So, now you're leaving?

So now you're leaving are you?
After all my fervent prayers,
There is no demon left for me to loathe;

You've emptied out the wood bin;
You leave an empty husk;
Your flight is vanguard of my many oaths;

Eight long years you've fed my hate,
Drawn out eight years of venom;
Now bumble in your idiotic sty;

Too dim to know the nature,
Of the damage you have wrought;
Please don't insult us both by asking "Why?"

Now that's the Harry Reid we've come to know...

Ah, Harry! You lovable loser. Whenever I'm plagued with feelings of inadequacy I need look no further than Harry Reid (D-NV), Senate Majority Leader for reassurance. It's you, Senator, that I want staying "in" with me the next time I play Texas Hold'em.

Recently, Senator Reid, leader of the mighty Democratic majority, made a stand for good government by stating flatly that he would not seat any senator appointed by Illinois' tainted governor, Rod Blagojevich, if Blagojevich tried to name someone to fill the seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama.

This tough stance was something of a surprise. It's not that the sentiment Reid expressed didn't have a certain virtue. It's just that Reid might have learned by now that his tough talk doesn't carry much weight when he has already rolled over for everybody who has so much as cast a stern look his way.

The list of capitulations over the two years since Reid has been Majority leader is long indeed. Reid rolled over for Junior Bush on everything from telecom warrentless wiretapping (he voted "Nay," but he still allowed the FISA bill to come to the Floor) to unconditional funding for the Iraq misadventure.

Just last November, Reid rolled over for Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT), granting Lieberman chairmanship of the Homeland Security Committee in spite of the fact that Lieberman campaigned for the Republican nominee for president, criticizing the Democratic nominee at the GOP convention.

So, when Blagojevich went ahead and appointed Roland Burris to take the vacant senate seat there was much ado in the Washington Beltway about Senator Reid's response. Would the Senator have Burris escorted out of the Capitol building by the Sergeant-at-Arms? Would he table the appointment through some shrewd procedural maneuvering? Or, would he vanquish the would-be Senator through force of will, bringing to bear his mighty presence?

No, foolish one! Senator Reid is doing what he does best... he's rolling over.

Reid: Roland, you're a nice guy, after all.
Burris: Shut up, Harry.

After all of Reid's Sturm und Drang, it now appears as if Roland Burris will soon be seated as the junior Senator from the state of Illinois. And, why not? Burris himself is not implicated in the charges leveled against Blagojevitch. His appointment is perfectly legal. He appears to be as honest as any other Senator. (I know that might seem to be a pretty low bar, but what the hey?) Reid had no legal means to block the appointment although he tried to hide behind the straw man argument that Illinois' Secretary of State has not signed the appointment papers.

So, why did Reid choose this battle against the appointment of a Democratic senator when he couldn't muster up the gumption to thwart Junior Bush in any manner?

Maybe Reid thought this was a fight that he could finally win. Any bully on the playground knows which kids he can intimidate and which he had better avoid. But, in Reid's case, there might not be any kids that belong in the former group.

Just yesterday he was at it again, claiming "I don't work for Barack Obama." Gonna get tough with the new prez, huh, Harry? Nobody's gonna steam roller anything past you, eh?

I'm sure Barack Obama and Rahm Emanuel are shaking in their shoes.

Israel cries havoc and lets slip the dogs of war

Seven hundred sixty-five dead Palestinians so far. Three thousand wounded. Schools and mosques targeted by Israeli ordinance. Humanitarian aid halted after an Israeli shell hit a UN relief truck, killing two aid workers. Foreign correspondents barred from entering Gaza to report on the situation. It's all right here.

There's no justification for what is going on in Gaza right now, people. Rocket fire, be damned. The Israelis have had their collective thumb on the Palestinians for 60 years now, cramming them into slums, surrounding them with razor wire and minefields, encroaching on their lands with illegal settlements.

It is all made possible because of massive infusions of US greenbacks, year after year. American support for Israel is unqualified, sacrosanct.

And how has Israel shown her gratitude? By infiltrating our highest levels of government with spies and by violating over 50 UN resolutions. By doing as they damn well please and leaving us to clean up the mess.

Still nary a word of criticism from anyone in the United States with any ability to do anything about it. The US could stop this atrocity today if the political will were there. But with a very few exceptions, US political "leaders" are confirming what we've all known: they are cowards and slaves to the AIPAC lash.


