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t seems like only yesterday we were looking at nominee #3 for this year’s C-SM “Most Ridiculous” award (actually, it was Tuesday), and here we are again so soon with #4 – a second nominated article from the nearly always ridiculous Gary Kamiya of Salon.

Kamiya easily checks off all the requirements for consideration for this august (if ridiculous) honor:  He is a serious writer, writing about a serious subject in all seriousness, yet he goes far beyond the sublime, settling heavily into the imbecilic.

His piece, Night of the Living Neocons, The shameless fools whose Iraq folly empowered Iran’s hard-liners are back, smearing Obama as an appeaser, is typical Kamiya: Blind to all the Left’s faults, while accusing the right of exactly those faults … oh, and being utterly unable to forgive or forget George W. Bush, who he sees as the primordial presidential ooze from which all things evil evolved.

Let’s start with a rundown of the derrogatory words he uses for neocons:  Rasputin-like, unhinged, disgraced, braying, raving, unreconstructed, lunatic, Visigothic, idiotic, ludicrous, paper-pushing pundits ensconced in comfy right-wing think tanks, supposedly “idealistic,” and cavalier.  A little later on he belittles neocons for belittling Obama.  The pot is allowed to call the kettle black, but the kettle gets no such rights in Kamiyaland.

As the piece’s title hints, Kamiya believes it’s Bush who created Iran’s hard-line regime, and that Obama is right to appease use carefully considered words, because just three words – axis of evil – are behind all that’s wrong in Iran.

That these neoconservative pundits have the gall to talk about Iran at all, let alone pose as defenders of the Iranian people, would be stunning if it were not so familiar. For it was their own policies that were largely responsible for the rise of the hard-liners in Iran. … And of those U.S. actions, none was more consequential than the very “axis of evil” statement that the neocons are now tumbling over each other to glorify.

Kamiya quotes Islamic affairs scholar Malise Ruthvin:

“The build-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq provided them with strong public support. In the local council elections of February 2003 — one month before the invasion — conservatives regained nearly all the seats they had lost in 1999 at the peak of the reformist movement. This was not a rigged poll: for unlike the parliamentary and presidential races, candidates for municipal elections are not vetted for ‘Islamic suitability.’ The right-wing victory was sealed two years later with Ahmadinejad’s election as president.”

It’s simplistic to blame the results of elections in Iran on the actions of America. Economic issues at home and tribal alliances and conflicts also matter greatly, and whatever America does or does not do is grossly distorted by the state-controlled Iranian media – which didn’t cover Obama’s Cairo speech and reported his recent milquetoast comments as if they were incendiary. Be that as it may, haven’t events borne out the fact that Iran is indeed evil? It has ruthlessly repressed its people, called for the destruction of free, Democratic Israel, tried to strip Lebanon of democracy, killed our soldiers, and thumbed its nose at the world.

Oh, and we need not mention Jimmy Carter’s contribution to the mess in Iran, or Bill Clinton’s.  We need not mention that Democratic presidents have had their visions for progress in the Middle East destroyed by Islamists just as much as Republican ones have.  Kamiya just won’t talk about that – he just is interest in the failure of Republicans.

Kamiya than attacks the Iraq war, familiar ground for him indeed:

And, of course, the entire Iraq war greatly empowered Iran by removing its greatest enemy, Saddam Hussein, and shifting power to Iran’s coreligionist Shiites.

He ignores the fact that the war also created a functioning (for better or worse) Muslim democracy next door, something the Tehraniacs have fought tooth and nail since the neocons first started working towards bringing it about. We didn’t remove Hussein and leave a vacuum; we did it and left a form of government that threatens Tehran to its core. How many of the demonstrates on the Iranian streets are there because they saw fair elections happen next door, and they want them now, too? Most of them!

At this point, Kamiya must have stopped writing and fired up a big, fat doobie because what follows appears to be some kind of drug-induced hallucination:

One of the things the neocons would like the rest of us to forget is that they were the most ardent proponents of invading the very country whose people they now piously claim to support. Back in the heady “Mission Accomplished” days, the neocon slogan was “Wimps go to Baghdad — real men go to Tehran.” Leaving aside the fact that the neocons were a bunch of paper-pushing pundits ensconced in comfy right-wing think tanks who never “went” anywhere that didn’t have room service, the point is that they have been burning to attack Iran for years — an attack that would inevitably result in the slaughter of tens or hundreds of thousands of Iranians. Yes, some of them claimed that invading Iran would be a cakewalk, that the long-suffering Iranian people would welcome Americans as liberators, and so on. (Some of them even managed to keep a straight face while saying this.) And if you believe them, there’s a bridge in Fallujah I’d like to sell you.

Have any of you ever heard any of us call for any sort of ground attack on Iran that would slaughter hundreds of thousands of Iranians? I sure haven’t, although I’ve heard plenty of calls for limited attacks on Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Have any of you heard that “Real men go to Tehran” slogan? I sure haven’t. Have any of you heard anyone idiotic to say attacking Iran would be a cakewalk? To the contrary, I’ve heard neocons explain that Iraq was selected as a target because a war with Iran would be exponentially more difficult. Look at all the straw dogs barking at the neocons!

As if you haven’t guessed by now, the next target of Kamiya’s angst is Israel:

Beneath their talk of spreading freedom and democracy, the neocons have always hated and feared Iran. There are several reasons for this, including the state of enmity between Iran and America spurred by the Khomeini revolution and the 1979 hostage crisis, but the main one is that Iran is Israel’s most dangerous enemy. Removing Iran as a threat to Israel is the main strategic goal of the neoconservatives, and that goal is far more important to them than “liberating” the Iranian people.

That’s it. Really. There’s no mention of holocaust denial or pledges to wipe Israel off the map. There’s no mention that Israel is a democracy. And there is certainly no mention of the regional destabilization a nuclear Iran would present, or the threat to America posed by Iran providing terrorists with nuclear weapons or materials for dirty bombs. It’s just that we have this curious strategic goal to protect Israel.

The most tragic and pathetic statement by Kamiya follows.

For the truth is that the neocons’ supposed “idealism” was and is in fact a fig leaf covering utter, cavalier indifference to the massive death and destruction their reckless — but so “principled” — policies caused.

He apparently has avoided any contact with information about what happened in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos after his side won and we ended all that neocon silliness about domino theories in Southeast Asia. Millions died, were tortured or forced into state-sanctioned slavery, and that’s all just hunky dory with Kamiya – just don’t ask him to consider how hundreds of thousands were executed by Hussein, but that doesn’t happen any more … well, it happens in Iran, but not Iraq.

And what of Obama’s position in all this?  Why, it’s just brilliant, of course!

The situation in Iran is a tricky moving target, but so far, Obama has played it exactly right on. He has expressed deep concern about the election and the regime’s violent response to peaceful demonstrators, but added that “it is not productive, given the history of US-Iranian relations to be seen as meddling — the U.S. president, meddling in Iranian elections.”

Since when is calling for fair elections “meddling?”  Since when is sympathizing with freedom-loving people “meddling.”  I know meddling when I see it:  Owning 60 percent of GM or canning its CEO; that’s meddling. But Kamiya is convinced in a meddle-free foreign policy:

It should be amply clear by now that America’s ability to influence events in the Middle East is severely limited. Indeed, as the Bush years showed, U.S. actions in the region tend to result in the exact opposite of their intended consequences.

He then turns around and says:

The success of the March 14 Alliance in Lebanon, a major victory for the U.S., is widely attributed to the “Obama effect.”

Which is it? Is he saying the Cairo speech led to the riots in Iran as the exact opposite of its intended consequences?  Or is he saying that Obama should speak very strongly in favor of democracy in Iran because there’s an “Obama effect” that can really make things happen?  I am so confused.  But that’s something that happens frequently when I consider the ridiculous things said by Liberals.

