The Torture State

Andrew Sullivan's essay today brilliantly constructs the states of mind of the American people and its leaders to draw us a line between the civil and just society we all believed we had and what the fuck was really going on. In regards to President George W. Bush:

... when [he] acted "shocked" at what we all saw, and said it was not America, he was also authorizing far worse in secret - and systematizing it long after Abu Ghraib was over. He was either therefore a fantastic liar on one of the gravest matters imaginable or so psychologically compartmentalized and prone to rigid denial of reality and so unversed in history, law and morality that he had no reason being president.

Either way, we Americans made a collective huge mistake in re-electing this boob, this marionette, this pseudo-compassionate pseudo-conservative neo-fascist.

I am no so naive to think that presidents past and present don't engage in covert operations as far from public view as possible. However, the fact that this particular covert operation has now so completely come to light shows how saner and more moral minds within the government were so disgusted by Bush's and Cheney's actions that they felt the truth must come out.

In any event, the United States of America is not now, and will not be for some time, a country occupying anything resembling a moral high ground.

President Obama has absolutely done the right thing in releasing the OLC memos about Bush's involvement in and authorization of torture. In the weeks to come, more will be discussed about this than the economic recovery plans and the budget deficits. It's time for us to take stock in just who we are as people.

I am ashamed of George Bush and Dick Cheney, and all those horrible people who thought they were patriots but were in fact on a level with Saddam Hussein and Josef Stalin.

"Idol" Top 7

Yes, I know that most of you probably don't watch the show, but it's my blog. Delete this if you wish.

This week marked the first week for me that I believed every contestant deserved to be there. Call me a cruel, heartless beast, but so long as Scott McIntyre, the piano-playing, Billy Joel-idolizing, legally blind crooner got space on that stage, the less legitimate I believed the competition to be.

Choosing songs from films, the contestants were "mentored" by film director Quentin Tarantino. Not as counter-intuitive as one might think, by the way. He had nothing to provide from a musical perspective, but really honed in on their performance chops. Most of what they aired of his coaching I felt was pretty constructive and I looked forward to seeing if his notes found their way into the songs.

First let me preface this by stating that I positively loathed the song choices by every contestant. Sappy love ballads are very common in the movies, but for five of the contestants to go down that road made for an extremely boring show for me.

Sixteen-year old L.A. native Allison Iraheta, whose family hails from El Salvador, started off the show with Aerosmith's "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" from the movie Armageddon. (I've never been a fan of the almighty Diane Warren, and I always believed that Aerosmith jumped the shark when they started letting others write songs for them.) Allison has a great husky voice that belies her tender age. It's always so hard to go first each week, because viewership is at its lowest point, so I hope what she did with the song, which was a lot, carries her through. Simon Cowell told her that she was the "only hope" for a girl to win the competition, and he's spot on. For her, however, I wanted to see something more uptempo. I thought "Life is a Highway," a great Tom Cochrane song that Rascal Flatts covered for Cars, would have been better for her.

Next up was one of my early faves, Anoop Desai, the Indian frat boy from North Carolina. He took on Bryan Adams' "Everything I Do, I Do It for You," featured in Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves. Anoop's become a competent balladeer in the past few weeks, having done very good jobs with "True Colors" and "You Were Always on My Mind." He didn't disappoint either, although I would have loved a mid-tempo like Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes" from Say Anything.

Los Angeles's own Adam Lambert, who has permanently broken free of the ensemble player roles he'd been getting his whole career, was next, and stole the show with Steppenwolf's "Born to Be Wild," from Easy Rider. Like so many other weeks before, he took the song to a new level as he took his gargantuan instrument into dog whistle territory. I felt his performance gets a bit over the top when he goes there over and over. Plus, I frickin' hate that song. My wife and I agree, however, that he's so far ahead of the rest they should just end the season now and give him the title. Just put the rest out of their misery. My pick for him tonight would have been Mr. Mister's "Stand and Deliver" from the movie of the same name.

