interrogator said: “Don’t talk that way to a guest!”

Reality is likely to make one no more pessimistic than optimistic. The region defies both responses, I think. There’s a great NPod anecdote too.

Snip. Snip.

Michael Lewis gets a vasectomy and spares us no detail:

The nurse returned, wearing the same blank expression but now waving a new disposable razor, which struck me as a cheap tool for a dear job. She worked quickly and joylessly, like a Marine barber. I wanted to be helpful but there wasn’t much to do, except to hope she didn’t flinch. In the vast silence, insane thoughts flitted across my disturbed mind.

Is it possible to shave something off by mistake?

Jesus Christ … What if I get an erection?

Would it be my last?

Maybe I should pop one off, just for old time’s sake.

That Clinton MLK Gaffe

This sums it up pretty succinctly:

The analogy Clinton was implying was obvious: I’m Lyndon Johnson, unlovely doer; he’s Martin Luther King, charismatic dreamer. Vote for me if you want results.

Forty years ago, that arrangement — white president enacting African-American dreams — was necessary because discrimination denied blacks their own autonomous political options. Today, that arrangement — white liberals acting as tribune for blacks in return for their political loyalty — is a demeaning anachronism. That’s what the fury at Hillary was all about, although no one was willing to say so explicitly.

The Bill Problem

It isn’t going away and is likely to be a much bigger liability if Senator Clinton wins the presidency. A reader explains:

One of the issues which was decisive for me in deciding early on that I couldn’t support Senator Clinton in 2008 was the fact that it meant Bill Clinton would be occupying the White House again – only this time with a lot more free time on his hands. I say this as someone who voted twice for him, thought the Starr investigation would have been better termed an inquisition, and thought the impeachment was a ridiculous political response to a personal indiscretion with no bearing on the country’s well-being. Lying about sex is usually a good thing and especially in this case. My concern now is that Bill’s possible new address in 2008 is not fully realized, imagined, or thought through by Democratic primary voters. Assuming Senator Clinton wins, the Republicans will (and should) make that distasteful image clear enough, and will thereby close the deal for many independents and help lower Democratic turn-out. Revisiting not only Lewinsky but Willey, et al. will be enough to sicken and disgust even many liberal voters, like me, who think it’s time to turn the page on not just the Bush dynasty but the Clinton’s as well.

For many independents and/or traditionally moral people his reclaiming of the White House 2nd floor will be a desecration of sacred national ground. The fact is that Bill Clinton as president was an accomplished multi-tasker with a smart, personally conservative, and supportive spouse. Hillary Clinton as president will be rooming with a loose cannon  who, while supportive of her career, has proven tendencies toward high-risk self destructive behavior – and all while actually in the White House to boot.  HELLO!  At best, Hillary Clinton will likely be distracted from her presidential duties by the worry of what Bill might be doing, and at worst black-mail or another national spectacle are not hard to imagine. The similarly disturbing result of her possible election will be the specter of an ex-president (even if he was personally fastidious) living in the White House, appearing at functions, possibly involving himself in staff, cabinet, and diplomatic meetings, and the possible confusion about who is really in charge. The country does not need this now, or any time for that matter, and it’s time, early-on before we Democrats select our candidate, that this issue be vetted.

There is no other candidate besides Rudy who comes with this much baggage. It is the elephant in our room and the other candidates are too polite to bring it up, can’t figure a polite way to bring it up, or are not desperate enough to bring it up yet. We lost in 2000 because of Bill Clinton’s bad behavior, and you can indirectly place 2004 at his feet as well. We Democrats are nuts, idiots, fools – you name it and it fits – if we let another 4 to 8 years of the presidency go down the tubes because of misplaced and unearned loyalty to Bill Clinton.

Romney And National Review

A reader notices this in a recent Ken Silverstein piece:

In seeking to woo conservatives, Romney has also used his personal PAC—the Commonwealth Political Action Committee—to contribute lavishly to several national pro-life groups, the Federalist Society, the National Review, and the Heritage Foundation, among others.

Is the National Review thing true? Now I don’t believe for a second that NR endorsed Romney for anything other than the reasons they cited. It certainly makes sense for purely ideological and partisan reasons. But I do think it’s a legitimate question to ask them to disclose how much money a leading Republican candidate has donated in the past few years. Full disclosure and all. If Barack Obama or Ron Paul had given me a large donation before I endorsed them, I’d feel obliged to disclose. Are the rules different for a magazine than for a blogger?