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nlike some folks I know of the other political persuasion, I revel in reading the other side’s point of view, so this morning I read Why I Plan to Emulate Dr. George Tiller by med student Rozalyn Farmer Love on AlterNet.  I really don’t want to put the story into nomination for the Most Ridiculous Story of 2009 because Love has, on the surface at least, tried so earnestly to bridge an all but unbridgeable gap.

That’s worth kudos and shouldn’t lead to catcalls of “Ridiculous!”  Had the author been honest in her examples, I might have been citing this article as a must read instead of including it in this year’s running.

Let’s get the formalities taken care of:  To be considered, a piece must be written by a serious writer about a serious subject in all seriousness, yet go far beyond the sublime, settling heavily into the imbecilic.  By those criteria, I suppose that Love will be an also-ran come December 31 (especially given the stories in the hopper thus far by a couple Rulers of the Ridiculous, Gary Kamiya and Glenn Greenwald), but let’s see how this stacks up.

The author starts by seeking affinity, which may seem odd given that the piece is on the decidedly left-wing AlterNet, but don’t give her demerits for that; it was originally published in the Atlanta daily.  Here’s her pitch:

I’m a third-year medical student at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. I plan to become an obstetrician-gynecologist. I dream of delivering healthy babies, working with families and supporting midwifery. But as part of my practice, I also envision providing abortions to women who need them.

The road I took to get here isn’t your stereotypical one. My parents are conservative Christians who believe abortion is wrong. Growing up, I naturally shared their view. But I’ve also wanted to be a doctor since I was 4 years old, and in high school, I began to feel drawn to issues of women’s health. In college, I designed my own major to broaden my understanding of women’s health by including psychology, sociology and women’s studies.

OK, so she’s from a conservative, church-going background, she’s focused and driven, and she’s gone out of her way to pursue her life-long dream.  Kudos, we can all relate.  But why, then, does she start the column with this intro:

If I’d passed her on the street, I probably wouldn’t have known her. Her gait is a bit stiff and her left eye somehow different from her right. She’s not famous, exactly, but some people might know her name: Emily Lyons. She’s the nurse who survived the 1998 bombing of an abortion clinic in Birmingham at the hands of Eric Rudolph.

It’s a bit curious to me that someone who works in an abortion clinic should get heroic status, but Love tells us:

Watching her walk slowly into our fund-raiser on her husband’s arm — a woman who’d endured more than 18 operations — I thought of all she’d been through and knew that I’d come to the right decision in my support of reproductive rights.

Everyone in their right mind has to feel sorry for the tragedy that was interjected into Emily Lyons’ life.  It should never have happened.  Of course, had she chosen a more morally acceptable field of medicine to practice in, she would have lived a different life.  Providing abortions is hardly a high-risk occupation, with a mortality rate of, what, one a decade or so?  But Lyons’ career choice ended up costing her a lot, because of the evil and irrational reaction it created in Eric Rudolph’s mind.

Next we learn of another moment of inspiration to Love, related in her usual inclusive, mellowing style:

I agree that ending an unwanted pregnancy is a tragedy. When I advocate for reproductive rights, for choice, I don’t claim that abortion is morally acceptable. I think that it’s a very private, intensely personal decision. But I was stunned when one of my professors, a pathologist and a Planned Parenthood supporter, told me that decades ago, entire wings of the university’s hospital were filled with women dying from infections caused by botched abortions.

Really?  Entire wings?!  Let’s assume conservatively that it was just two wings of the university’s hospital and they had, oh, 20 beds in each wing. That means 40 beds filled with women dying from infections from botched abortions at any one time.  Let’s assume, again conservatively, that it took them two weeks to die.  That means we would have been cycling through 40 deaths 26 times a year, or 1,040 botched abortion deaths per year in one hospital.

According to wiki.answers.com, there were 7,569 hospitals in America in 2005, so let’s say, conservatively again, there were 5,000 “decades ago.”  If all these women were in fact dying in all these hospital wings as Love has so gullibly believed from such a credible source as a Planned Parenthood leader, why, we would have been racking up 5.2 million botched abortion deaths a year in this country!

Why didn’t Planned Parenthood do a better job of letting us know this back then?

Any deaths from a botched abortion is horrible, and it presents a morally credible argument for abortion, whether you accept it or not.  Judging the relative value of one human being over another is at its heart a moral issue, and the case can be made that the value of protecting grown women from painful deaths justifies the taking of a pre-born life.  But it is immoral to present your moral arguments with wildly skewed, incorrect evidence.

Another driver for Love was this:

At the same time [she was studying women's health issues], I found myself shocked at how little many of my friends — women who were studying biology and planning to become doctors — knew about their own sexual health. They didn’t know about or couldn’t get the reproductive health care they needed because of barriers put up by their culture, their religion and their parents. (emphasis added)

This is a third-year med student, so we are talking here about women who are currently in their 20s and 30s.  Why are federal, state and local governments giving millions of dollars a year to Planned Parenthood and various sex education/health clinic programs if smart women who are in pre-med can’t get the care they need?  Didn’t the SCOTUS rule that anti-abortion demonstrators can’t block clinics?  Do you need your pastor’s permission to get an abortion?

What did these women need, anyway? Late term abortions on the pew of a church?  I can’t imagine what they couldn’t get.  Honestly, you’d think Love was talking about tribal women in north Africa, not American women in the late 20th and early 21st century.

So Love, who tells us she still goes to church and is considered “a good person” by her old Christian friends, has gradually abandoned the morality of her youth, and accepted the morality of the abortionists.  But late-term abortion?  Letting a baby drop into the birth canal and sticking a gizmo into its brain and scrambling it? Cutting it apart to get it out?  Well, that took her a while:

As I continue my education, my views on abortion are still evolving. Take late-term abortions. When I first heard about them, I was horrified.

It wasn’t until I spent time in ultrasound rooms in graduate school that I began to see late-trimester abortions in a very different light. In one case, the patient’s baby had just been diagnosed with a lethal congenital anomaly. The high likelihood was that it wouldn’t survive after birth for more than a few minutes. As long as the baby remained in her mother’s womb, however, she would live. I asked the physician what this woman’s options were. The answer was, not many. She could choose to continue the pregnancy, but then she might be waiting for almost 20 more weeks to give birth to a baby that would never take more than a few breaths on its own. She was past the point where she could legally terminate the pregnancy in Alabama. If she could get an appointment in Atlanta within the next week, she might be able to have the procedure there. Beyond that, there were only a few physicians in the nation who would perform an abortion in such a case.

I could hardly wrap my mind around the agony that this woman and her husband must have been facing. They needed a caring physician to help them through this dark moment, and if they chose not to continue the pregnancy, they also needed a physician who was both skilled enough and brave enough to provide them with the care they needed. They needed Dr. Tiller.