Michigan's Matt Giraud, who plays a mean piano and sings his melismatic ass off, picked "Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman," another Bryan Adams ballad from Don Juan DeMarco. (You see what I mean? Aren't these overly sweet songs like musical Twinkies?) The melody is a bit dreary for me, so I was happy that he took some liberties with it. The judges disagreed. Here's when I get pissed -- the comments seem so designed to engineer a specific voting response. In other words, the producers don't think Matt has a shot at the finals, so the judges' comments are unduly harsh and plant the seed that Matt's day are numbered. Still, he pretty much telegraphed that he feels over his head when he told Ryan Seacrest before he started that his confidence level was wavering, so he can't just blame others for his eventual fate. Tear a page out of the Anoop playbook and project self-confidence even when you're up against it. The guy sings great blue-eyed soul, and I would have loved to hear him tackle "Try a Little Tenderness," the 1960s Otis Redding ballad that was so prominently featured in The Commitments.

Danny Gokey, AI's resident church boy, followed Matt with a reading of (gag) "Endless Love" from the movie (gag) Endless Love. (Pause for hurling. There... now I feel better.) Forget the fact that Milwaukee's Gokey is a widower at age 26 (can we, please?). Forget that the lyrics are personally meaningful for him. Tarantino directed him to try singing the song with his hands in his pockets so that he would use his hands less to convey the song's emotional core, so that he could deliver it with his eyes. Awesome direction for someone who understands framing a face to draw out the essential feelings present in a scene. Jesus, the guy even took off his trademark glasses for the first time. But what did he do? Not only did he overuse his hands to deliver the lyrics, he closed his eyes (or directed them to the floor) for most of the song, and then turned away from the camera during the song's emotional climax to play to the crowd of teen girls in the front row. He even let the musical director put a frickin' harpist on the stage with him! To borrow from Syndrome, the villain in The Incredibles, "Lame lame lame lame LAME!!!" His worst performance to date. I predicted he'd be in the finale with Adam, but now I'm thinking third place. My choice for him would have been something darker, like Aimee Mann's "Wise Up" from Paul Thomas Anderson's stunning film, Magnolia.

The penultimate singer was Kris Allen, an affable 23-year-old multi-instrumentalist from Arkansas. Give him props for having the only brave song choice, that being "Falling Slowly," from the indie film Once. Too bad he threw it away with a key that was too low for him and a performance that lay flat on its back. He had a moment near the end when he took a high note and delivered it well, but he hit the note late, behind the harmony singer, making him sound amateurish. Oh, well...he's so damn popular with the girls that he'll probably sail through despite the obscure song choice. Tarantino hinted that he should play an instrument to add impact; he failed to take that direction, and I think he suffered because of it. My choice for him would have been Elton John's "Tiny Dancer" which was so wonderfully used in Almost Famous.

The final, "pimp" spot was reserved for the only other woman in the competition, Lil Rounds. Despite having so many chances to shine in the past few weeks, she has not produced the kinds of results that her vocal promise would have one expect. Having the final spot on the show is a way to close it with a towering performance that sends voters rushing to the phones. Once again, singing Bette Midler's "The Rose," she squandered the opportunity, and I believe she'll go home tomorrow night. The judges sure agreed. For me, she started the song with a faithful homage to the song, then broke off in a gospel-tinged second half that was a jarring juxtaposition. There wasn't enough of a hint that it was coming (other than in the video preceding the performance), so there was a huge seam in the song that made it feel like two songs. Then, her biggest mistake: she took the bait from the judges and talked back to them. I think perhaps she knows she's not going to the finale, and this was her last chance to have her say. Girlfriend got a voice. She's got looks, she's got personality. But she doesn't know who she is. And she'll need some serious vocal and performance coaching before she can hit the big time. Same problem as Melinda Doolittle (third place in Season 6). My choice for her would have rocked the house, had it been done right: "Goldfinger" from the James Bond film.

So, if you've read this long post, you'll know how much I value this show as a mirror on American pop culture. These kids are so earnest in their quest for stardom, and the show doesn't pull punches. If they mess up, they're gone. This season, the producers went too far with the back stories, and I hope that next year they ditch the soap opera aspect and stick with what works: good kids, with lots of talent, singing their hearts out for 12 weeks until only one is left standing.

Bottom three: Lil, Matt, and either Kris or Anoop. Lil goes home.