The whole thing makes me sick. I do not support it. I condemn it.

Think about it, people: who do the Israelis most resemble with their intentional (yes, intentional) targeting of civilians in apartment complexes, schools, and mosques? Who are the Israelis emulating when they confine people of a particular ethnicity to guarded slums? When they isolate those people from others? When they prevent those people from receiving basic humanitarian aid? When they strive to keep their atrocities hidden from the world?

In today's political environment, to even look askance at Israel is to risk being labeled an "anti-Semite." So, I won't answer those questions. I leave it to you, dear reader. Ask yourself if there is an historical precedent for this kind of behavior. Ask yourself which fanatically nationalistic people showed such contempt for international law, for basic human decency.

Go ahead... ask!

La caída de Bill Richardson

Aunque hay, por lo menos, dos otros hispanos nombrados en la gabinete de Obama (esos siendo Hilda Solis de California y Ken Salazar de Colorado), estoy triste a la salida de Bill Richardson. Recuerde que Richardson estuvo, recentemente, un candidato por presidente, y su estatura en el mundo de diplomacia internacional es grande. Sinceramente, él tuvo el potencial a ser una figura histórica, lo que todos hispanos podrían admirar.

¡Ay, las trampas de la política! ¡Y que triste la caída!

Richardson se retira de consideración para secretario de Comercio esta semana. El esta el sujeto de una investigación (semejante a la investigación del gobernador de Illinois, Rob Blagojevich) para un esquema (potencial) de "pay to play" en donde contratos eran concedidos a donantes políticos.

Sin examinando las causas por la investigación, quiero expresar mi desilusión. He admirado Richardson para muchos años, como indiqué aquí. Pero, comprendo la necesidad de Obama y la nueva administración a quedarse lejano de cualquiera mancha de corrupción.

Ojalá que Richardson sea absolvido de culpabilidad. Quizás en el futuro, Richardson puede volver a la etapa de política nacional.

(Perdóneme por favor para mi español malo.)

Obama comments on Gaza

Israelis doing what they love to do

Up to now, President-elect Obama has been notably silent about the crisis in Gaza. He surely must be giving some thought to the matter, no? He's had plenty to say about the financial and economic crises that are now upon us, so what gives? Even the statement he made today was non-committal and vague.

I'm very concerned with the conflict taking place there, I'm monitoring the situation on a day to day basis. The loss of civilian life in Gaza and in Israel is a source of deep concern to me. After January 20th I'm going to have plenty to say about the issue, and I am not backing away at all from what I said during the campaign, that starting at the beginning of our administration, we are going to be engaged effectively and consistently in trying to resolve the conflict in the Middle East...

So on January 20th you'll be hearing directly from me on this issue. Until then, my job is to monitor the situation and put together the best possible national security team so we hit the ground running on national security issues. --President-elect Obama, January 6th, 2008

Hardly a definitive statement, eh? So why the reticence when it comes to this full-blown crisis?

Well, I have a couple thoughts...

1. Foreign policy, more than economic or social policy, is the domain of the executive branch of government. Congress can advise or help to shape policy, but it is the president that sets the direction in matters of state. (How bitterly have we rued this truth in the era of Junior and the neo-conservatives?)
   
   While Obama can certainly lobby and pressure Congress to craft economic legislation before he occupies the Oval Office, he has no leverage when it comes to foreign policy until he is actually in the White House. Therefore, for him to make pronouncements before he can shape policy is to make himself vulnerable, politically, while gaining no advantage.
   
2. As I pointed out in a previous post, for Obama to either condemn or support the Israelis or the Palestinians could escalate the violence. If Obama condemns Israel, the Israelis may choose to pull out the stops and start leveling whole city blocks in an attempt to achieve some deranged Likud-inspired goal before Junior leaves office. (Telling, isn't it, that Israel is perhaps the only country in the world where Bush is popular?)
   
   On the other hand, if Obama calls Israeli actions "justified," he alienates large swaths of the Muslim world and severely handicaps his ability to forge more positive relationships there.