Again, Love cites a morally defensible position, whether you agree with it or not.  Is a two-breath life a life worth living?  But how many partial birth abortions are like the tragedy she presented as her motivator?  Such stats are all over the board, as you can imagine, so let’s go to the abortionists’ mouth and see what they have to say:

Kansas requires physicians to report reasons for performing PBAs. Of the 240 PBAs [Partial Birth Abortions] reported in Kansas in 1998 and 1999, there were none where the mother’s life was at risk; in every case the attending physician certified “that continuing the pregnancy will constitute a substantial and irreversible impairment of the patient’s mental function” [i.e., she didn't want a baby] and that there was not a substantial physical risk to the mother from the pregnancy.[29] No PBAs have been reported since 1999 in Kansas, but other abortions performed at 22 weeks gestation or later must similarly be reported. For these as well, few if any are cited as involving risk to the mother’s life; typically, risk to the mother of “substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function” is cited.[29]

Physicians who perform large numbers of PBAs have stated that many are performed for elective reasons. In an interview with American Medical News, M. Haskell stated that about 80% of the PBAs he performed were purely elective, with the remainder performed for genetic reasons.[30] In testimony to Congress, J. McMahon reported that for about 2,000-2,100 PBAs he had performed, 1,183 (56%) were for fetal “flaws” or “indicators”, 175 (9%) were for maternal “indicators” [see next paragraph], and the remainder (about 700, or 35%) were elective.[31] McMahon further indicated that elective abortions comprised 20% of those he performed after 21 weeks gestation, and none of those he performed after 26 weeks.[32]

McMahon’s 1995 testimony to the House Judiciary Committee gave more detailed statistics, which have been analyzed by physicians P. Smith and K. Dowling. Among maternal indicators, the single most frequent was maternal depression (39, or 1.9% of total), with 28 attributed to maternal health conditions “consistent with the birth of a normal child (e.g. sickle cell trait, prolapsed uterus, small pelvis)” (1.3% of total) and the remainder (5% of total) for other maternal factors ranging from maternal health risk to “spousal drug exposure” and “substance abuse”. Those performed for fetal indicators included some for lesser conditions such as 9 (0.4% of total) for cleft lip-palate, 24 (1.1% of total) for cystic hydroma, and other for conditions either surgically correctable or involving lesser degrees of neurologic/mental impairment.[32, 33] (emphasis added, Johnston Archive)

Love picked the easy way out, the minority case she could justify. What will she do when a woman comes into her clinic and says, “I know I’m in my last weeks, but my junkie boyfriend just left me for a stripper and I’d rather not deal with a kid, at least until I’m off parole.  Could you just kill the little f***er for me?” Where’s the nobility of purpose in that? What is the moral justification?

For all her considerable efforts to connect with us so we understand her position, Love leaves us with an argument about as compelling as a Planned Parenthood position paper arguing against letting pregnant women see sonograms.  She has picked her cases very carefully, presented them unrealistically, and created a perfect world for justifying abortions.

Give her credit for bravery and points for trying, but to use a fantasy world to argue a real-world position is just ridiculous.

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stonishingly, Gary Kayima of Salon is new to C-SM’s “Most Ridiculous Story of the Year” competition.  He’s certainly been skewered by me previously, particularly for his Palin as dominitrix piece, which I wrote about here.  Well, welcome to the club, Gary.

His Salon column today starts with a defiant headline: Torture works sometimes, but it’s always wrong. Here’s the lead:

We know and have known for years that since 9/11 we have been a nation of torturers. We have also known, in large part, what those tortures consisted of — waterboarding, slapping, sleep deprivation, the withholding of pain medication. With the Obama administration’s release of the four “torture memos,” we have learned about other disgusting practices, such as slamming prisoners into walls and locking them in boxes with insects, and gained further insight into the nauseating legal arguments used by Bush administration lawyers to justify the unjustifiable.

As you can see, the ridiculousness of this story is ingrained deeply from the outset:  Kamiya’s unthinking acceptance of a new definition of torture tortures all the careful liberal thinking that he applies to  his topic from this paragraph onward.  Let me restate it:  We know and have known for years that with 9/11 the left redefined torture to suit their purposes, not the true meaning of the word, in order to punish Bush, even if it would cost us lives.

We used to know what torture meant.  We were all clear on this simple matter: ripping out fingernails, breaking bones, applying electrical charges to sensitive parts of the body, burning with acid, raping or killing family members in front of the victim.  More historically, the rack, drawing and quartering, the Iron Maiden.  In other words, stuff that kills, that leaves marks, that changes lives.

The people who carried out these practices did so without much concern for due process, so many of their victims had no business being tortured, whether you believe in the process or are appalled by it.  It just came with the territory. “Oops, sorry. We meant to go to your neighbor’s house. Here are your fingers back. Good luck.”

Nothing is so clearly drawn with Kamiya, so he accepts not only waterboarding (aka college hazing in some schools), slapping, sleep deprivation and the withholding of pain medication as torture, and then adds to the definition of the word “disgusting practices, such as slamming prisoners into walls and locking them in boxes with insects.”  Nevermind that the walls were flexible and the prisoners wore neck braces.  Nevermind that the insects were not poisonous. Kamiya’s got anti-American outrage to fuel, and now he’s set it up by redefining torture to include behaviors like setting the alarm clock for too early.

Once he’s created this skewered and false playing field, he’s ready for his logic games – and this is where it gets really ridiculous.  He impresses us by comparing humanist Kantians who would curry to no torture (except, perhaps, those listed by Kamiya, which they probably wouldn’t consider torture) and utilitarian Benthamites, who when confronted with the ticking clock torture – get the information now, or 100 innocent children die – will pick the lesser of two evils and torture the whacko.

Kamiya isn’t buying the Behamites’ line. First, he rejects the ticking clock scenario as something “endlessly depicted in Fox’s TV show ’24,’” but presumably not in real life. Dick Cheney, in his interview with Sean Hannity, used Iyman Faris’ plot to cut the cables of the Brooklyn Bridge as a real-life example of such a scenario, saying waterboarding helped to reveal Iyman’s locale, which led to increased guarding of the bridge, which led to Iyman calling off the whole deal because “the weather is too hot” – too many cops.

It wasn’t exactly the ticking clock, but it was the stopping of a plot before it could be carried out.  Iyman reportedly had torches for cutting cable when he was arrested.  But don’t bother Kamiya with all that.

But in the real world, the “ticking bomb” situation never arises. It is never the case that we know we can automatically avert mass slaughter by torturing someone. Reality is not that neat. Guilt and knowledge are not established in advance. Those whom we torture may or may not be planning nefarious deeds.

Under those guidelines, the perpetrator would have to be arrested, arraigned, tried and convicted before we could know with certainty that he had information that might merit torture to obtain.  Am I missing something here or is that just plain … ridiculous?

Kamiya plows on:

But let us, for the sake of argument, assume that [former Bush intelligence head Michael] Hayden and [former Attorney General Michael] Mukasey are correct, and that torturing Zubaydah led him to give information that resulted in the arrest of KSM and other terrorists. That still would not constitute a “ticking bomb” situation. No one can say whether those captured would have carried out other terrorist attacks. There are too many unknown factors.

Again, before we could pull out teeth or put bamboo under fingernails play loud music or pour water into their mouths, we would have to know their guilt with the certainty of … um … the certainty of … oh yeah! … the certainty we would have if we arrested the terrorist scum leaving the scene of the blown up school and the 100 dead innocent children, with the detonator firmly gripped in his hand.  Kamiya has succeeded in a masterful display of liberalism here:  It is better to kill innocents than to take a chance at wrongly causing temporary discomfort to an enemy of America.

He goes on to declare that a nation that puts insects in with terrorists who behead people and take down skyscrapers “forfeits any claim to a moral high ground. It becomes no better than those it is fighting.”  And he believes it.  He’s read the memos, he understands the methods.  He lived through 9/11. He knows the fate of Daniel Pearl and other unfortunates who fell into the hands of al-Qaeda. 

Yet still, he’s comfortable with his definition of torture and can see no moral difference between our carefully designed, rarely applied and thoroughly supervised non-invasive techniques and the mental wet dreams of KSM and bin Laden.

Worse, he’s willing to let you die for his beliefs.

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t seems like only yesterday I was picking the most ridiculous story of 2008, and already there’s a nominee for the 2009 award, which won’t be awarded for another 364 days. The piece certainly meets all the rigorous entry requirements: It is written by a serious sock puppet writer about a serious subject in all seriousness, yet it goes far, far beyond the sublime and settles heavily into the imbecilic.

