UncommonSense

6/28/2002

Read Jon Carroll every day. If you miss a day, go back and check him out.

Today, I am going to disagree with BartCop about the "under God" ruling. (yes, back to that story).

Yesterday, BartCop wrote:

I have one, simple question: How would you feel if the Pledge of Allegiance closed with, "one nation, under Mohammed...." You like that? You ready to swear your allegiance to Mohammed? No? But you want me to swear my loyalty to your God? Has there ever been a more clear-cut and obvious argument?

It is neither as clear cut nor as obvious as this. No law in this land forces anyone to pledge allegiance, 'under God' or not. This was a frivolous lawsuit meant to push the 'under God' issue into the national debate. As such, it serves but one purpose. That purpose was pointed out today by MediaWhoresOnline:

"Virtually the moment the decision came down, the National Republican Congressional Committee blast-faxed its members a memo "urging them" to "put out a statement as soon as possible." (Looks like Anthrax Coulter is on the RCCC's A list!) The memo pointed out that a "good statement would include a call for every school board to "ignore this decision" (so much for wingnut preachings on the "rule of law"), and blame 'Liberal Democrat Tom Daschle'" and Senate Dems for "holding up 45" of Pres. Bush's "judicial nominees who would serve as a counterweight to this type of nonsense."

As I said yesterday, this would be used to attack Democrats like Daschle, even though Daschle wasted no time voicing his criticism of this decision. The truth about Daschle's opinions doesn't matter to the GOP spin machine. Because they have relentlessly spread the equation Athiest = Liberal = Democrat, they don't need the truth. When Tom Daschle comes out and says he doesn't support this decision, people automatically react by thinking he is playing politics. In fact, I heard a DJ suggest this very thing, that Daschle was just playing politics and backpeddling to save his political hide, while the Republicans were sincere.

In times like this, I wish there was a conservative on the web who would agree to go a few rounds with me, but nooooooo. They can't get in the ring and argue the facts because if they did, they'd get the Mohammed question and then they'd be screwed.

I'm not a conservative, but I'll take up the challenge.

One of the planks in the BartCop Quiz has always been, "Who picks the prayer?" It's a show stopper. There's no good answer to "Who picks the prayer," so the answer = no prayer. All day today, you're going to hear "Let won't let us pray," but anyone who says that is either stupid or a Republican. No power on Earth can stop you from praying and they know it. They don't want to pray, they want to make a big peer-pressure production out of prayer to force children to follow the "true" God, and if your true God is Mohammed, you can just go screw yourself.

Just to pick a nit, this isn't about prayer, it's about the Pledge. In any case, this plank from the BartCop quiz is also a plank from my arguments against school prayer. But this isn't an argument about school prayer. An argument about school prayer is much more controversial and much easier for a liberal to win.

This is insulting, illegal, unconstitutional, and aren't we lucky that there's one court who followed the law instead of their misguided hearts Of course, the Scalia thugs will overturn this and force federal prayer back into the mouths of children who don't want to pray, making a mockery of ther pledge of allegiance and that's a goddamn shame.

What I said yesterday is true today. What BartCop says is true, too. Unfortunately, the Republicans are playing on the greater berserks of our liberal natures, trying to lure us into a fight that we cannot win, nor do we need to win it. If this were truly about school prayer, as BartCop suggests, it would be a fight worth fighting and one that we would stand a chance of winning, because prayer requires that someone lead it, and that someone isn't going to be a generic cleric of all religions. Therein lies the liberal's chance to divide and conquer - who picks the prayer?

But this 'under God' issue is one that the Republicans can slaughter, and I mean slaughter Democrats over. If we want to gain one Senate or House seat in any of the Red States, we cannot let the GOP lure us into this fight. We'll lose it, and with it, the Senate.

So to all those who want the Democrats to support this common sense decision of the 9th Circuit Court, please stop acting like the Green Party. All you are doing is expressing your willingness to destroy Democratic chances in the November elections simply because you want to win one battle in a war that we all will lose.

Personally, I'd prefer a Democratically-controlled Senate over having 'under God' removed from a childhood ritual that no one can be forced to participate in. Once we have a Democrat in the White House, a Democratic Congress, a majority of liberals on the Supreme Court, and an end to corporate ownership and control of major media, then we can remove 'under God' from the pledge.