Uppercut Fail

Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan, a "metaphor" for the far right's fight against Obama.


Bwahahahahahahahahahaaaaaa!

Update on Torture -- Obama's Big Test

The Daily Beast reported Monday that Spanish prosecutors will seek criminal charges against Alberto Gonzales and five high-ranking Bush administration officials for sanctioning torture at Guantánamo. The other five are former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo, former Cheney chief of staff David Addington, former Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee, former Defense counsel William Haynes, and former Defense Undersecretary Doug Feith.

Now, because these individuals are American citizens, it's really the U.S.'s legal obligation to investigate and possibly prosecute them, as is stipulated in the US Constitution and the international treaties to which we subscribe and which are the "supreme law of the land."

However, the Obama administration has so far blocked efforts to do so, mainly due to Obama CIA Chief Leon Panetta, whose #2 is a former senior official at the CIA during the Bush regime (and who was the first choice for CIA chief of two top Democratic senators, Feinstein and Rockefeller, who only supported Panetta after Obama agreed to make their guy second in line -- doesn't this make you sick?).

The Spanish prosecutors are involved because Spanish citizens were allegedly tortured at Guantanamo. They have agreed to step aside and "suspend their investigation if at any point the United States were to undertake an investigation of its own into these matters."

This week the Department of Justice is due to release three critical memos from Bush's Office of Legal Counsel which authorized the use of torture. There is great speculation as to whether they'll get released at all, or if they'll be so heavily redacted as to render them unusable. What happens will be a great test of Obama's commitment to transparency in government.

I may be a partisan Obama supporter, but I certainly won't like it if he in any way enables the ongoing secrecy of the Bush administration to continue.

If This Doesn't Convince You...

I've said for a long time that the Republican Party has been on a trajectory towards fully identifying itself as a party exclusively for Christians. It is why I understand and agree with Steven Weber's piece in HuffPost from last week, which I linked to earlier. That piece imagines the party as a naked old man with no strength, life, or spirit left.

Since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, the Republican Party has moved closer and closer becoming to a Christianist (i.e., pseudo-Christians who wield faith as a political weapon) movement. We have now seen the ascendancy of George W. Bush, which then begat the attempted (and incomprehensible) ascendancy of Sarah Palin. All of this was aided, of course, by a loud and dangerous cadre of right-wing media outlets that now dominate TV, radio and print media.

I predicted long ago (and have largely been proven correct) that the Republican Party would fracture into two camps -- one a mostly reasonable, patriotic bunch of thinkers who understand that politics works when deals are struck with the other party, and one a radical, reactionary, Christianist mob of True Believers bent on hastening the manifestation of their apocalyptic world-view. Still, in the middle of those two camps is a third camp, mostly those who still believe (wrongly) that the party embraces fiscal conservatism. Eventually it will dissolve into either of the two more dominant camps. The result will be the long sought-after multi-party system in American politics, except that our political debate will be even more fractious than before. This will give left-leaning Americans an unprecedented opportunity to forward their agenda for at least the next generation.

According to polls last November, Palin's candidacy was the main reason for the lopsided Democratic victory, as many Republicans who might have voted for McCain were awakened to the insanity that they had too long ignored among their ranks. Those of us on the left simply capitalized on the fact that many Americans have soured on and now openly reject the Christianist message embodied by Palin and others.

Well, here's the Christianist's response to us:



I suppose it will continue to get worse before it gets better, right?

The Dying Republicans, cont.

A reader asked me what kind of loony liberal trash I was reading when I posted Steven Weber's piece from Huffington Post. Andrew Sullivan nominated the piece for his annual "Moore Award," the kind of intemperate, leftist crap that smacks of Michael Moore. Well, I liked the piece.

And if one is looking for balance on the other side, one only need read Mr. Cesca this morning, as he shares a post that showed up on Glenn Beck's 9-12 Project's website.

NOTE: I usually embed these as links in my blog posts, but for some reason the computer I'm using won't display all my HTML tags properly. So now I'm just copying and pasting the link to Cesca's blog below:

http://www.bobcesca.com/blog-archives/2009/04/to_wit_1.html

The writer of the post is, if not faking it, a dangerous nutjob. He is talking about armed resistance to the point where President Obama and "all of Congress" are soon going to "hang" for what they are doing to this country. He is writing about trying to forcibly unseat our President.