In Another Brutal Year for Liberty, Salon columnist Glenn Greenwald finds 2008 to have been a year “befitting an administration that has spent eight years obliterating America’s core political values.”  My Inside-the-Beltway mother pulled this on me a while back saying it would take years for America to recover from the  damage to its freedoms caused by Bush.  I asked her to describe one freedom she had lost; there was no answer – so maybe the reason why it’ll take so long to recover the freedoms is that we’ll have to figure out which ones we lost first … and that could take a while.

What makes the Greenwald piece particularly fun, if no less ridiculous, is that it give us the opportunity to watch a premier Bush-hater agonize over his beloved Dems siding with Bush:

Unlike the early years of the administration, when liberty-abridging policies were conceived of in secret and unilaterally implemented by the executive branch, many of the erosions of 2008 were the dirty work of the U.S. Congress, fueled by the passive fear or active complicity of the Democratic Party that controlled it.

The Patriot Act, which Greenwald hates, was of course passed by Congress with Dem support, not by the executive branch, but who cares about mere trivialities when you’re fired up for a rant? And speaking of a rant, I really can’t go any further without ranting a bit about this illustration, which was selected to accompany the piece.  My rant: Couldn’t they have worked a little harder to incorporate a swastika into it?

Greenwald focuses his angst first on FISA and telecom company immunity from prosecution for assisting in the war on terror – something he condemns wholly but most  people see as a necessary tactic in the war on terror that has virtually no impact on US citizens:

The most intensely fought civil liberties battle of 2008 — the one waged over FISA and telecom immunity — ended the way most similar battles of the last eight years have: with total defeat for civil libertarians. Even before Democrats were handed control of Congress at the beginning of 2007, the Bush administration had been demanding legislation to legalize its illegal warrantless NSA eavesdropping program and to retroactively immunize the telecom industry for its participation in those programs. Yet even with Bill Frist and Denny Hastert in control of the Congress, the administration couldn’t get its way.

Not even the most cynical political observer would have believed that it was the ascension of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi that would be the necessary catalyst for satisfying Bush’s most audacious demands, concerning his most brazenly illegal actions. If anything, hopes were high that Democratic control of Congress would entail a legislative halt to warrantless eavesdropping or, at the very least, some meaningful investigation and disclosure — what we once charmingly called “oversight” — regarding what Bush’s domestic spying had really entailed. After all, the NSA program was the purified embodiment of the most radical attributes of a radical regime — pure lawlessness, absolute secrecy, a Stasi-like fixation on domestic surveillance. It was widely assumed, even among embittered cynics, that the new Democratic leadership in Congress would not use their newfound control to protect and endorse these abuses.

Let’s focus a moment on “his most brazenly illegal actions,” shall we?  I thought that was the war in Iraq – or possibly arranging for the airliners to be flown into the WTC so Halliburton could raise its dividend – and I’m shocked to learn that Greenwald gives his “most brazenly illegal” title to the mere NSA program.  Seems like a waste of any “most” designation, doesn’t it?  It’s not exactly like the NSA electronic surveillance program led to concentration camps or the appointment of Sarah Palin as president for life.

As for “oversight,” the Congressional leadership – including Pelosi and Reid – did have oversight of the program, were fully briefed and saw its value in accomplishing their primary duty of protecting America.  That Greenwald is still whipping this horse is ridiculous, but whip it he does:

Yet in July 2008, there stood Pelosi and Reid, leading their caucuses as they stamped their imprimatur of approval on Bush’s spying programs. The so-called FISA Amendments Act of 2008 passed with virtually unanimous GOP and substantial Democratic support, including the entire top level of the House Democratic leadership. It legalized vast new categories of warrantless eavesdropping and endowed telecoms with full immunity for prior surveillance lawbreaking. Most important, it ensured a permanent and harmless end to what appeared to be the devastating scandal that exploded in 2005 when the New York Times revealed to the country that the Bush administration was spying on Americans illegally, without warrants of any kind.

Nowhere in the column does Greenwald detail a single civil liberty that was even lightly tweaked by the NSA program or its 2008 extension; it must just be accepted on its face that the law is bad because (1) it’s from the Bush administration and (2) it targets poor, suffering terrorists.  He does take time, however, to point out that Obama violated his pledge (the shock of it!) to filibuster any bill containing immunity for the telcomms.  How cute that he still holds out hope that Obama is not just another politician.

Greenwald next addresses America’s “torture crisis,” and no, he’s not concerned that liberal lunacy is critically curtailing our ability to exact useful information from people who want to destroy our nation.  No, he’s talking about the effort in February to amend the Defense Authorization Act to require all government agencies, including the CIA, to comply with the interrogation techniques outlined in the Army Field Manual.

“The most immediate effect of such a law would have been to impose an absolute ban on the use of waterboarding, along with any other coercive tactics – torture techniques – which the Manual does not explicitly authorize,” Greenwalt wrote.  But Congress – a Dem Congress – failed to override Bush’s veto of the amendment.

The path taken was slightly different, but the outcome was the same: total failure in reining in Bush’s abuses. Indeed, by the end of 2008, civil libertarians could point to many defeats suffered in the Democratic-controlled Congress, but not a single victory.

Greenwald then gets around to habeas corpus restrictions on detained terrorists, which he calls “one of the worst constitutional assaults of the Bush era.”  He doesn’t mention that it was also, then, one of the worst constitutional assaults of the Lincoln era and that America got along just fine, correcting itself after the restrictions did what they needed to do during the Civil War.  Never mind history; Greenwald’s got a rant to deliver here.

He of course loved the Boumediene case, which was detainees getting  habeas corpus, and was just happy as a clam to see terrorists freed from Gitmo and returned to Bosnia and other fronts in the Islamist war against civilization.  Any setback in the war against jihad is a victory for human rights in Greenwald’s twisted perception – even if the released terrorists were to subsequently tweak a human right or two themselves – say by blowing up a school filled with children.

Fortunately for us, unfortunately for leftist goons, Greenwald’s joy over Boumediene was short-lived:

One of the most potentially damaging judicial developments of the year was a horrendous ruling issued in July by the conservative Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in the case of Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri. The al-Marri court actually upheld the president’s claimed authority to detain legal residents and even U.S. citizens in a military prison as “enemy combatants,” rather than charge them in a civilian court with a crime.

Al-Marri is up for SCOTUS review so Greenwald is clinging to hope that terrorist combatants will be able to have the same rights that Bushitler wants to take away from all of us.

Perhaps the most ridiculous thing of all about Greenwald’s column is that after bashing on the Dems and The Mighty Obama himself he still holds out hope that Obama is not just another politician:

The one silver lining is that the last 12 months have been brightly clarifying: It is clearer than ever what the Obama administration can and must do in order to arrest and reverse the decade-long war on the Constitution waged by our own government.

Has it ever occurred to you, as it has to me, that if something as powerful and sinister as the Bush/Cheney/Rove cabal cannot succeed in turning America into a concentration camp in eight long years, even with al-Qaeda giving them all sorts of extra boost, then either (1) America must have a pretty darn good system in place, or (2) they really weren’t trying very hard.

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he stories I’ve nominated for the dubious honor of receiving C-SM’s “Most Ridiculous Story of 2008″ fall into three camps:

Two are about women’s rights.  Gloria Steinem wails that America remains a backward, sexist hell-hole in Women Are Never Front-Runners.  Steinem’s piece, the only anti-Obama piece among the entries, seeths with anger that Hillary Clinton was not just handed the nomination.  Anne Glusker’s She’s A Kennedy, But She’s A Lot Like Us seeths with a similar anger – that a typical stay-at-home mom (that’s Caroline Kennedy) should be asked to have a resume that obviously qualifies her for a job.

