Kelly Ayotte, New Hampshire's Tea Party Republican senator from New Hampshire was on NPR this morning trying to win re election by proclaiming her determination to keep the prison at Guantanamo open.
This reminded me of the fact that I often forget--we are still imprisoning people in Gitmo, without trial, holding them for decades without prospect of release.
Throwing people into jail without due process of law, without filing charges to state clearly to the prisoner or the public what the person is accused of, ignoring haebeus corpus, is, of course, something expressly forbidden by the Constitution, and more importantly by any sort of civilized sensibility.
You capture someone, throw him into jail and simply throw away the key, no more questions asked. It's beyond medieval, it's savagery.
What we, as Americans are saying is, well that Constitution which protects our citizens does not apply to human beings who are not citizens, because we do not consider these rights of man, but simply privileges of citizenship.
Of course, the argument has been made these are "prisoners of war," captured by our soldiers, not our police, on another continent, a world away and we can do things in war without due process. We had prison camps for captured soldiers during World War II and we did not feel we had to charge them with any crime.
The problem is, this "war on terror" is not like WWII or Korea or Vietnam. There you had uniformed soldiers and battle lines. There you had wars with foreseeable ends. The fact is the ISIS inspired terrorist whether he is caught on a battlefield, scooped up in an Afghan village or captured shooting civilians in San Bernadino or Paris is much more like a common murderer, motivated differently perhaps, but behaving alone or in a gang and firing against people not wielding weapons against him, so he is engaging in murder or attempted murder.
The "war on terror" is unending and in that sense is not a war at all, but an ongoing police action. It's something new in our history.
What do we do with men we've captured in the Middle East and with those who we will capture in the future?
As Lincoln once said, the solutions for gentler times will not suffice for the turbulent present; as we face new problems, so we must think anew.
But we have not been thinking.
We accept that we can send in the drones to kill "terrorists" in Pakistan and Afghanistan and elsewhere because we are assured by our leaders they have human sources who have identified these "targets." Even without a trial or a charge or any sort of arguments for innocence, we accept killing Al Qaeda agents because of the secretive way in which they act and because we cannot think of any other effective way of dealing with stealthy assassins living overseas.
But in the case of men we have captured on the Arabian peninsula, we have options. Some of the options we have exercised include "water boarding" which at least one former CIA director has claimed is not torture but simply "enhanced interrogation." Somehow, we have accepted the idea when we have people completely under our control we can strip search them, abuse them physically and that's okay. We can do this because they are suspected of being soulless animals who kill innocent human beings. The enormity of the accusation justifies the cruelty of the captivity, even before we have any real certainty they are guilty of what we say they are guilty of.
And now we have Senators like Kelly Ayotte arguing the men we have in Gitmo, whoever they are, are so terrifying we cannot take the chance of bringing them to our shores, because, like King Kong, they may escape!
We have psychotic, frothing at the mouth, serial killers in American prisons, but, oh, the prospect of bringing some Al Qaeda operative who has been held for 9 years at Gitmo to the USA makes us go all weak kneed.
Of course, no matter what these guys were like before that 9 years, you know they must hate us now. But there's nothing we can do about that.
And, bye-the-bye, what are we doing holding a piece of Cuba as our own private preserve? What would Americans say if Cuba or Mexico held a piece of Florida and housed military on it, not to mention a den of iniquity, a black hole of foul deeds?
The fact is, this black hole we've created is a festering abscess on the soul of America, the worst sort of despotism, as bad as anything we've done since Abu Gharib in Iraq. George W. Bush, reacting to the revelations of Abu Gharib famously said, "This is not who we are."
Well, I've got news for you, George:
This is who we is.
Cross the Potomac River from Maryland into Virginia or cross the Hudson from New York to New Jersey or cross into Connecticut from Massachusetts and you need a road side sign telling you you have crossed a state line.
But put a blindfold on me and drive me from New Hampshire to Vermont, or, for that matter, push me out of an airplane and let me parachute to ground and as soon as I can whip off that blindfold and look around, I know I am not in New Hampshire; Vermont looks very different.
It's all valleys and steep hills which are, well, green. It's a little like parts of West Virginia, with its hollows, but there are red barns and covered bridges all around, so you know you're in northern New England, not the inbred environs of WV, and there are no coal mines.
Drive along the country roads, many of which are unpaved as you seek out the cross country ski areas, or the cheese farms, and you notice another thing which distinguishes Vermont from New Hampshire: A lot of Vermont is really rural in a way New Hampshire is not, and really poor, in a way New Hampshire is not.
