House of the rising Moonglum

I haven’t done an Iraq post in a while. Many of the Iraqi blogs I read have slowed down, but with the elections coming up, a few of them have picked up a little. In particular, IraqPundit is going around getting a bunch of different viewpoints on the state of the country and the upcoming elections. What I want to know is, why are the day laborers from the poor part of Baghdad the ones opinions I agree most with. “The men said they had no respect for ‘the thieves’ in parliament, as they called them. All of them? All of them, they said.” I guess it’s because I live in Chicago. s/Parliament/City Council/

I’m just hoping and praying that the violence doesn’t pick up too much before the election to really interfere with it. I think an election with less of a visible US troop presence will be able to have a lot more support from the general public.

Yes, thank you. I hate to agree with Grover Norquist, but I do love intellectual consistency. If this group of über-conservatives can see the light on the Gitmo detainees, hopefully more will follow. I know I am asking a lot here, but you never know.

Dear President Obama,

As a citizen of the state of Illinois, home to Abraham Lincoln, I would be proud to accept any and all prisoners from our current conflicts in Illinois prisons. For too long our country has operated outside the rule of law with respect to those who have wronged us. We have laws in place with which to punish them, and if we ever hope to regain the trust of the world we must use them. The first step is to find a place within the bounds of the US to house our most dangerous criminals, and we have at our disposal an empty maximum security prison. The citizens of that town seem happy to help out. Once in place we can bring them to trial and finally have justice done. This country has waited for too long, and the rest of the world begins to doubt our sincerity.

Thank you for your attention in this matter,

Moonglum

p.s. Ignore Mark Kirk, he seems to prefer keeping one prison empty while the rest are overcrowded, when opening this one, while providing local jobs could also relieve some of the overcrowding in the rest of the prisons in Illinois. How this reduces our safety I have no idea.

Obama used some good timing to shift a lot of spending from long range Procurement and Development to cheaper and more effective and near term projects in the current Defense budget. I don’t know how much chance he has to follow up on this moving forward, but making defense spending leaner and aiming at more bang for the buck in terms of high tech projects seems like a really good idea.

My favorite item though? Mr. Obama has also threatened to veto any attempts to salvage an early version of a new presidential helicopter that the administration canceled. That’s walking the walk.

THe Globe and Mail (among others) is reporting that Obama has canceled the missile defense systems that were going into eastern Europe, while at the same time getting concessions from Russia on the war in Afghanistan. I would love to hear from my more wonkish friends on what they think the repercussions of this will be. I, personally, have never believed that a late-boost/mid-range missile defense system would be viable anyway, but many of my friends have held the opinion that the purpose of the system wasn’t to defend against rogue states with ICBMs, but to cement out relationship to Eastern Europe and require us to come to their aid in the case of Russian aggression. The Globe and Mail article certainly suggests that. The Christian Science Monitor thinks it is just a cost benefit analysis. And while it is nice to see us trying to work with Russia instead of just antagonizing them, it also seems like cutting it off could have been done with a bit more grace. They both noted that picking the anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland for the announcement was poor.

Thoughts?

I had a friend recently send me a pajamas media video that was supposedly about Obama’s Iconography and Branding. I have been thinking a lot lately about where the whole Obama as Hitler thing is coming from, and had been leaning towards racism, but couldn’t figure out exactly why. (And no, not just Carter.) Basically I’m trying to figure out what is different between this and the far left saying the same thing about Bush for the past 8 years. This video helped me figure some of it out. “Never seen before” “Perpetual leadership” “Only seen in totalitarian regimes” “I won’t show them because it would be obscene to compare the horror they generated, 150,000,000 dead no less, to what’s going on here today. That was mass murder this is merely advertising. We’ve just never seen that kind of thing before here in america.”

I’m sorry, but if this guy is an ad expert and an iconography expert he knows exactly what he is doing, and it is playing on the base fear of the “other”. He is “different”. He is not like what has gone before _in this country_. He is _not us_. This video has nothing to do with iconography, and is full of misdirections and lies. The W disappeared for four years? Please. The DNC isn’t using the presidential seal? That’s because it is ILLEGAL to use it for anything other than official government business. The eagle is flying away? The eagle is ALWAYS flying, for the same reason that the donkey is kicking, it makes the icon more active and exciting. Heck, it’s flying away in _the presidential seal_ as well!

As for the O icon continuing to be promulgated, every official speech the president has done has had the presidential seal on the podium. His weekly podcasts used to be branded with the O, but the day he became president they were rebranded with the presidential seal. This iconography argument is a thin veneer for trying to brand the president a different from all the others, and different from us. And that is where my fear for the racial thing comes in.

I hated George Bush, but at the end of the day he was my president. (If anything the argument against him was that he was _too much_ like us.) This line of thinking and talking is what is driving the far right to “mobilize for action”. This causes people to yell at the town halls and show up with guns at Obama’s speeches. By painting him as on par with the epitome of evil, the right is slowly building up the idea that ANYTHING is acceptable in opposition to him. This iconography video is just more of the same. Sarah Palin’s death panels and Rush Limbaugh saying he has brown shirts. That crazy Baptist saying it’s OK to kill Obama because he supports abortion. Right wing (birther) blogs say that he actually is hitler and is going to round up and kill 6,000,000 jews. People showing up in town hall meetings, or filling up message boards with Obama and Hitler comparisons when the rest of us are trying to talk about healthcare. This causes me to turn into a knee-jerk liberal.