Two are Obama worship pieces written during the primaries.  Michael Chabon’s Obama Vs. The Phobocracy posits that America runs on fear (hence, phobocracy), and that any opposition to Obama – any opposition at all – merely constitutes giving into fear and denying hope.  It’s hope-a-dope to the max.  Mark Morford’s Is Obama An Enlightened Being? is New Age wacky-a-dope to the max.  In it, Morford denegrates all religious feelings except those attuned to Obama and posits that The One is a Lightworker, a rare spiritual being who helps the human race to evolve.

And three are paranoid screeds against the Bush admin.  Libby Spencer’s When – Not If – Martial Law Is Declared seizes on an obscure FBI program and huffs and puffs until that program will bring about the imminent fall of freedom in America – and remarkably, she manages to utterly discount the threat of terrorism in the process.  Last year’s winner, Naomi Wolf, is back with another paranoid rant, The Battle Plan II: Sarah “Evita” Palin, The Muse Of The Coming Police State, in which she sees the Cheney/Rove cabal setting up Sarah Palin as the “Frankenbarbie” who will oversee the end of the American democracy.  Finally, Paul Abrams’ Why Rove Attacks Eric Holder: To Provide Cover for Bush’s Pardons supposes that the Bush Admin, fearful of mass arrests and convictions of everyone from Bush on down, is setting up Marc Rich pardoner Eric Holder as the fall guy in a scheme of mass pardons.

These are, by and large, not off-Broadway screeds; only Spencer’s martial law piece appeared in an outlet that could be called obscure (Newshoggers); the rest were published in mainstream outlets:  the NYT (Steinem), WaPo (Chabon and Glusker), the SF Wrongicle (Morford) and Huffpo (Wolf and Abrams).

You can get read more detailed summaries of the entries here.

Now, onto the winners.  Gloria Steinem was at least partially right: Pieces on women’s rights don’t come in first.  As ridiculous as her column and Glusker’s were, they simply weren’t important enough to win the award.  Steinem’s raison d’etre, like Jesse Jackson’s and Al Sharpton’s, is predicated on an America that doesn’t change and continues to victimize its minorities.  That’s ridiculous, but not ridiculous enough.  Glusker actually makes some great points, but in selecting Kennedy as her standard-bearer, she made a ridiculous choice … but not ridiculous enough.

I know a lot of folks were pushing for Morford’s piece to win, but I’m also discounting both of the Obama-worshipping pieces.  As ridiculous as they are, Morford and Chabon accurately portrayed the motivations of the large part of the electorate that accepted Obama based on feelings and symbolism.  If Obama had lost, I’d be picking between the two, and Morford with his Lightworker blather would certainly have risen to the top, but Obama won, making thier pieces not so much ridiculous but pathetic and troubling.

That leaves the inmates at the paranoia asylum.  Spencer did a masterful job of exploding a tiny FBI program into the crushing defeat of American freedom, thereby doing the best job of showing the left’s utter disdain for America’s resiliency.  Abrams was masterful in turning Holder/Obama negatives into a bug-eyed terror show starring Karl Rove – the sort of extremely deft blame-shifting that only the most paranoid leftist can muster.

But Wolf’s piece was far and away the most ridiculous, earning Naomi a two-fer and the  honor of being the only recipient thus far of C-SM’s Most Ridiculous Story of the Year award.

First, any reader will be awed by the sheer length of the piece and stand in wonder that Wolf was able to sustain her high-pitched wail for so long. Then there is the crazed creativity and ugly woman-hating feminism of the piece.  A lot of radical women embarrassed themselves by denigrating all the accomplishments of Palin – mom, businesswoman, successful politician, corruption fighter, alliance-builder – in a rush to not just reject her but hate her with a viciousness once reserved for male chauvinist pigs, but only Wolf was able to trump this vile intolerance by making Palin a priestess of darkness – or maybe just a Barbie doll – in the Cheney/Rove kabal.

In the course of telling her tale, Wolf embraces news reports of police actions, the goings-on at Palin’s church, Bush code words in Palin’s speeches, and even the quality of her mail delivery service to create a piece that puts the finest work of the 9/11 Truthers Liars to shame.  And to top it all off, the masterminds of this scheme ended up failing miserably – they couldn’t even get their Evita elected! – which makes Wolf’s piece deliciously ridiculous.

So with humility and awe, the 2008 Most Ridiculous Story of the Year award goes to two-time winner, and full-time crazy, Naomi Wolf.  Please keep your comments short, Wolf, or the band will start playing over you.

The full text of my original post on Wolf’s post follows. Continue Reading »

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n New Year’s Eve morning, I’m planning to pick the most ridiculous story of 2008, selecting from among seven stories I earmarked during the year.  Your voice will be heard; review these synopses and let me know your pick.

The rules for the competition are simple: An entry must be presented by a serious writer in all seriousness, and it must go far, far beyond the sublime and settle heavily into the imbecilic.

January 8:  Women are never front-runners by Gloria Steinem

Every year is a great year for Steinem’s vintage whine, and this is one of her best vintages yet, written screeded after Obama won in Iowa:

Gender is probably the most restricting force in American life, whether the question is who must be in the kitchen or who could be in the White House. This country is way down the list of countries electing women and, according to one study, it polarizes gender roles more than the average democracy.

On and on she went, insulting every woman who’s done well for herself and refused to consider herself a victim.  Then she insulted herself:  Less than a day later, Hillary won the New Hampshire primary, proving Steinem’s entire piece … well, ridiculous.  Read my post here.

February 4: Obama vs. the Phobocracy by Michael Chabon

Chabon earned a Most Ridiculous nomination for writing in WaPo some nine months before the election that if you don’t agree the debate over who should be president is over — heck, even if you ask a single question about Barack Obama — you are against truth and mankind’s better nature, a gross purveyor of fear, and a dasher of hope.

Chabon dismisses every anti-Obama, pro-someone else position as a shutting out of hope, and therefore dismissable.  It turned out the American voters tended to agree with him, refusing to look for the real Obama, but his article is still ridiculous because of his position that America is a “phobocracy.”  He tells us that America’s sorry state isn’t “the fault of George W. Bush and his minions, the corporate-controlled media, the insurance industry, the oil industry, lobbyists, terrorists, illegal immigrants or Satan.”

No! It’s soylent green people! Specifically, us:

The point is that this mess is our fault. We let in the serpents and liars, we exchanged shining ideals for a handful of nails and some two-by-fours, and we did it by resorting to the simplest, deepest-seated and readiest method we possess as human beings for trying to make sense of the world: through our fear. America has become a phobocracy.

Yes indeedy. To paraphrase some other great champion of massive government, there is no reason to fear an Obama presidency except fear itself:  Read my post on Chabon’s ridiculous post here.

February 9:  When – not if – martial law is declared by Libby Spencer

Spencer must be chewing on her nails since she’s only got a couple weeks left for her prediction to become true.  (No she’s not; leftists never look back).  Here’s whay she wrote in Newshoggers in February:

I’ve taken a lot of criticism over the last year about my speculation that our government is preparing to declare martial law. Unfortunately, it looks like I’ll get the last laugh …

What’s she so freaked out over?  InfraGard.

“InfraGard?” you say? That’s a federal program that links business leaders in a town to an FBI agent in that town — a federal program that was created under the Clinton administration, a tid-bit that Libby seems to have missed.  After 9/11, the FBI expanded InfraGard’s charter from cyber- and business-related crime to broader assistance against homegrown terror.  And that flipped out Spencer.

Libby, of course, does not trust business, as evidenced by her conclusion to the constant left-wing question: Why isn’t everyone else as freaked out about this as I am?

Don’t count on seeing this reported in the mainstream media. I expect the major media conglomerates are also members.

Would that be the Jew-owned national media, Libby? The Bush-Rove-Israel axis of evil?