6/27/2002

I have to weigh in on the "under God" ruling of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

All the way to work this morning, the Neanderthal DJs of the local Clear Channel rock station that hardly ever plays music couldn't stop talking about this, couldn't stop harping on liberals and atheists and Democrats. Every time they said the word 'God' they would cue the alarm bells and sirens and sinister male voices ordering them to stop saying that word. They were having a field day with it.

Does it matter that Democrats in Congress immediately expressed their disgust with this decision? Hell, no. Six years ago, the Republicans successfully fixed in the minds of half this country the following equation: atheist = liberal = Democrat

So when the news reports that an athiest father brought this lawsuit (to stop the schools in California [i.e. liberal hotbed] from forcing his daughter to say something that no law in the country forces his daughter to say), the pundits don't even have to try to get people to make the jump to liberal and then to Democrat.

The Democrats can deny and decry all they want. The connection was made six years ago, if not earlier. The truth is not self evident. In the minds of most people, self evident is the truth. If you can establish in the minds of the people what is self evident (atheist = liberal = Democrat), you don't need the truth.

That's why this lawsuit is such a tragedy. If this atheist father really wanted to do something good for his daughter, he should have sued for smaller class sizes, more teachers, better pay for teachers, more resources for the children, etc., etc.. Although I agree that children shouldn't be forced to say "under God," I really didn't need this guy to stand up and fight for me.

People need to learn how to choose their battles.

6/26/2002

Due to continuing pressure at work, there is little time to cover things here. So I'll let Gene Lyons do the talking today.

RUNNING FOR COVER

Gene Lyons June 26, 2002

Once again aides escorted President Junior to a White House podium amid excited speculation. Wearing his determined face, with only the faintest apprehension in his eyes, managing for once not to look like a fraternity boy who'd borrowed his older brother's clothing to appear before a traffic judge, Bush read his much-anticipated, twice-delayed address on the Middle East.

If ever a presidential speech was written by committee, this was it. Ever since the latest sickening wave of Palestinian suicide bombings and Israeli reprisals forced Bush to quit pretending that the crisis would magically pass if he ignored it or blamed his predecessor, we've been reading reports like this one in the Chicago Tribune: "Inside the White House...a struggle over emphasis and nuance has played out between pro-Israel hard-liners, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, who would grant no concessions to the Palestinians until all terror attacks cease, and Secretary of State Colin Powell, who has aired the Arab argument that Palestinian desperation over the deferred dream of a state is fueling the violence."

As ever, the missing factor in the equation is President Junior, tacitly understood to have no informed opinions worth reporting, although news organizations expecting future White House access won't say so. Since the hard-line argument is always the simpler one, with its neat action/adventure film division of a complex situation into good guys vs. "evildoers" there was little doubt about which side would prevail. Even so, it was shocking to see how little of Powell's perspective appeared in Bush's speech. A few rote sentences about Palestinian suffering was about all. "I can understand the deep anger and despair of the Palestinian people," Bush said. "For decades you've been treated as pawns in the Middle East conflict."

Scant weeks ago, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon openly defied Bush's stern demands that his troops withdraw from the West Bank at once, much as the Afghan Northern Alliance had earlier ignored the Commander-in-Chief's instructions to refrain from attacking Kabul. Like the Afghan warlords, Sharon had shrewdly taken Bush's measure. Sure enough, Bush was soon describing the Israeli Prime Minister, a lifelong warrior who has greatly accelerated the building of West Bank settlements on Palestinian land and repeatedly vowed never to surrender them, as "a man of peace."

On Monday, Sharon's defiance earned him an even bigger reward. "The president's speech," according to the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, "is a huge triumph for Ariel Sharon. At the end of last year, the Israeli prime minister seemed either naive or perverse, or both, when he pledged to render [Palestinian leader Yassir] Arafat 'irrelevant.' Now, he can cogently contend, he has won his case convincingly before what for Israel is the highest court of world opinion: the U.S. government."

