Weekend of Freedom…

Workout Notes Yesterday, I did a “speed hike” (sort of) at the Forest Park Nature Center’s outter loop; the trail was muddy in spots and it took me 1:04 to do (my hike times have ranged from just under 50 minutes; an all out racewalk; mid 50’s is typical for a good day, and my “snow hike” times have been about 1:15 or so).

This is the view from the top of the first climb on the Wakerobin trail.

The side of my leg twinged a bit and I had minor tingles; in all, it went much better than the last time.

Then this morning I went to my two yoga classes; afterwards I did 20 minutes of “running” on the treadmill (about 2.2 miles), .3 miles of walking, then another mile outside (walking). That gives me about 16-17 miles on foot for the week, which used to be one medium workout for me. But you have to start somewhere.

Afterward, I am going with my yoga teacher to an outing at a pub with other yoga teachers. It should be interesting.

Yoga wise, I am finding my posture is getting worse; I seem to want to stoop over. I need to keep stretching my psoas muscle and keep doing the camel pose.

Politics

Let the other side help us!
First, there is a nice article on why we shouldn’t ignore Ann Coulter (and others like her); instead, every time she is seen with a Republic Party candidate or politician, we ought to plaster their photos everywhere!

The intra-liberal squabbles over Ann Coulter are back. Coulter, speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on March 2, 2007 (after being given a warm introduction by GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney) said, “I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word ‘faggot.’” Her comment was greeted with laughter from the crowd.

When the blogosphere erupted in horror, high-minded liberal commentators argued that we’d all be smarter to ignore Coulter and her shenanigans than to dignify them with a response. This argument has played out before. At the 2006 CPAC, Coulter said, “I think our motto should be, post-9/11, ‘Raghead talks tough, raghead faces consequences.’” Liberal columnist Eric Alterman has announced that he wants people to ignore Coulter. This year, in response to Coulter’s remarks about Edwards, Alterman complained, “[T]his CPAC flap is really, really dumb. …Coulter [wants] her name in the media and she got it.” He advised liberals to “let Coulter rot in solitude.” Kirsten Powers, one of Fox News’ token liberal commentators, concurred on her blog: “I have long been an advocate of ignoring [Coulter], but nobody seems willing to take me up on that idea.” And Ana Marie Cox, writing on Time’s Swampland, said of Coulter, “I really only have one thought about her: That we should not think about her. …[S]he, like any bully, will go away if you ignore her.”

Of course they’re right that Coulter is a publicity hound–more performance artist than public intellectual. And engaging her extremist policy stances, like her assertion (in her syndicated column) that “the government should be spying on all Arabs, engaging in torture as a televised spectator sport, dropping daisy cutters wantonly throughout the Middle East and sending liberals to Guantánamo,” risks legitimizing them. But Alterman and others are wrong to pretend she doesn’t exist. In fact, liberals should count their lucky stars that they have her, and they should publicize her every outrage–because, far more than it legitimizes her wacky notions, it advances the liberal cause.

Bush was so wrong so often, he isn’t supported, even when he is right. One of my favorite columnists Fareed Zakaria writes about President Bush’s recent trip to South America and how little support he had for his ideas, even though some of them have merit:

President Bush has done the right thing in going to Latin America. He’s visiting the right countries, and he has sounded the right themes, emphasizing that the United States supports democratic government, open markets and “social justice” (a phrase I have never heard Bush use before, and which must be causing ulcers in some of his right-wing fans). But Bush’s new look at region will not do much good. It’s too little, too late.

Until Bush’s election in 2000, American foreign policy toward Latin America had been on the right track for two decades. Ronald Reagan orchestrated an extraordinary turnaround, supporting human rights, democracy and free trade in several countries. His administration played an important role in ending the dictatorships in Chile and Paraguay, among other places. He proposed new trade policies that would spur growth in the region. And perhaps most important, he began a tradition of support and cooperation for Mexican reform that became standard for later American administrations. His successors, the elder George Bush and Bill Clinton, extended these basic policies. They forged the North American Free Trade Agreement, supported Mexico’s reforms and democratization, and pushed for a free-trade agreement for the entire Western Hemisphere.

“Through four presidential terms the United States had developed a remarkably successful policy towards Latin America,” says Harvard University Latin American scholar Jorge Domínguez. “That forward movement was stopped and then reversed by Bush.” Bush came into office with few ideas about what he wanted to do in the region (except with Mexico, where he proposed an ambitious and intelligent immigration plan). Latin America was largely ignored, especially after September 11, though here as elsewhere the familiar story of incompetence and ideology characterized regional policy. [...]