Income disparity is also much more striking in Vermont. New Hampshire has it's monster McMansions, along its seacoast and up at Lake Winnipesaukee, so there is real money in New Hampshire, but it's more like the money you see in the Washington, DC suburbs: it's BMW/ Mercedes money, not Rolls Royce/ Bentley money. Vermont has the latter.
We stayed in Quechee this weekend, looking for snow, of which there was not much, but we were able to find enough, just north of town in Strafford to get in a full day of cross country, just enough so you feel you could not have gone another hundred yards, and were lucky to find the parking lot when you did.
Then drove down to Woodstock, where the streets are lined with stores which, at first glance, look like what you'd find in Georgetown, or Annapolis or Camden, Maine, until you go in. At Foot Prints, the walls were arrayed with Spring fashions in a way that all the designs and colors harmonized, so each wall became a canvas. There were pretty little sweaters in primary colors and contrasting collars and cuffs, for a cool $400 each.
The Woodstock Gallery is gorgeous, again the paintings by different artists harmonized so you might have thought the entire space was color and design coordinated. Couldn't afford any of the original art there.
Everything in Woodstock was just beyond my reach, financially. There is clearly real money skulking about Woodstock, and it's all just a mile or two from unpaved roads and dilapidated houses. The money is, presumably, mostly from out of state.
Vermont's got New York on one side and Massachusetts below and people with money from both those places have found they can buy a lot of land and build in Vermont. This does not seem to bother the natives one bit, who seem pleased to see the money flow in, and winters like this one, where out of staters stay home are pretty bleak.
You do get an intimation where Bernie Sanders got his feeling for income disparity, though, driving around Vermont. You see the struggling, the poor and you see the rich.
You don't see a lot in the middle.
Watching the Town Hall in Nevada tonight, it finally crystallized in my foggy brain what Hillary's problem is: She simply does not get how to present herself.
Where Bernie seems to care nothing about his own ego, where he seems totally wrapped up in the righteousness of his cause, in the enormity of the evil he faces, in the pathos of the problems of people he seeks to help, Hillary utters scarcely a sentence without the word "I."
For Bernie, it's all about them and us. For Hillary, it's all about me.
She may think it sounds forceful and confident, that she is confronting the problem of being a woman who might be thought insufficiently combative or strong, but instead she looks self serving and self absorbed, rather than genuinely invested in the plight of others.
She often does not answer the question asked, which is a deep problem in the Town Hall setting because it looks as if she does not actually hear ordinary people.
So, when a young Sanders supporter who had asked her why she would not release her transcripts, added, "And I'm sorely disappointed that in 2007 you said marriage was between a man and a woman," Hillary blew both questions.
She actually had a good answer to the first question: "I'll release my transcripts when everyone else, including Bernie Sanders releases theirs, because they all have talked to the same people I have."
But that was lost in applause and she didn't dwell long enough on that question. She should have said, "Yes, I spoke with Goldman Saks, and they may have thought they bought me, and they may have put my picture up on their brag walls, shaking the hands of the CEO's. But who is naive enough to believe that a grip and grin session means you are in bed with the guy paying to have his picture taken with you?
Yeah, I took the money! I was broke when I left the White House and that's the way you make yourself solvent. You go out and talk to people. And you would too, if they offered to pay you what they paid me. You say: What? Sure, I'll come give a speech if you pay me that much! I'm not going to sleep with you, but I'll give the speech! Maybe I'll give three, if you are that foolish.
But you never stopped fighting for the hard working guys who can't pay those fees. You never forget who sends you to the Senate or the White House.
And you know why? Because all the rich guys have is money. It's the poor guys who have the votes!"
Maybe Hillary should ask Chris Rock to coach her.
And, in answer to that question about her statement in 2007. "Yes, you are right. I said that in 2007, eight years ago. But who here among us today was fully evolved in 2007? Maybe you were, and I congratulate you for that. But you were ahead of me. That was eight years ago. The whole country turned on a dime with respect to gay marriage. Even the gay community was stunned by the alacrity with which opinions changed, mine among them.
For many of us, part of the reason we opposed gay marriage was we thought it would never be widely accepted, and after all the whole question was whether people would accept this new normal.
So I don't apologize for not having been a prophet or a leader on this one. I'm just happy to say today, like so many others, I'm all for gay marriage."
One of her best lines in the last debate was almost lost because she rushed past it in her summation, but she accused Scott Walker of trying to cut the heart out of the middle class by trying to crush unions in Wisconsin. She should have elaborated, pounded that point home, built her outrage into a fulminating volcano of righteousness, embraced the union movement, talked about the history of unions and how the rich and powerful tried to crush unions with private police forces, bludgeons and guns.