Politically speaking, wrote Ha'aretz, which has consistently opposed Sharon's expansionism, Arafat appears to be a "dead man walking." See, it's the Palestinian pawns whom Junior expects to bear all the responsibility. "I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders not compromised by terror," Bush announced grandly. "When the Palestinian people have new leaders, new institutions, and new security arrangements with their neighbors, the United States of America will support the creation of a Palestinian state."

Yes, and when cows fly, we'll milk them in trees. With Israeli tanks in the streets and helicopter gunships hovering overhead, the Palestinians are now asked to locate among themselves a Jefferson and Madison, inscribe a democratic constitution, and hold free elections. "How the Palestinians can be expected to carry out elections or reform themselves while in a total lockdown by the Israeli military," the New York Times drily editorializes "remains something of a mystery." Possibly Junior can volunteer the services of Katherine Harris and Antonin Scalia to help count the votes.

Meanwhile, Sharon and the Israelis are called upon to make no concessions whatsover unless and until the Palestinians accomplish this democratic miracle. For months Sharon enlisted the U.S. in the absurd pretense that the unreliable, ever-shifty Arafat, held under virtual house arrest in his own beseiged compound, could somehow restrain the lunatic militants of Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad even as Israeli soldiers systematically eliminated the Palestinian infrastructure--bulldozing offices, destroying communications networks, and decimating Arafat's security forces.

It now appears that the Israelis have been granted all but formal permission to do away with Arafat permanently by almost any means they choose. Otherwise, there's nothing to prevent him from winning the upcoming elections. Moreover, Sharon isn't the only one "empowered" by Bush's speech. In essence, Bush has awarded veto power to Hamas and the rest of the fanatics who see a limited Palestinian state as an impediment to their mad dream of destroying Israel altogether. This isn't a Middle Eastern policy; it's an abdication of responsibilty by a president eager to shift the blame.

6/24/02

Due to work deadlines, the next few days will be slim.

This morning, I lay in bed in that half dream state between hits of the snooze button. Earlier in the night, I dreamed that I met Poppy Bush at a cerebral palsy benefit (don't ask me where that came from) and I was pondering the symbolism of my dream. Lots of random dream thoughts and visions wer firing in my head when two things happened.

First, I saw the place where they will find that little girl - behind a guard rail on an interstate highway.

Second, I heard something not unlike a conversation between two people. In the conversation, one of the people said, "They took him into custody on September 10th, and that's when the warnings went out."

The 20th hijacker, Zacarias Moussaoui, was taken into custody in August, we are told, after he expressed a desire to learn how to fly a commercial jet, but not land one.

Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't August a little late to begin learning how to pilot the aircraft you intend to hijack in September?

What if Zacarias Moussaoui isn't the 20th hijacker? What if it was someone else, someone arrested on September 10th? Wouldn't that explain a great many things?

Wouldn't it explain why FEMA arrived in New York on Monday night? Wouldn't it explain why the plane with only four hijackers was the last to be hijacked? Maybe the four on that plane waited longer and decided later to go ahead with their plan, because they weren't sure why the fifth member of their team hadn't shown up and they wanted to wait and see if their cover had been blown before acting.

Wouldn't it explain why George Bush said that if he had known hijackers would use the planes as weapons, he would have done whatever it took to stop them? If he knew there was going to be hijackings, but the 20th hijacker had told them that they were planning conventional hijackings, wouldn't that convince him that there was no need to overreact? Wouldn't that explain why he sat in that classroom for 20 more minutes, because he knew there were still two hijackings to go and his people were scrambling around trying to figure out what went wrong?

Wouldn't that explain the administration's need for total secrecy in regard to all prisoners, and its desire for military tribunals and the elimination of judicial review? Public knowledge about the prisoners might reveal that someone was arrested on September 10th, a public trial would reveal that he warned the government before the hijackings began. Wouldn't this explain why the administration is willing to trample the Constitution in its desire for total secrecy? Wouldn't this explain why the administration is utterly against any kind of independent investigation? Wouldn't this explain why the administration wants to use torture and indefinite detentions?

Wouldn't this explain why they are so keen to prosecute and execute Zacarias Moussaoui?

When you read and watch the news in the next few weeks, remember to ask yourself, what if there is another 20th hijacker?