Over the past year, Bush’s people and policies-now steered by Condoleezza Rice-have changed significantly. The senior official in charge of Latin America policy, Thomas Shannon, is a grown-up. The administration has avoided anything that might look like heavy-handed interference in countries. It has talked up American partnership and aid. Bush has made some effort to address the issues most important to governments in the
region-biofuels in Brazil, immigration in Mexico and trade everywhere.

The only problem is that now Bush is operating with almost no room to maneuver. He is deeply unpopular in Latin America. Chávez’s campaign against his trip might seem absurd, but it plays to widespread public sentiments across the region. And in the United States, Bush faces a country and a Congress deeply suspicious of him and his policies-even when they are the right ones. On trade, he has little political clout. And yet, without reducing American tariffs on ethanol, any notion of a partnership with Brazil on biofuels is simply rhetoric. Similarly, without comprehensive immigration reform, the relationship with Mexico remains uneasy.

The tragedy here is a familiar one. When Bush had enormous room to maneuver in 2001, when loaded with political capital in 2002 and 2003, he embarked on a series of ideological exercises that severely diminished American influence and prestige. Now, battered by failure, he has moved toward more-sensible policies-not just in Latin America, but in North Korea and even the Middle East. But the president is now walking alone, with few supporters at home or abroad, and little capital that he can draw on to execute any of his new approaches. In region after region, on issue after issue, that might well be the recurring theme of George W. Bush’s foreign policy in his final 22 months.

Ted Rall: U. S. Veterans getting the short end of the stick is nothing new.

NEW YORK–Americans were dismayed to learn that soldiers wounded in
Afghanistan and
Iraq–”fallen heroes,” as network news calls them–were being warehoused in Building 18, a rat- and roach-infested satellite of the Army’s Walter Reed Medical Center.

Disbelief turned to disgust with the disclosure that injured veterans are going bankrupt and losing their homes because the Veterans Administration (V.A.) holds up their benefit checks for years on end. Surely the men and women who fight for our country deserve better. How could such a wholesale betrayal be tolerated by a nation where “support our troops” magnets account for 20 percent-plus of total auto body surface area?

The surprise is that anyone is surprised. Every generation of warriors has marched off to war based on the pledge that they would be taken care of no matter what. America has broken that promise every time.

Abandoning men who lose their limbs and sanity in battle is a tradition that goes back to America’s first war.

More than 40 years passed before Revolutionary War vets got their pensions–by which time most had died. Of the few survivors, only those who could prove they were indigent actually collected. [...]

More than 300,000 soldiers were wounded in combat during World War I, but the Veterans Bureau, predecessor of the V.A., rejected all but 47,000 claims. “The Veterans Bureau,” a columnist wrote in 1925, “has probably made wrecks of more men since the war than the war itself took in dead and maimed.”

America’s first major military defeat led to mistreatment of those who had served in the Korean War by those who said they hadn’t fought hard enough. Among other indignities, P.O.W.’s were denied their back pay of $2.50 for each day of captivity.

Thousands of Vietnam vets were discarded like used tissues, reduced to homelessness and starvation after being denied adequate medical treatment and cash benefits. As recently as 2004, according to the Christian Science Monitor, “an estimated 500,000 veterans were homeless at some time during 2004 [but] the V.A. had the resources to tend to only 100,000 of them.”

It took a decade after the fall of Hanoi before Vietnam vets began turning up on the streets, but troops who served in Afghanistan and Iraq have already become homeless. “This kind of inner city, urban guerrilla warfare that these veterans are facing probably accelerates mental-health problems,” says Yogin Ricardo Singh, director of a veterans advocacy program in Brooklyn.

“You can have all of the yellow ribbons on cars that say ‘Support Our Troops’ that you want,” adds Linda Boone of the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans. “But it’s when they take off the uniform and transition back to civilian life that they need support the most.” As usual, they’re not getting it.

Two decades ago, as now, outrage generated by media reports forced Congressional blowhards and Army brass to promise to do better. But nothing changed. As it always does, the journalistic pack moved on to other stories. Politicians, slacking off as public pressure eased, went back to slashing the V.A. budget and brushing off veterans who complained of physical and mental disabilities brought on by their service. At this writing, the Bush Administration has asked Congress to slash veterans’ benefits by a net seven percent.

We caught Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and he has confessed!

Yes, we should have gone after this guy and caught him. But this success, while a success, is a bit overblown:

On Thursday, the US government released portions of the transcript of an interview with “enemy combatant” Mohammed (or is it really Muhammad?) in which he admitted, for the first time, to killing Pearl.