At the risk of being labeled an Obama apologist, I'm encouraged by his vagueness. If Obama wanted to play it safe, Congressional leaders, in their typically cowardly manner, have shown the way. Check these quotes:

I think what the Israelis are doing is very important. I think this terrorist organization, Hamas, has got to be put away. They've got to come to their senses. --Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid (D-NV) on Meet the Press, January 4, 2009

Israel has the right to defend its citizens and territory, as it is doing. The current outbreak of violence is the result of Hamas’ decision to break the ceasefire agreement on December 19. The only way for the violence to end is for Hamas to stop its attacks on Israel immediately, honor the ceasefire agreement and work in good faith to establish a peaceful resolution.”--House Minority Leader John Boenher (R-OH), December 30, 2008

Note that these quotes are from the leaders of both the Democrats and Republicans. That's what you call "political cover." If Obama wanted to put the matter behind him, to end speculation about his position vis-a-vis the crisis, he could simply issue a statement saying "Israel has a right...blah, blah, blah."

Could silence indicate a break from the past?

That he hasn't done so already must make the ghouls at AIPAC just a tad nervous, methinks. Dare we to hope that Obama might really be considering an evenhanded approach to the Palestine conflict? Is it maybe possible that he might actually stand up to Israel? That he might rein in the rabid dogs like Netanyahu?

Given the power of the Israeli spin machine in the US media and halls of power, and the eschatological fervor with which meathead Evangelicals view the Jewish state, and the fading hopes that discredited neo-conservatives place in the concept of warlike Zionism, entertaining hope for a different approach might seem a fool's errand. But, until Obama commits his administration one way or the other, I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Book Review: The Road

Okay, fine. So, maybe my self-taught literary appreciation skills just don't measure up. I'll accept that. But, to my way of thinking, The Road, Cormac McCarthy's 2006 post-apocalyptic novel, offers small reward when weighed against the demands it makes upon the reader. McCarthy is often recognized as one of today's most accomplished novelists, and other reviews of this, his ninth novel are almost universally laudatory. Count me out.

The novel grabbed me from the first paragraph. I finished it in one sitting.

I wish I hadn't read it.

It is the tale of an unnamed man and his son migrating southward in a world gripped by nuclear winter. In this world, the Earth offers nothing but coldness, privation, and savagery. The reader journeys with them southward along "the road" in search of warmth and survival. Along the way, they struggle to avoid starvation, death from exposure, and tribes of cannibalistic savages.

Several themes run through the book. Among them is an acknowledgment of the essential need humans have for purpose, for a morality that transcends survival.

For the protagonist, the father, his single-minded purpose in life is the survival of the son. "My job is to take care of you," he says to the boy. "I was appointed to do that by God. I will kill anyone who touches you." And the boy is clearly cast as humanity's redeemer. It is the boy who pitifully evokes the traces of compassion and morality in this stark, savage world. The boy is the world's one last hope. Or perhaps, the last ghost of a hope that has died.

It's not that Mr. McCarthy lacks eloquence or power. His terse, Hemingway-esque prose is marvelous. And scattered throughout are lines of pure poetry that force the reader to pause and ponder. "There is no prophet in the earth’s long chronicle who is not honored here today." His ability to create a universe by stringing together hundreds of stripped-down moments, verbal exchanges, and flashbacks, interspersed with a very few significant events is awe-inspiring. And although there is no plot to speak of, the novel does not suffer from its lack when viewed as allegory. McCarthy is, without doubt, a wise and dour man, an intimidating intellect.

But the book is brutal. The reader is subjected to unspeakable horrors and unrelenting despair. In this world, humankind appears to be the only surviving species. All vegetation is burnt ash; there are no animals; the landscape is charred ruin. In short, this is not a world where human beings could survive at all, let alone subsist for ten years after the (never-explained) holocaust. There is no relief, no moment of jocularity, no elevation from the grim reality. It is as if some sadistic vein of McCarthy's creativity has created this implausible world so that he can inflict his own torment on his readers; so that we can experience the hell he knows.

That would be acceptable if the reward were commensurate with the suffering. But it seems to me that if the reader must endure the horrors (and, without elaborating, this book is full of obscene horrors) it is fair to expect an equal measure of wisdom or virtue to be imparted.

Perhaps McCarthy believes that the two-page denouement, with its hints at an enduring morality and its merest shred of hope, is enough to assuage the lonely despair of his readers. And, maybe --in today's dying world, with its wars and savagery, with its decaying humanity --it is.