Drawing on ACLU sources – sure to be reliable, no? – Spencer reaches this conclusion:

This is how 9/11 changed everything. Our government created a “Surveillance-Industrial Complex.” Private contractors now have a license to kill Americans at will.

Oh.  That’s how 9/11 changed everything!  Ridiculous.  Read my post on Spencer’s post here.

June 10:  Is Obama an enlightened being? by Mark Morford

The cosmically blue eyes in Morford’s headshot for his Notes & Errata column in the S.F. Wrongicle are soft-focused to goofy spirituality perfection, just right for this ridiculously goofy contribution to this year’s Most Ridiculous competition.

It seems Morford has come across people – spiritual people,even! – who aren’t Ogaga over Obama.  How curious.  Fortunately, Morford has the answer:

I, of course, have an answer.  Sort of. Warning: If you are a rigid pragmatist/literalist, itchingly evangelical, a scowler, a doubter, a burned-out former ’60s radical with no hope left, or are otherwise unable or unwilling to parse alternative New Age speak, click away right now, because you ain’t gonna like this one little bit.

Ready? It goes likes this:Barack Obama isn’t really one of us.

Yeah, I know: Nothing ridiculous here. But wait, as they say on TV, there’s more:

Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve. They are philosophers and peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or emotion, but to the soul.

Conservative that I am, I’m not all that sure I want to evolve.  Call me ridiculous, but I’ll call Morford ridiculous … maybe even the most ridiculous. Read my post on Morford’s column here.

October 3:  The Battle Plan II: Sarah “Evita” Palin, The Muse Of The Coming Police State by Naomi Wolf.

Naomi Wolf has a leg up in this year’s competition since she won last year’s Most Ridiculous award with her column, Fascist America in 10 Easy Steps.  Like Libby Spencer above, Wolf is intent on America becoming a rightwing police state:

Please understand what you are looking at when you look at Sarah “Evita” Palin. You are looking at the designated muse of the coming American police state.

You have to understand how things work in a closing society in order to understand “Palin Power.” A gang or cabal seizes power, usually with an affable, weak figurehead at the fore. Then they will hold elections — but they will make sure that the election will be corrupted and that the next affable, weak figurehead is entirely in their control. Remember, Russia has Presidents; Russia holds elections. Dictators and gangs of thugs all over the world hold elections. It means nothing. When a cabal has seized power you can have elections and even presidents, but you don’t have freedom.

An affable, weak figurehead? You mean like Obama? No, she meant like Bush, and now Palin:

I realized early on with horror what I was seeing in Governor Palin: the continuation of the Rove-Cheney cabal, but this time without restraints. I heard her echo Bush 2000 soundbites (”the heart of America is on display”) and realized Bush’s speechwriters were writing her — not McCain’s — speeches.

Yeah, Naomi, sure – but we all know VPs have no real power, so why all the paranoia? Well, never underestimate the depth of paranoia suffered by leftists:

What’s the plan? It is this. McCain doesn’t matter. Reputable dermatologists are discussing the fact that in simply actuarial terms, John McCain has a virulent and life-threatening form of skin cancer. It is the elephant in the room, but we must discuss the health of the candidates: doctors put survival rates for someone his age at two to four years.

I believe the Rove-Cheney cabal is using Sarah Palin as a stalking horse, an Evita figure, to put a popular, populist face on the coming police state and be the talk show hostess for the end of elections as we know them. If McCain-Palin get in, this will be the last true American election. She will be working for Halliburton, KBR, Rove and Cheney into the foreseeable future — for a decade perhaps — a puppet “president” for the same people who have plundered our treasure, are now holding the US economy hostage and who murdered four thousand brave young men and women in a way of choice and lies.

Well all I can say is thank God Obama – who sicked DAs on anyone foolish enough to criticize him – won and we avoided all that. Ridiculous! Read my post on Wolf’s post here.

December 15:  Why Rove Attacks Eric Holder: To Provide Cover for Bush’s Pardons by Paul Abrams

Abrams, writing at HuffPo, tees off on a comment Cici Connolly, WaPo national politics writer, made in response to Chris Matthews’ “tell me something I don’t know” question on the largely unwatched Chris Matthews Show when she said,

“Word on the street is that Karl Rove is going to be helping lead the fight against Eric Holder when his nomination for Attorney General heads up to the Senate.”

Holder, of course, is responsible for giving the legal head-nod leading to Bill Clinton’s pardon of Marc Rich.  And Rove, of course, is responsible for all the evils in the world, according to current leftist ideology, so:

All Rove wants to do, and will succeed at doing, is to elevate public attention to his confirmation hearings where pliant Republicans will ask the same questions about Marc Rich over-and-over-and-over to shine the spotlight on Clinton’s egregious pardon.

Abrams doesn’t realize that Rove isn’t needed for this exercise.  The GOP can ask these questions all by themselves.  While Rove paranoia is ridiculous, it’s so commonplace that a raving exhibit of it hardly qualifies a column for Most Ridiculous stats – but this sure does:

In addition the Republicans will try to pin Holder down on whether he will prosecute the major rogue actors in the Bush/Cheney regime, but he cannot take that bait.

“Major rogue actors in the Bush/Cheney regime?” Where do I start? Regime?  Rogue?  Sorry, it was a twice-elected administration, not some tin pan regime, and as far as I know there are no outstanding criminal charges against any administration members, now that Libby has been nailed for the high crime of forgetfulness.

I don’t get it, but then I’m too sane to come up with Abrams’ ultimate scenario:

Of course, Bush will pardon them anyhow. Or, as I originally predicted, on January 19th, Bush will pardon Cheney and resign, and let Cheney pardon the rest of them, including Bush himself.

I’m not sure what the pardon will be for. Flying the planes into the WTC?  Sneaking into the Library of Congress and shredding the Constitution? Acting on UN and Congressional resolutions against Iraq?  Going seven years without another attack on US soil?  Ridiculous!

Read my post on Abrams’ post here.

December 29: She’s a Kennedy, But She’s a Lot Like Us by Anne Glusker

Because I think it’s great for mom and kid alike for mom to stay home with the kids, I admire Glusker for championing these moms and urging employers to see the beauty in their unconventional resumes.  But Caroline Kennedy as just another stay at home mom looking to get back into the workplace?

Yes, Kennedy, who is worth $100 million, is in Glusker’s eyes just another mom who decided to stay home with the kids, and now wants to go back to work!  Really:

Amid all the recent buzz about Caroline Kennedy’s bid for a U.S. Senate seat, there has been a great deal of talk about her connections, her power, her wealth. But the way I see it, if you strip away the glamour, the name and the money, then Caroline is . . . me. And many of my friends. Maybe even you. If, that is, you happen to be a midlife woman raising kids and returning — or thinking of returning, or hoping one day to return — to the full-time workforce.

Yes, I’ve heard the buzz about connections, but I call it dynasty-making.  Glusker sees it differently; to her it’s just the potential vs. performance split:

It works this way, according to Kathie Lingle of the Alliance for Work-Life Progress: “The guys in charge say, ‘Oh, John can do it, we know he can.’ They’re assessing his potential.” Whereas, when looking at a female job candidate, they’re likely to say: ” ‘Oh, Sue can’t do it; she’s never done it before.’ ” They’re basing their evaluation on her past performance.

Yep, that’s what’s holding Kennedy back from open-armed acceptance of Her Senatorship: the potential vs. performance split, entirely a guy/gal prejudice thing.  Of course the flaw in all of Glusker’s supposition is that Kennedy’s asking for a free ride to the U.S. Senate, where she’ll have committee assignments that matter to the nation and the world, and will be expected to represent her state during one of the most troubling times in U.S. history.  Glusker attempts to deal with this little matter:

Even though the job Kennedy is trying to nab is a far cry from the account executive or publicist positions that my friends might go after, the phenomenon at work is the same. The reaction seems to be: If she hasn’t followed a straight-and-narrow, logical path, we simply can’t imagine her in the role under discussion.