Which is really frustrating, because there is actual discussion that I would like to be able to have about things like economic reform and healthcare reform. Important questions, like what would a public option mean? How would it operate? And if we don’t have one, how can we guarantee that the health insurance companies can’t go on abusing the middle class like they already have been? And if we decide that everyone should have health care, how are we going to get the 40,000,000 people who aren’t covered, covered without a public option? But when I go to a town hall meeting, or a website, and someone comes out with “Obama is Hitler!” it makes me immediately jump to his defense. Because at the end of the day, even though I may disagree with him on some items, like George Bush, he is my president. And that path leads to the end of social discourse.

And I think that is where the difference lies. It feels (to me) like it was easier to have discussions about the ramifications of Bush actions than it is about Obama actions. I suppose it could just be that he is actively trying to be more accessible, and thus the conversation is similarly louder. For example, there weren’t any town halls on the decision to invade Iraq, but the probably would have been pretty tense if there were. But a final note is that Obama gets four times the death threats than Bush did. It just seems unlikely that that comes from policy differences alone. I find it hard to believe that more people are violently opposed to health care than to torture. And much easier to believe that a general culture of hate and painting the black president as different from us has a lot more to do with it.

Just got back from Alaska, where it was pretty hard to find any Palin merchandise. There were actually some pretty good pro-Palin news stories on why it is a good idea for her to step down, even if you believe in her (for local Alaska political reasons, not personal or national political reasons). And this is a good thing, because her actual resignation speech was incomprehensible. I present for your enjoyment, two attempts to fix up her speech a little bit. First, the editors over at Vanity Fair give it a go. Pretty useful comments in there, which actually turn it into a pretty good speech.

Second, and by far my favorite, is a “reading” of the beat poem that is Palin’s speech, as read by William Shatner. Oh yeah.

Unsurprisingly the Kurds updated their own constitution and laid claim to all the land and oil in the north of Iraq. I would like to believe that this is just a negotiating tactic for getting a better deal with the central government, but that would ignore a thousand years of history. What are we doing still messing around in countries with thousands of years of history that we will never understand?

I really do wonder how much secrecy is necessary in a democracy. Really, I mean that. If we are expected to be able to vote for the people who are going to make the best decisions, how are we going to know who that is when we don’t know what decisions they are making?

So it appears that someone who just lost his job is complaining that telling the truth risks national security. Really? All this sounds like is sour grapes. He should just be thankful that Obama isn’t charging anyone for crimes committed.

I understand that some secrets are needed, but I really do fear when every little item is classified for “national security”. And Obama is just continuing this trend with (thankfully at least) a few exceptions.

Yet another article showing the progress the EPA is making. I can’t say what a breath of fresh air this is. I don’t know how much of this will actually pan out into policies that are good for our national viability and the environment, but it is nice to see it being talked about at the very least.

A friend on another blog recently suggested that there was little difference between what Obama is doing now and what McCain would have done as president. I highly disagree, in tone and tenor much more than anything else. I like having a president that tries to let off the steam of mad populism and stamp it out. Having just read a biography of Washington, and seeing how much he worried about the US revolution turning into the French one, it really drove home the point to me that generating fear to uphold your rule is really only going to produce backlash.

But that is a subtle difference that we can’t really know would have been different, given the other choice. A tangible verifiable difference: The EPA has its teeth back. Three items, first an immediate hold on mountaintop removal coal mining. Second, no more unregulated pollutants in streams. Finally and most importantly: greenhouse gasses have been declared harmful to human life. This means that the new administration is now required by law to regulate the release. I simply don’t see any of those things having happened under McCain.

Why am I unsurprised. The older I get the more I believe that Smedley Butler was on to something. War is a racket and the powerful have a lot to gain from it while the young and of little influence die. In any case, it looks like up to $150 billion was misused in Iraq by the US people in charge of making sure that reconstruction was done. We sure could use some of that money about now for our relief packages. Not to mention having some of those projects completed may have helped keep more Iraqi’s happy…

On another note, talk about misplaced ads. In a british newspaper, on an article about how much military spending is wasted, google decided to stick an ad for Lockheed: “Save the F-22! Protect American jobs!”. That cause no small amount of cognitive dissonance.

There is big election going on. It’s been three years since the last one, and the Iraqis are having their second round of elections. And they seem to be going much more smoothly than the first. I think and hope that Obama will luck out with Iraq and that the local situation there will continue to improve making his great plan to bring troops out of Iraq make more sense. In any case a nice smooth set of provincial elections really helps out on the peace and prosperity front. I am happy for the Iraqi people and hope that this election helps bring them both.