All kidding aside, there is room on both sides of this debate for passionate opinion. But we have not reached the point where we must discuss armed conflict within our own borders. I shudder to think of what some of these idiots are planning in the privacy of their homes. This guy's rant better have gottent the attention of the Secret Service and the FBI.

The Dying Republicans

Steven Weber paints a very bleak picture indeed:

We can see it for what it is and what it always has been. It exists not in myth but in a reality which has plagued humanity for millennia: utter, hateful ignorance born from a fear of truth, indeed a fear of life itself; a mad and impotent pursuit of some long-forgotten ecstasy having spawned generations of paranoid power addicts who chase the past at the expense of the future, cloaking their real intentions in perfumed patriotism and the seductive swoon of religion.

Will They Someday Go Away?

Newsweek features a column by renowned atheist Christoper Hitchens, author of the newly-published God is Not Great. Now this is as brilliant a refutation of "intelligent design" as I've seen, and not without its respect for alternative views. Money quote:

I certainly do not want it said that my side denies a hearing to the opposing one. In the spirit of compromise, then, I propose the following. First, let the school debating societies restage the wonderful set-piece real-life dramas of Oxford and Dayton, Tenn. Let time also be set aside, in our increasingly multiethnic and multicultural school system, for children to be taught the huge variety of creation stories, from the Hindu to the Muslim to the Australian Aboriginal. This is always interesting (and it can't be, can it, that the Texas board holdouts think that only Genesis ought to be so honored?). Second, we can surely demand that the principle of "strengths and weaknesses" will be applied evenly. If any church in Texas receives a tax exemption, or if any religious institution is the beneficiary of any subvention from the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, we must be assured that it will devote a portion of its time to laying bare the "strengths and weaknesses" of the religious world view, and also to teaching the works of Voltaire, David Hume, Benedict de Spinoza, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson. This is America.

Free Markets?

Sullivan excerpts a piece by Francis Fukuyama at American Interest on the future of American Capitalism.

The excerpt got me thinking, especially after reading the sentence that "Alan Greenspan admitted last fall that he was astonished that the self-interest of the financial community did not prevent it from making huge mistakes."

And this is astonishing in what way? It is the very model of American capitalism itself. I have never heard my teachers or professors or business mentors tell me, in earnest, that there was plenty of business or opportunity to go around for everyone to become wealthy. No, to get that I had to read Deepak Chopra.

The American way of thinking is that this is a dog-eat-dog world, right? Get what you can get before everyone else discovers how easy it is. I had a boss once tell me, "You don't get rich by being smart; you get rich by someone else being stupid." In my work as a mortgage sales professional, I knew a young co-worker who routinely charged more for the product we both sold, just because he knew his clients would pay. When I brought this to the attention of the national sales manager, he told me, "I'm not going to restrict the entrepreneurial efforts of my best salespeople."

Although I never cheated anyone out of a dollar, I certainly knew that while I was making multiple six figures a year I knew it wouldn't last. So my wife and I always did our best to save and have at least three months' income in the bank for when times were bad (little did we know that three months was worth jack shit in this economy today). You don't think guys like Bernie Madoff and Michael Milken -- and these are crooks, mind you -- stashed away millions and millions offshore to avoid it being detected and/or confiscated by the authorities?

Screwing the other guy so I can have mine is the way things go in America. Few really think long term, and those who do live distinctly low profile lives, which is sort of another un-American way of living. This country has lived on top for so long that we can't stop ourselves from living too large.

...by Any Other Name... cont.

And the saga continues. A few days back, I posted a reply I'd gotten from a friend on my Facebook page in response to the original post. That provoked a reader to write the following:

Reality check! Whoever you are, you are badly unresearched, like far too many Americans: Your darling Reagan began his political career by destroying California's economy, especially its educational system, which has yet to recover. He set a new precedent in live-action government propaganda in the sixties, while gov of California, by making up arbitrary figures at press conferences to back up his anti-government-spending agenda, which would appear on the front pages of newspapers while the corrections to the previous week's Ron-figures appeared on the back page. It really was a great performance; gotta give him that. Of COURSE he became the hero of the GOP; I guess those are the 'leadership skills' you speak of.