In a grisly disclosure, a man who is now being described as “one of history’s most infamous terrorists” claimed, according to Agence France Press, “to have beheaded US journalist Daniel Pearl… with my blessed right hand,” according to a transcript released by the Pentagon.

This act alone enables him to supersede the infamy of Carlos “the Jackal.”

Interestingly, he said, Pearl’s murder was not an Al Qaeda operation, a distinction that may be lost on American readers who were mesmerized by his frightening admissions.

In overseas media his Pearl connection is being associated with the Islamacist campaign in Kashmir, not Pakistan or Afghanistan. A British-born citizen, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who is profiled in the film, was sentenced to death by a Pakistani court for Pearl’s murder in June 2002, but has appealed the verdict.

What do we make of this public disclosure of Mohammad’s “confession?” It comes at a time when a growing scandal in the Justice Department and setbacks in Iraq and Afghanistan has the Bush Administration reeling. The claims that this larger than life, almost comic-book-like “super terrorist” have made certainly adds weight to the War on Terror and Bush’s campaign to hunt down and kill those responsible for 9/11.

Getting the “mastermind” was a big “get” when it happened and his revelations certainly have positioned him to joining world’s worst list. (It was the Pakistanis who got him, not the super sleuths of the CIA.) The Guardian reported that his long list of terror operations–most of which failed–were greeted “with shock and skepticism in almost equal measure.” The NY Times downplayed their concerns near the end of their story, on page A23, saying matter of factly, “It is not clear how many of Mr. Mohammed’s expansive claims were legitimate.” Note the word “expansive.” The AP reports that an “official”-not named-believes that his claims are exaggerated.

An American editor wrote to me:

“I am deeply troubled by the reports of Mohammed’s confession. It strikes me that it is a tidy resolution to a much larger problem. How convenient that we have all the questions answered in one somewhat disheveled package. Considering that the confession was obtained through torture, and the number of studies that have shown that information obtained in that matter is unreliable (although politically expedient), what have we really learned? Is it overly cynical to think that this administration so desperately needs a win that this is being trotted out?

And what of the nefarious Osama Bin Laden? Does this mean that he wasn’t involved, if Mohammed was the “mastermind” and orchestrated everything from “A to Z.” (By the way, interesting use of the American vernacular — I wonder who the translator is?).”

On the Randi Rhodes show, the callers had a good old time coming up with crimes that he has also confessed to; (e. g., the O. J. murders, invention of the accordion, etc.). The Dependable Renegade has him as being behind the design of Laura Bush’s pantsuits!

Barack Obama: He is such a big topic that there is a sneak preview of an article in The American Conservative about him. The article is not meant to be flattering, but, and this is telling: it does say some good things about him:

For Americans wondering about his fitness to be president, his latest Kenyan trip symbolizes the inner duality beneath his dapper exterior. He possesses one of the finest minds of any politician….

I certainly agree with that. But the thrust of the article seems to be that Obama really, really, wants to be Black and his efforts to be black sometimes leads his heart to overrule his head. I don’t buy that; Obama is going to be Black in this country whether he wanted to be that or not. Nevertheless, if this is the worst that is written about him, he is in good shape.

Media Matters alerts us to the point of view of the author of the article:

In a March 11 entry to his weblog, columnist and film critic Steve Sailer — who has written that African-Americans “tend to possess poorer native judgment than members of better-educated groups” — posted excerpts of an article about Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) that Sailer claimed will be published in full in the March 26 edition of The American Conservative, a magazine co-founded by MSNBC political analyst Patrick J. Buchanan in 2002. Sailer has launched race-based attacks on Obama in the past and has drawn criticism for racist claims about African-Americans in general. The excerpts of Sailer’s piece for The American Conservative are rife with baseless allegations, name-calling, and racial stereotypes.

Sailer, whose columns appear on VDARE.com, wrote on January 2: “The brutal truth: Obama is a ‘wigger’. He’s a remarkably exotic variety of the faux African-American, but a wigger nonetheless.” Sailer’s column linked to a Wikipedia entry on the word “wigger,” which, at the time (as well as currently) read: “Wigger (alternatively spelled wigga or whigger or whigga) is a slang term that refers to a white person who emulates mannerisms, slangs and fashions stereotypically associated with urban African Americans; especially in relation to hip hop culture.”

And I think that Media Matters is being fair.

Nevertheless, go ahead and read the article; I still find it amusing that Obama’s detractors can’t seem to decide if he isn’t “black enough” or is “too black.”