It is kind of strange to think that one of the things that started me writing this blog was the war in Iraq. And here we are 6 years later, still there. Through a full election cycle. At least it seems that the level of violence is really finally dying down.

Well it looks like they are throwing Sarah Palin under the bus. I have a friend who believes that all leaks happen on purpose, and that the leaker has something to gain from the leak. I’m not sure I always agree, but it is really obvious in this case. First of all the timing, and second the saturation. Newsweek reports that she was the one who spent all that money on clothes, and was out of their control. Fox news (video below) says that she didn’t know that africa is a continent and not a country, she didn’t know which countries are in NAFTA, and was out of their control. Aaaand, “there is to be an avalanche [of revelations] that will continue for many days.” All in all the long knives are out.

The interesting question is why. Is this simply to shift blame, or is it a start of a longer game to shift the Republican party away from the religious right? Since she is such a symbol for them I could see that. Of course the Neo-cons have gone so far away from the other traditional conservative values that my guess is they will have to do even more re-branding than that to continue.

I tell you one thing though, if these stories are true (and that is a BIG if, these stories serve a purpose remember), and she really was this bad and they let her keep running anyway… no re-branding will be enough. They simply don’t care about the country.

update: Campbell Brown thinks they are just trying to save their own skins. This makes them look so bad though, as she points out. I still think a re-branding is more likely.

I can’t say how pleased I am that our nation was able to move beyond its racist past and elect its first black president. McCain’s speech was great, and everything that I liked about him. If he had been allowed to run as himself, he would have done much better. Obama’s speech was inspiring, and the email he sent to all campaign workers, thanking them for all their hard work, and letting us know we need to be prepared for the work ahead was a great sign that he knows how much is left to be done. I am so overjoyed and hopeful for the future. If Obama can accomplish even a portion of the expectations people have for him, this country will become a place we can scarcely imagine.

People marching on Western Ave, chanting Obama, and Yes We Can. Heh.

The one sad note on the day, was that it appears that Californian voters approved Proposition 8. One of my best friends was married this summer, and just had her wedding annulled by popular vote. We may have shifted racism into the minority column, but bigotry hatred and fear still have a place in this country. Fortunately California has some laws in place to protect the rights of same sex couples, however many federal protections still only apply to married people.

And Obama goes on about his energy policy. *sob* I want him as my president so bad. Someone asks a simple talking point question and he goes on without interruption, about the different viewpoints he has been synthesizing, and much of the fallout of what energy policy impacts across the country, from single point of failure food production to the weaknesses of the cap and trade system. PLEASE COUNTRY vote for him! It has been so long since we have had a president who I can actually listen to expounding on difficult topics.

It really is a great overview of his energy and tax policy and you should read it if you haven’t heard him talk about it before. The best thing in my opinion is that it shows that he understands how intertwined energy is with everything else we do.

I was opposed to this bailout, and for a brief period I felt a little better about it. Shakowski even responded to my email about it with a very nice (form) letter that actually answered many of my concerns. (I can post it if anyone is interested.) The problem is that once the rubber met the road most of my concerns were realized. My biggest concern was a lack of oversight, so that this didn’t become a “save Paulson’s friends” extravaganza. The bank that is managing the bailout gave itself $3B? What is up with that? Other bailed out banks using the money to buy up other banks or give out dividends? And who is complaining about whom about spreading out the wealth? It is supposed to go steal from the rick give to the poor, not steal from everybody give to the rich in the form of cash dividends.

No, I am not kidding. Seriously people. I used to think that Fox news provided some semblance of useful news, even if it came from a viewpoint that I don’t agree with. The truth is they aren’t even farce. They are actually dangerous. In the comments people are talking about God’s will being done with this election and the end times being sped along with the election of one with ties to Satan. Modern Christian Zionism is a tenant that comes from Falwell and Robertson, and thus unfortunately is getting a lot of play in the evangelical movement in this country. This means that these people are sending money to pro settler organizations in Israel to support what might otherwise be an unpopular movement over there.

It’s all fun and games until someone destabilizes the middle east. Fox news, please don’t cause the end times. Alternately, we must worry about this life, and let the Lord worry about the next.

This is one of the best endorsements I have ever seen in my life. His nod to muslim americans, and the freedom that this country provides was wonderful. I still wish that Powell would have run for president all those years ago, I would have loved to vote for him. He has certainly made his mistakes, out of some sort of loyalty I suppose. But his love of this country, and understanding that this is a large and diverse country is wonderful. He has Obama’s intellectual curiosity, but much more experience. His steady hand on 9/11 and after would have been much appreciated. (In retrospect I have to believe he would have been better than a second term of Clinton, but that is a long view hindsight, and honestly with republican congress and presidency we might have gotten ourselves even more into the deregulation hole.) In any case, here is a well reasoned and beautiful endorsement (the full interview):

Can someone please explain to me what is happening to the Republican party? First Palin and now Bachmann? This is the most amazing virulence I have seen coming from someone in a long time. Move it forward to 5:56 where you can see her accusing congress of anti-American activities. I am not kidding. Wow. “I think the news media should do an expose of Congress to find out which members are pro America and which are anti America”.