My mom was his biographer AND a newspaper journalist in the Bay Area during his governorship; your hero hid under his f**king desk from her at one point. Sadly, it gets worse.... Having won his doddering, demented, evangelical-apocalyptic-vision suffering ass into the White House (and its red button) through the same ignorance and gullibility of the American voting public that landed George the 2nd there (and Arnold in Ron's old office in Sac'to) he proceeded---with a cabinet containing not only Cheney, but Rumsfeld---to apply his failed economic policies at a national/ international level, creating the (infamous) deficit inherited by Clinton. Remember, Bush-the-first's economic agenda was more Reaganomics, with exactly the same group of individuals and their ideas in charge. America's educational system (alas and not surprisingly) has yet to recover. Crikey, we're still suffering under the amazingly far-reaching and visionary crimes committed by the Sec'y of the Interior RR put into office, James Watt, who was perhaps the most [corrupt] public official in American history previous to Bush II's admin.

As regards where we go from here, we can only grab shovels and hope, and be as active as possible (and researched and aware, thankyouverymuch). Perhaps your tenet of thought, if not you personally, are a result of this broken educational system. Reaganism, like many conservative paradigms, requires an ignorant public; hence the under-funding of schools. Gosh, lower taxes for the rich fits nicely into that model, doesn't it? The big snowball rolls DOWNHILL, gaining mass and momentum....

Your idea that Reagan ended wars and fixed the economy is hallucinatory, easily countered by the most remedial level of awareness or research, and frankly, you owe your country more than that. If you care enough about America to weigh in at political blogs, have some realism backing you up. Gorbachev envisioned and implemented Perestroika---an amazingly heroic and courageous string of acts, risking not only his life, but that of his very country---and Ron stood in front of the Berlin wall taking credit with his "tear down this wall" speech. [ed. note: actually, Reagan's Berlin Wall speech preceded Gorbachev's reforms by about a year, per Wikipedia]

Sadly, it gets worse... Boldly going where no President had gone, He and George the 1st used George's CIA-machine to sell drugs to fund their junta in foreign Central-American countries. It was proven beyond the shadow of a doubt, is common knowledge, and was called the "Iran-Contra scandal." Perhaps you've heard of it. Astonishingly, they escaped due process---that We The People failed to prosecute has ired me for over fifteen years, and has cost the world much death, trial and tribulation. We should have prosecuted; perhaps if we had, American non-cognoscenti would have gotten it. The failure was all of ours. Aye, and the price, too. The price will be handed down through generations, alas, by way of precedent for future criminals to take advantage of.

I hope I'm not about to see history repeat itself, setting the stage for god-knows-what future crimes---the Reagan admin set a dangerous precedent, standing upon whose shoulders George the 2nd's admin was able to commit horrific acts against the American Constitution, the International Community, and the Geneva Conventions. How well we come out of this, buddy, ALL OF US, will be a matter of how SMART we can be. Suffice to say, if We The People fail to prosecute Bushco for their crimes, things look very bleak for our children, and for the future of America. Heck, just in the immediate context, if we want to hold onto any credulity as the people behind the Statue of Liberty and under The Constitution, we HAVE TO prosecute. The U.N. is taking the matter up. Spain is taking it up. This will grow, if the world is a sensible place. We The People have to either lead the effort with pitch-forks, or lose our legitimacy.

TAKE THE HINT. There's a reason the GOP has imploded; it's political tenets are fatally un-American. Tragically, RR makes a fitting hero for the idolatry of the GOP, so you're welcome to warship HE of the would-be apocalypse, but I'd rather buy you a beer, and make you AWARE.

The reader, a good friend, needed to fix that one fact about Reagan taking credit for Gorbachev's vision. Truth is, however, we'll probably never know what happened behind the scenes. Reagan could have gotten intel that Gorbachev was planning to open up the Soviet Union to more transparency. He could have taken the opportunity to upstage Gorbachev at the Brandenburg Gate and made it look like glasnost and perestroika were responses to Reagan's rhetorical challenge.