In her answer to why she would not raise the Social Security retirement she missed the vivid for the statistical. What she should have said was: "The guy who works 30 years on the assembly line, or on the power line or in the steel mill or coal mine reaches age 65 as a much older man than the guy who sat behind a desk or went to Congress. He has, in actuarial terms, maybe 5, maybe 7 more years to draw his Social Security benefits. The CEO, the accountant likely has 15 years. So, for the office worker, raising the age to 67 doesn't make all that much difference, but for the beat down guy who worked physically hard all his life, raising the age of retirement to 67 might mean he dies two years earlier and never really benefits much from all those years paying in."
And Hillary, stop talking about programs, and start talking about right and wrong. Nobody cares about your white papers or your plans. It's all government speak and pie in the sky. What they care about is what makes your blood boil, who you think is ripping us off and who the bad guys are.
Roosevelt famously demonized the fat cat capitalists, (un-named) and said, accurately enough, they hated him and beaming with a great grin he said, "And I welcome their hatred." This from an American aristocrat, a traitor to his class. But it worked, and it was believable because you could see he knew these guys and he knew them well enough to hold them in contempt.
Bernie is an encyclopedia of historical outrages, which he uses to great effect. He points to American concentration camps for Japanese citizens, to American government overthrow of the duly elected Iranian president, to Henry Kissinger and Cambodia. He doesn't care if half his audience has no idea about these things--they'll go Google it and they'll be outraged. But for now, they just know what he tells them and they swell with rage along with him.
The wonder is, Hillary doesn't have someone in her inner circle who can talk her down from her current approach, someone who can play back her performances, provide her with alternative answers. Even in "West Wing" they did that sort of rehearsal and theater, so the candidate could get to a better place.
Right now, I'd say the smart money is on Bernie Sanders. Hillary would probably make a better President, and would be more likely to survive the next four years--Bernie does not look to be a vigorous 74--but she is simply tone deaf to what has stirred the hearts and minds of the masses.
Recommended viewing for Ms. Clinton: Look at Martin Luther King, look at Bernie Sanders, look at Franklin Roosevelt, as they exhort the masses. You don't see the author of their words in what they say--you see only the images of the world they depict.
It does not matter Bernie is stooped and bald and gray: He has you seeing a world where nobody sits home and dies because he's too poor to get to the doctor; he has you seeing a world where the masses rise up and claim their rightful place in the green pastures of public parks and bathe in the clear waters of public beaches and drink clean water from public water systems. It's not because "I" did it; it's going to happen because righteousness will reign when the people can find their voice.
And right now, at least, that voice sounds like it comes from the hoarse, winter voice of an elderly grandfather from Brooklyn, who sounds as if he couldn't utter an insincere word if he tried.
As Bernie Sanders has noted, when the voters turn out, Democrats win.
When turn out is low, Republicans, who represent the 1%, do well.
The way to stay in office when your ideas favor a small minority is to try to keep only a small minority voting.
Fortunately, given the great American tradition of holding a vote for 300 million people on a single day and on a working day when middle class people cannot easily get to the polls, things have worked out well for Republicans.
In a recent rant, John Oliver examines the one study which suggested voter fraud, i.e. a person voting more than once on election day, may actually occur, and, it turns out, when you look at that study, what it really shows is this almost never happens.
As Mr. Oliver notes, voter fraud has occurred in American history, but almost never the kind of fraud voter ID laws address.
Stuffing ballot boxes, yes, but a voter voting more than once for a candidate is terribly inefficient, waiting in line to vote multiple times--how much could that actually affect an outcome when millions are voting?
What he does show is a Tennessee legislator who inveighs righteously about how important the voting process is to a democracy explaining her bill to limit voting registration, and then it shows her voting electronically on bills before the legislature by pressing not just the button at her desk but the buttons on desks for any legislator who is not present at his desk, i.e. she is cheating and voting for absent members.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NK-oP1lRCI
Ah, there is the essence of concern for the integrity of democracy.
For some time now Mad Dog has been working on a formula to predict the outcomes of Supreme Court decisions, which, if implemented might save the government considerable time and money and might save the public needless anxiety and speculation.
This effort is a work in progress and began when Mad Dog realized that he could predict with 95% accuracy the outcome of any case before the court containing any significant social/cultural implications, based on a three sentence summary of that case and the issues involved. Aware he possessed no particular powers of clairvoyance, Mad Dog realized there must be some law of nature, or law of political science or psychology operating.
Here's what we've got so far: Mad Dog has tentatively called his formula the Decision Opinion Predictor Estimator or D.O.P.E., for short.