What’s ridiculous is that Glusker ridicules us for not accepting Kennedy as just another housewife wanting to return to work.  Read my post on Glusker’s column here.

Let me know your thoughts. I’ll be posting the winner tomorrow.

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oming in just a few days under the wire in C-SM’s Most Ridiculous Story of the Year competition is a story on a subject that I’m sympathetic to – the difficulty women who’ve stayed home with their children have coming back to work.  But it still clearly earns a spot on the “most ridiculous” list.

Kids most decidedly do better when mom stays home, and nearly as important, moms do better, too. I saw Incredible Wife’s guilt and anxiety amp up considerably when she worked – first, because we needed her income, then so she could make her Voice of the Victims films – then wind back down when she once again was “there for the girls.”

So why is Anne Glusker’s “Personal Business” column on the subject in Sunday’s WaPo so ridiculous? The title tells the story: She’s a Kennedy, But She’s a Lot Like Us.

Yes, Kennedy, who is worth $100 million, is just another mom who decided to stay home with the kids, and now wants to go back to work!  Really:

Amid all the recent buzz about Caroline Kennedy’s bid for a U.S. Senate seat, there has been a great deal of talk about her connections, her power, her wealth. But the way I see it, if you strip away the glamour, the name and the money, then Caroline is . . . me. And many of my friends. Maybe even you. If, that is, you happen to be a midlife woman raising kids and returning — or thinking of returning, or hoping one day to return — to the full-time workforce.

Yes, I’ve heard the buzz about connections, but I call it dynasty stuff.  And power, and wealth.  But what I’ve also heard that Glusker is afraid to put in her lead is Kennedy’s inexperience.  You strip away the glamour, the name and the money and you’ve got one inexperienced rich gal.  But that most definitely isn’t how Glusker sees it:

A great deal of the criticism around Kennedy’s interest in Hillary Rodham Clinton’s soon-to-be-vacated Senate seat sounds an alarm for women like me. We’ve been at home with the kids, sure, but we’ve also been busy with lots of other things. We’ve been working part-time, consulting, freelancing. Like Kennedy’s, our resumes don’t conform to the conventional, one-job-after-the-other sequence that recruiters expect. When I read a sniping post on Gawker.com that “Caroline has been a happy housewife since getting her law degree, published a few ghost-written books and sat on a few boards that used her celebrity to draw donations,” I thought, hmm, wait a minute. Couldn’t there be a more inventive way to look at her CV?’

Yep, that’s what we need for our incoming U.S. Senators:  A more inventive way to look at their CVs.  Lord knows, she needs it: She hands out the Profiles in Courage award, she worked part-time for the NYC Dept of Education, she’s been on a private school’s board, she’s currently vice-chair of an education foundation and a couple Kennedy-legacy positions.  It’ll take considerable creativity to turn that into a CV for one of the most exclusive and powerful political positions in the world.

Glusker has the creativity:  She calls Kennedy’s experience “diverse”‘ and her resume “unconventional.”  Too bad non of that unconventional and diverse experience has anything to do with the business of running a country via our complex political machinery.

It’s clear she’s using Kennedy as a symbol for her agenda:

Rather than a privileged aberration, I prefer to view Kennedy as a bellwether, a case study in how things could be if only the workplace were more accepting of an unconventional CV, one that may brim with great experience and skills and talent but is also peppered with gaps and one-off projects and volunteering.  …

When we talk about women going back into the workforce, it’s illuminating to consider the circumstances under which they left it in the first place. For many women, it was never truly a choice, never truly voluntary. As Pamela Stone, author of “Opting Out?: Why Women Really Quit Careers and Head Home,” points out, many are pushed out by jobs with long hours, rigid workweeks and inflexible demands. “These women haven’t opted out,” says Stone. “They’ve been shut out, by workplaces that don’t pair well with family life.”

Of course none of that applies to Kennedy; she’s a “privileged aberration” to Glusker’s model, and somehow I find it hard to accept that stay at home moms desirous of a return to the workplace will join Glusker in seeing Kennedy as the personification of their cause. But Glusker is undaunted:

… Kennedy … is running smack into what social psychologists call the potential vs. performance split. It works this way, according to Kathie Lingle of the Alliance for Work-Life Progress: “The guys in charge say, ‘Oh, John can do it, we know he can.’ They’re assessing his potential.” Whereas, when looking at a female job candidate, they’re likely to say: ” ‘Oh, Sue can’t do it; she’s never done it before.’ ” They’re basing their evaluation on her past performance.

Yep, that’s what’s holding Kennedy back from open-armed acceptance of Her Senatorship: the potential vs. performance split, entirely a guy/gal prejudice thing.  We just know that Gov. Patterson is going to judge her differently than he would judge, say, Andrew Cuomo.  Patterson would just look at Cuomo as a guy … not a former HUD secretary, not a current NY Atty Gen, but just a guy ‘cuz a guy can do it.  (And he’s ex-hubby to a Kennedy!)

Of course the flaw in all of Glusker’s supposition is that Kennedy isn’t angling for a job as a copywriter at an ad agency or a software exec in the Silicon Valley; she’s asking for a free ride to the U.S. Senate, where she’ll have committee assignments that matter to the nation and the world, and will be expected to represent her state during one of the most troubling times in U.S. history.  Glusker attempts to deal with this little matter:

Even though the job Kennedy is trying to nab is a far cry from the account executive or publicist positions that my friends might go after, the phenomenon at work is the same. The reaction seems to be: If she hasn’t followed a straight-and-narrow, logical path, we simply can’t imagine her in the role under discussion.

There’s nothing ridiculous in the statement; we simply can’t imagine Caroline Kennedy in the job given her anything but logical path towards it.  What’s ridiculous is that Glusker ridicules us for not accepting Kennedy as just another housewife wanting to return to work.

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n just a couple weeks, I’ll be picking the most ridiculous story of the year from among the entries I’ve come across in my readings over the previous 12 months.  Sneaking in at the last minute is Paul Abrams of HuffPo with a rank little piece called Why Rove Attacks Eric Holder: To Provide Cover for Bush’s Pardons.

Cici Connolly, WaPo national politics writer, started this ball rolling with her response to Chris Matthews’ “tell me something I don’t know” question on yesterday’s largely unwatched Chris Matthews Show when she said,

“Word on the street is that Karl Rove is going to be helping lead the fight against Eric Holder when his nomination for Attorney General heads up to the Senate.”

That little bit of unsubstantiated (and paranoid) rumor-mongering was met with gasps from the assembled bubble-heads, has since led to a minor pundit storm, and that storm washed Abrams’ flotsam up on the blogospheric beach this morning.

Abrams starts by buying Connolly’s supposition entirely, even though Rove’s only position from which to lead anything is a lead bogeyman to the Dem’s paranoia.  Let’s recap, shall we?  Rove resigned ages ago, and was a tad tainted, albeit by the extremely tainted Plame Game silliness.  His former boss, Pres. Bush, currently carries a political batting average in the double digits, if you’re charitable.  Every Republican on the Hill is busy running away from Bush, even if they don’t know where they’re running to quite yet.

And out of this, how exactly will Rove run anything?  He does remain an opinion leader of sorts and he has numerous bully pulpits, but the only thing that separates him from any of the other conservative pundits who are piling on Holder is the Darth Rove image the Dems have in their heads. That’s ridiculous, of course, but hardly ridiculous enough to get Abrams this prestigious nomination.

Abrams starts digging his hole by attempting to minimize the crimes of Marc Rich, who Holder famously vetted prior to Bill Clinton’s notorious pardon.