Israel pulls the trigger

Gaza burning

I awoke this morning to the news that Israeli ground troops launched an invasion into the Gaza Strip. The invasion is anticipated. Israeli troops have been massing around Gaza for days, while their air force has been pounding sites in the impoverished territory. There are reports of hundreds of civilian casualties, including 5 daughters in one family. Here's a snippet from a column posted on December 30, in Haaretz, an Israeli publication:

Our finest young men are attacking Gaza now. Good boys from good homes are doing bad things. Most of them are eloquent, impressive, self-confident, often even highly principled in their own eyes, and on Black Saturday dozens of them set out to bomb some of the targets in our 'target bank' for the Gaza Strip.

"They set out to bomb the graduation ceremony for young police officers who had found that rare Gaza commodity, a job, massacring them by the dozen. They bombed a mosque, killing five sisters of the Balousha family, the youngest of whom was 4. They bombed a police station, hitting a doctor nearby; she lies in a vegetative state in Shifa Hospital, which is bursting with wounded and dead. They bombed a university that we in Israel call the Palestinian Rafael, the equivalent of Israel's weapons developer, and destroyed student dormitories. They dropped hundreds of bombs out of blue skies free of all resistance. --Gideon Levy, Haaretz

Pity those poor Palestinians. They've got the most ruthless army led by the most fanatical leadership bearing down on them with billions of dollars worth of US-supplied military equipment ($3 billion per year).

The attack is supposedly in response to rocket fire originating in Gaza and landing in Israeli territory. There have been three Israeli deaths in seven years as a result of this rocket fire; the ordnance is by all accounts primitive, and it is highly unlikely the Palestinians have real means of fighting the Israelis since the blockade Israel has imposed on Gaza prevents even humanitarian supplies from getting through.

To find a motive for this disproportionate response to a few Palestinian firecrackers, one need only look ahead to February 10, when Israel will hold its next elections. The contest is the traditional chaotic mess between the militaristic Likud party, led by Bibi Netanyahu, a vicious (some would say "deranged") right-winger, and the Labor party, Israel's so-called "moderate" wing, led by Defense Minister Ehud Barak. A third candidate, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, chairwoman of the Kadima party is also running. Up to now, the polls had favored Netanyahu. But since Barak has started bombing Gaza his numbers have gone up.

Ehud Barak's poll numbers are on the rise

The Palestinians have no friends in this fight. At least, no friends that can do anything about it. Hamas, the ruling party in Gaza, is viewed by the traditional (and traditionally corrupt) governments in Egypt and Saudi Arabia as being friendly to Iran. So Cairo and Riyadh have no interest in doing anything that might prolong Hamas' tenure. And the AIPAC deathgrip on American political apparatus is stifling.

Junior Bush sent Condi Rice out to vomit some nonsense full of condemnation of Hamas. She laid responsibility for civilian casualties on the Palestinians. Not a word about Israel, perhaps, showing a little restraint. Note that Condi has no plans to fly to the Middle East to try to smooth things out. And Junior himself remains on vacation in his Texas sh*thole. Just as well.

Defenseless Israeli troops

The American media is shockingly biased. Just this morning I saw a CNN anchor consulting "expert" Retired Brigadier General David Grange about the crisis. Grange went on and on about the dangers the Israeli troops are facing as they move into Gaza. Paraphrasing: "This is urban terrain. The Israelis will be at a distinct disadvantage." How, Dave? Are Israeli soldiers in danger of getting headaches if Gazans manage to bounce a few rocks off their steel helmets before being gunned down?

Grange went on. Again, paraphrasing: "And don't forget, Hamas will want to get television coverage of civilian casualties so as to bring international pressure against the Israelis. So Hamas will deliberately hide among the civilians, hoping for an Israeli attack." Yeah. That sounds like a great tactic. Can't you hear the Hamas fighters, now? "We get them to kill our kids and our friends and neighbors. Then, the cameras will come and the international community will issue some strongly-worded condemnations! Then we win!"

Barack Obama has been silent about the crisis up to now. And, frankly, I think that is best for all involved. If Obama were to condemn the attack, the Israelis might be spurred on to even more aggression in some kind of attempt to fulfill their blood-thirsty goals before Inauguration Day. If Obama condemns Hamas, he puts himself in a deep hole vis-a-vis relations with the Moslem world before he even steps into the Oval Office.

It's a mess, pure and simple. There may well be no solution. But I'm disgusted at how the cowards in Washington (and in Cairo, Riyadh, and everywhere else) are willing to let the Israeli blitzkrieg --and, yes, let's call it what it is-- roll over a defenseless people.