If D = the Decision
and if P= the number of powerless or poor people affected
and if $= the number of rich or powerful or people in authority affected
and if Y= the number of Democrats on the bench (we already used "D" for Decision)
and if R= the number of Republicans on the court
and if F= the fudge factor, other wise known as Anthony Kennedy
then
D= P x Y
_____ + F x 1/9
$ x R X 50
And that corresponds, roughly to the chance the case will be called for the poor and powerless.
This works with a 95% accuracy rate, but not 100%, because every once in a while someone like Justice Roberts will inexplicably vote for Obamacare or Justice Kennedy will break out in a warm glow of humanity, like some people get flushed when they watch "It's a Wonderful Life," and he'll vote for gay marriage.
But in most cases, it's a lock. In DC v Heller, the court voted for the gun manufacturers and the NRA, and this included a vote from Justice Scalia, who always insisted he voted because he was influenced only by what was written in the text of the Constitution, but that phrase, "A well organized militia being necessary to the security of a free state" which is the first half of the Second Amendment apparently escaped his notice, and all he saw was the "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." It is possible he had what is called a "visual field defect" and could not see that first part, but more likely, the formula simply predicts.
Then there was the Flowers v Freeholders, case in which a man was arrested for riding while Black in a car and strip searched multiple times in various jails but that was not unreasonable search and seizure because he was, well, Black and poor, so two strikes you're out. The Court held the jailers needed to be protected from men like him-- or from women who might be walking around with knives or explosives tucked away in their vaginas just in case they wound up in jail where those things could be used against their jailers.
But, best of all is Morse v Fredericks, in which a high school student was marched out of his high school so he could join his class cheering a parade for the Olympic Torch, ( a shameless publicity stunt organized for that billion dollar scam called the "Olympic Movement") and he responded by unfurling a banner saying, "Bong Hits for Jesus," which evoked the ire of the school principal, who ripped down his banner and suspended him. The Court held students have no right to freedom of speech, despite the originalist text of the First Amendment, which, again, Justice Scalia reasoned did not apply to students because, well, they are powerless. Of course, Justice Scalia might have argued that though the First Amendment says, "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech," nowhere in that text did it say, "The Supreme Court shall make no law abridging freedom of speech." And that is just exactly what the Supreme Court did in the Bong Hits for Jesus case.
I do not know who Christopher Cook is, but his article in the Atlantic is persuasive.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/02/the-pragmatic-case-for-bernie-sanders/462720/
When you think of gay marriage, integrated public bathrooms and schools, women gaining admission to medical schools in equal numbers to men, women entering traditionally male jobs like telephone repairmen, factory workers, none of these changes seemed possible when they were first proposed, but pressures from a variety of developments made them happen.
Forty years ago, some of my college classmates were enjoying a story at dinner about a guy who had been caught with a girl in his room in violation of "parietal hours" and he had plead his case by saying he had lent his key to the coed in question so she could take a study break nap. How was he to know she'd take the nap naked and sleep until he arrived back home after midnight? Much hilarity ensued as each of my friends opined about the likelihood of this formulation succeeding.
Then I said, "You know, years from now, we'll probably not have in loco parentis at all. We'll probably have women living in our dorms, the way women lived down the hall from you if you get an apartment in New York City, in real life."
My friends fell out of their chairs laughing. The very idea of females legally living in the male bastion of Diman House, in the Wriston Quadrangle, sleeping down the hall from male students!
Of course, that happened within 10 years of our discussion.
Attitudes change. Minds change. Demographics change. Change does not always happen because a President wills it, but it may happen if he simply allows it.
Look at that American pie graph of wealth distribution. Does that not look evil to you? Can you not imagine, if enough people were made to face that graph, they would not respond to it?
"Serene upon the frigid heights of infallible egotism"
Shelby Foote, among others, quotes this description of Jefferson Davis, whose statue still stands along Canal Street in New Orleans and who still lives in the street names and park names throughout the South.
We can only hope, and fervently pray it is the Donald who the Tea Party, which has swallowed the Republican party whole, will choose.
As Gary Trudeau has demonstrated in yesterday's rendering, the Donald is the candidate Democrats most yearn for, as he truly represents the groups who now constitute the GOP. Exit polling in New Hampshire, such as it is, revealed voters who feel immigrants are a threat, undeserving citizens receive welfare, Obamacare is a disaster, white males are under attack and in danger of losing their just position of power and the Donald can take back what Obama has taken from them and "make America Great again."
www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/2016/02/14
Can't you just see Bernie Sanders taking on Mr. Trump on stage?