Regrettably, Holder was the official ultimately responsible for vetting President Clinton’s last-minute pardons. By his own admission, he did not pay sufficient attention to the details, and Bill Clinton, at the behest of Marc Rich’s attorney, Scooter Libby, pardoned Rich, a notorious defrauder who had escaped to Switzerland without going to trial or serving a day in prison. In the wake of the Madoff scandal, a fraud that made Marc Rich’s seem like petty larceny, Rove smells blood.

It’s true that Bernard Madoff will be one of the biggest scammers of all time, with a tally in the billions.  But there’s apples and oranges at work here.  Madoff’s billions are the direct take of a pyramid scheme targeting the ridiculously rich. Clinton pardoned Rich for something else entirely.  Among the more notorious of Rich’s crimes were buying oil from the Iranians despite the post-embassy takeover embargo, then marking it up 200%, then selling it to oil-starved Americans, so on that caper he broke the law in order to fleece all of us, as a nation.

Rich was pardoned for failure to pay taxes and doing business with Iran.  The fine his company paid the U.S. after Rich fled in 1983 was $200 million – inflate that and you’re probably at half a billion in fines, not total criminal take.  Rich’s crimes were hardly petty.

Now Abrams spins his web:

All Rove wants to do, and will succeed at doing, is to elevate public attention to his confirmation hearings where pliant Republicans will ask the same questions about Marc Rich over-and-over-and-over to shine the spotlight on Clinton’s egregious pardon.

If that’s all Rove wants to do, he can retire from the fight now.  Holder’s pardons are already in the public domain and will be the fodder of GOP questioning.  Whether it’s over-and-over-and-over or not depends on how much the GOP wants to follow the Dem model.  Proceeding:

In addition the Republicans will try to pin Holder down on whether he will prosecute the major rogue actors in the Bush/Cheney regime, but he cannot take that bait.

“Major rogue actors in the Bush/Cheney regime?” Where do I start? Regime?  Rogue?  Sorry, it was a twice-elected administration, not some tin pan regime, and as far as I know there are no outstanding criminal charges against any administration members, now that Libby has been nailed for the high crime of forgetfulness.  Abrams suggests Rove is due a pardon, but since Rove hasn’t even been charged with something, that’ll be an interesting pardon.

I don’t get it, but then I’m too sane to come up with Abrams’ ultimate scenario:

Of course, Bush will pardon them anyhow. Or, as I originally predicted, on January 19th, Bush will pardon Cheney and resign, and let Cheney pardon the rest of them, including Bush himself.

I’m not sure what the pardon will be for. Flying the planes into the WTC?  Letting aliens impregnate American women? Sneaking into the Library of Congress and shredding the Constitution? Acting on UN and Congressional resolutions against Iraq?  Going seven years without another attack on US soil?

Abrams’ solution to this mess is as ridiculous as the rest of his column:  Put off the Holder hearings until after the coronation inauguration.  As if that would stop the nefarious Rove and his villainous schemes!

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hat you are seeing in this photo is not a hate crime; we have it on the authority of the Los Angeles Times:

“I’m not defending this; I’m not criticizing it. It doesn’t rise to the level of hate crime,” said Steve Whitmore, spokesman for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department …. (LA Times, emphasis added)

The two misogynists in the predominantly gay city of West Hollywood made no apologies for their display when the story broke (although they’ve since taken it down following demonstrations outside their home. Whatever their motivation, it wasn’t fear of being charged with a hate crime because they had the LAPD on their side.

So if hanging Palin in effigy isn’t a hate crime, what do you think of this?

LEXINGTON, Ky. (AP) – University of Kentucky authorities were investigating Wednesday who hanged an effigy of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama from a tree on campus. …

Federal authorities have been notified, Todd said. He said the effigy violates the university’s code of ethics and won’t be tolerated. …

Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan declined to comment specifically on the situation, but said an effigy can suggest a threatening tone or be an attempt to intimidate. He said the agency is “very proactive about addressing these matters.”

The feds have been called in? The Secret Service is taking it seriously?

And one about this?

NEWBERG, Ore. (AP) – A Christian university in Oregon said Tuesday it has punished four students who confessed to hanging a likeness of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama from a tree on campus. …

The FBI is investigating whether any civil rights were violated.

“A criminal investigation is much more rigorous than an academic one, obviously,” said Beth Anne Steele, an FBI spokeswoman. She couldn’t say when the investigation would be complete.

An FBI civil rights investigation?

So why are these incidents raised to the level of requiring an investigation while the West Hollywood gay couple gets a pass?

A commenter on my first post on the West Hollywood obscenity half-heartedly offered an explanation: Women weren’t lynched for a century or more in the South, but blacks were. A valid point, but if it’s true, then it would also be a hate crime if instead of hanging the effigy they displayed Palin as a victim of domestic violence. And no reasonable person would ever think the authorities would get off their butts to investigate that as a hate crime or civil rights crime.

So I’m left with this: Hanging an effigy of a half-black man is a probable hate crime, but hanging an effigy of a white woman, especially if she’s a Republican, is not.

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aomi Wolf’s Fascist America in 10 Easy Steps won the inaugural year competition, becoming Cheat-Seeking Missiles most ridiculous story of 2007. Now she’s back with another horror fantasy on the Bush-Cheney-Rove Cabal, The Battle Plan II: Sarah “Evita” Palin, The Muse Of The Coming Police State.

Wolf lives in a perpetual nightmare. On Dennis Prager’s show yesterday, she was complaining about being on the TSA watch list. This from a woman who just penned a book called Give Me Liberty: A Handbook For American Revolutionaries. She wants to foment revolution, and she can’t understand why she’s on a watch list. With that introduction to her acuity, let’s take a look at why Wolf looks at Sarah Palin and sees Evita Peron.

Please understand what you are looking at when you look at Sarah “Evita” Palin. You are looking at the designated muse of the coming American police state.

You have to understand how things work in a closing society in order to understand “Palin Power.” A gang or cabal seizes power, usually with an affable, weak figurehead at the fore. Then they will hold elections — but they will make sure that the election will be corrupted and that the next affable, weak figurehead is entirely in their control. Remember, Russia has Presidents; Russia holds elections. Dictators and gangs of thugs all over the world hold elections. It means nothing. When a cabal has seized power you can have elections and even presidents, but you don’t have freedom.

There’s a small flaw in her thinking here: Soviet Russia didn’t exactly offer up a multi-party election, and if anyone had such an idea, the KGB would quell it quickly. And they were better at appearances than the rest of the world’s dictators and gangs of thugs. Our elections still mean something.

I realized early on with horror what I was seeing in Governor Palin: the continuation of the Rove-Cheney cabal, but this time without restraints. I heard her echo Bush 2000 soundbites (“the heart of America is on display”) and realized Bush’s speechwriters were writing her — not McCain’s — speeches. I heard her tell George Bush’s lies — not McCain’s — to the American people, linking 9/11 to Iraq. I heard her make fun of Barack Obama for wanting to prevent the torture of prisoners — this is Rove-Cheney’s enthusiastic S and M, not McCain’s, who, though he shamefully colluded in the 2006 Military Tribunals Act, is also a former prisoner of war and wrote an eloquent Newsweek piece in 2005 opposing torture. I saw that she was even styled by the same skillful stylist (neutral lipstick, matte makeup, dark colors) who turned Katharine Harris from a mall rat into a stateswoman and who styles all the women in the Bush orbit –but who does not bother to style Cindy McCain.

How many Clintonistas are on the Obama campaign? Never mind. The reference to supporting torture? I believe it’s this, from Palin’s convention speech:

“Al-Qaida terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America; he’s worried that someone won’t read them their rights.”

The left has been trying to redefine torture so it includes just about everything, and with this, they’ve done it. Not read your rights? TORTURE!! Continue Reading »

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