And the American Conservative article makes one huge factual blunder:

Today, we say “role model.” Even so, what many whites hope, deep down, to accomplish by electing the well-mannered Obama as president is to make him the supreme role model for all African Americans, eclipsing such deplorable bad examples as Al Sharpton, Snoop Dogg, and 50 Cent. Stuart Taylor Jr., a white critic of affirmative action, exulted in The Atlantic: “The ascent of Obama is the best hope for focusing the attention of black Americans on the opportunities that await them instead of on the oppression of their ancestors.”

The message much of white America hopes to send to black America by electing Obama is: Don’t Be So Black. Act More Barack. Perhaps this explains why blacks haven’t been all that enthusiastic.

Wow, he sure got that wrong! Senator Obama has taken the lead among African American voters.

The opening stages of the campaign for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination have produced a noticeable shift in sentiment among African American voters, who little more than a month ago heavily supported Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton but now favor the candidacy of Sen. Barack Obama.

Clinton, of New York, continues to lead Obama and other rivals in the Democratic contest, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll. But her once-sizable margin over the freshman senator from Illinois was sliced in half during the past month largely because of Obama’s growing support among black voters.

More from the American Conservative

I’ve always had some contempt for the die-hard Bush supporters. I’ve often said something like this to friends: “many Bush supporters haven’t figured out that things like “Dirty Harry” and “Rambo” were just movies. They think that one can work through complicated situations by ignoring “those eggheads” and just “flying by the seat of one’s pants”.”

Evidently, I am not alone in thinking this:

Fox’s hit drama normalizes torture, magnifies terror, and leaves conservatives asking why George W. Bush can’t be more like 24’s hero.

by Michael Brendan Dougherty

Agent Jack Bauer has tortured his own brother, used household appliances to electrocute a terror suspect, staged the execution of a child, and even shot a man’s wife to get information from him. On any given day, he will disarm suitcase nukes and presidential assassins. The orders of superior officers at the Counter Terrorist Unit don’t deter him, the rule of law and even the threat of death do not diminish Bauer’s iron will to defend America.

But this hero isn’t real. He lives for one suspense-filled hour each week on Fox’s cult series 24.

It’s not just Bauer’s over-the-top methods that keep audiences gripping their barcaloungers, it’s also the show’s novel format, which relies on “real-time” storytelling. Each episode reveals the events of one hour; each season adds up to one frenetic day. The common thread is terrorism—that constant existential threat demanding self-sacrifice and frequent disregard for the polite rules of procedure and diplomacy. It’s Us or Them.

In a gentler time, conservatives would have deplored this gory primetime fare. But now, finding a worldview consonant with their hawkish tendencies, they have embraced Jack Bauer as their pop-culture icon, his name uttered as an invocation of the grit and guts needed in the Age of Terror. [...]

Even though 24 has millions of hard-core fans, conservative opinion makers have distinguished themselves among fervent devotees of the show. Bauer’s shade lingers over their imagination. Last May, Kathryn Jean Lopez, editor of National Review Online, asked What Would the Founders Do? author Richard Brookheiser, “Does the 8th Amendment suggest . . . that the Founders would not side with Jack Bauer (pro) on torture?” In September, giving the impression that books make her think of television shows, when interviewing Washington Times national security reporter Bill Gertz about his latest tome, Lopez said, “Most of us think Jack Bauer nowadays when we think of counterintelligence. Is there anything real about him?” This January, after the latest season premiere, Lopez couldn’t help herself. In a conversation with Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, she burbled, “Do you watch 24? If so: Can we learn anything from Jack Bauer to help us win this war we’re in?” Huckabee put her down easy, noting that his wife enjoyed the show.

But singing Bauer’s hosannas isn’t restricted to National Review Online. It’s also the practice of syndicated columnists. In his Jan. 17, 2007 column, Ben Shapiro declared, “torture will often serve a useful purpose,” and proposed a utilitarian ethic for its use, saying, “If torturing a particular terrorist is useful—if we engage in the complicated calculus that tells us that the benefits outweigh the harms—torture is not only justified, it is morally right.” The title of his column: “Where’s Jack Bauer When You Need Him?”

Cal Thomas has also devoted column space, diagramming the plots of 24 to make a pro-torture point. In one 2005 episode, Bauer confronted a new challenge: the law. Thomas mourned, “An ACLU-type lawyer shows up at CTU headquarters … with a court order forbidding torture of the suspect.” Life was imitating art, Thomas warned, “the scarier drama that is being played out by the United States Army, which last week announced it is preparing to issue a new interrogations manual that specifically bars the use of ‘harsh’ techniques of the type used at Abu Ghraib prison.” Luckily, in the show Bauer hatched a plan to release the suspect then detain and torture him outside of CTU headquarters.