The Memory Hole

In 1984, the memory hole was a function of the government that allowed them to make mistakes disappear. This Orwellian dystopic fantasy was intended to show how control of information can quite easily control history and control the present and future. The more simplistic explanation of course is just BizarroWorld.

Misdirection, if not a synonym of politics is at its very least an essential component. Plan on short memories and very little critical thinking and analysis. Speak emphatically, loudly and clearly and it becomes THE TRUTH. The master of this was the Great Communicator himself, however to give Ronnie credit, I truly think that he believed what he was saying and if not he believed that his stories resonated with American people and would lead America to greater things. Today of course misdirection, what has traditionally been called fibbing, exaggeration, hyperbole or down right lying goes all the way to the top of the political food chain.

Certainly Bill Clinton engaged in this same type of misdirection, relying on his arrogance and self-absorbed intellectual superiority to avoid being questioned about his intern issues, eventually leading to his impeachment on perjury charges. Which makes you think, what if he had told the truth about his dalliances, there would be scandal and embarrassment but what would have happened to the last two years of what had potential for greatness but ended in shame. The shame that began a series of political events that obscured the continuing war on terror and began the machinations of continuing dirty politics with no substance and lack of leadership.

PHO HISTORY AND A FAKE TURKEY

So after about 4 and a half years of denying it, suddenly the administration has begun to invoke Vietnam and Iraq in the same sentence. Certainly this comparison would not be made between looking for WMD's, yellowcake and the Tonkin Gulf incident that essentially were the cases for both conflicts; or the extended battle of insurgency against a seemingly hidden foe whether it be the winning of hearts and minds or fighting against "a few deadenders"; the continued bleeding both of American blood and treasure, or the lack of a defined mission or road to victory. All these would likely be decent comparisons, and as armchair historians and political scientists, could lead to long discussions, debates and arguments. But these are the people in charge of the whole game.

The argument used now is that pulling out of Iraq would cause terrible human rights damage, similar to the killing fields of Pol Pot or the re-education camps of Vietnam. These are likely valid arguments, it is unknown what type of hell Iraq may become without some type of American or coalition forces to engage potential genocidal action and slaughter. That being said and necessity of the issue of troop withdrawal being addressed by more than a "pull them all out" or "surge to victory" leaves the American people in fear of facing an increasingly withdrawn and troubled presidency of almost Nixonian proportions.

It seems we must hope that there are greater forces, Bush 41, a council of elders, Laura, a really clinical psychiatrist, a bottle of Booker's that can pull the President back from the precipice, to show the strength that he showed in mid-September 2001 or at least do no more harm. The joking, folksy, gambling President Bush is gone, a more sober, serious Bush, willing to take advice from all sides must emerge. There will be no enormous mea culpa, but the President must rise above the partisan politics to lead.

BEDTIME FOR GONZO!
On a lighter note, the Alberto Gonzalez error is done. Better known as the world's highest ranking mob lawyer, Gonzo was the administration's excuse maker, leading into the axiom, it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission, especially when you're the one in charge of giving forgiveness. Gonzo felt he didn't have to answer to anyone and like Clinton, likely could have benefited from just being honest from the get-go, in Alberto's case, around the issue of the fired prosecutors. In this case, Al, just tell the truth, if only because it is the easiest thing to remember. This case would have blown over quickly, but the arrogance of secrecy is that this is our knowledge, our Constitution and we'll use it like we want to. Where there is a vacancy, there is opportunity and certainly this opens up a spot for a talented law enforcement and legal leader who can get the support of both parties and rise above the fray of politics.

CRUISING MINNESOTA

Larry Craig, Republican from Idaho wants your family values vote, especially if that family values vote include cruising the men's room of airports. Which I believe is one of the party planks that James Dobson is trying to add to the party platform. Hey, you're an adult, do whatever you want to do as a consenting adult but it's the hypocrisy people. Craig has been the target of groups trying to "out" him for several years and recently pled guilty to "lewdness" in the airport in Minneapolis. The Romney campaign in a quick separation began to move away from it's co-senate liasion although the five brothers have yet to completely scrub the website. Ah, it just keeps getting better and better.

How Red is Your Herring

Ah, the politics of misdirection. Build your supporters by anointing them with a sense of moral superiority. "The other side just doesn't get it", "they don't love freedom", "they're free riders", "they're stealing American jobs." I don't know when politics just got weird. Or people just got really stupid and gullible. Maybe they always have been but when you look at them in a historical context, you just get a filtered version.

The latest Giuliani-Romney feud as the temporary front runners until a long overdue Republican tide of commonsense takes hold is over immigration, and who has let more Mexicans in the door. Of course, what many Americans should really be concerned about is crumbling infrastructure, an unsustainable Social Security/Medicare system, an overstretched military, nuclear proliferation, etc but those things are really hard to explain or but in a bumper sticker that may say something like, "why should I press one for English."


I know that there were dirty campaigns in the past. But the level of vapid discussion could never have been this great. Certainly racial and ethnic politics have played a part in American politics, from the fear of slave rebellions to the Civil War and reconstruction on through integration, the thinly veiled Nixonian law and order campaign to Willie Horton and on to the current immigration debate. Of course, the immigration argument is not all about race but suffice to say if the majority of immigrants were 6 foot tall Norwegian bikini models rather than persons of Mestizo descent, the discussion may be quite different.


BUILDING A FENCE
Much of the discussion is economic wrapped up in a certain American fear of change and outsiders, immigrants are "stealing our jobs". Immigrants are taking spots in public schools, in hospitals (particularly the use of emergency rooms for primary care) and other social services. Illegal immigrants are These are valid arguments in my mind, but arguments should have discourse. For me, it is my secular and Christian feelings of the need for social justice battling the feeling and belief that while America is built on immigrants and the great majority of us are the descendants of immigrants, what makes America great in my mind and separates us from many others is the rule of law. And undocumented folks/illegal immigrants flaunt that rule of law. It certainly is a dilemma.

However, in the same manner that many thought we would go into Iraq with the mightiest military, best trained soldiers and best equipment and dispatch our enemies is the logic that such simple things as building a multi-billion dollar fence will "secure our borders." Any discussion of immigration reform is painted as amnesty or surrender analogous to the idea of pulling our troops out of Iraq before final victory. As a subject it is an anathema to the new target of Republican candidates, those Reagan democrats and independents whose conservative populism drove them away from an out of touch Democratic party of the 1970's and 1980's.

The misdirection of course is to find a scapegoat for the problems of America. To build a nostalgic image of a better past where Americans had life long job security at good wages. And the enemy of course is not a rapidly evolving global economy or the corporations that pump money into all campaigns both Republicans and Democrats but the guys who's washing dishes, picking fruit, and cutting up chicken parts. And what does a mass deportation of millions of immigrants look like? Should I anglicize my name?


SANCTUARY
The sanctuary
I'm sure in her you'll find
The sanctuary
And the world and the world
The world turns around
And the world and the world
The world drags me down-THE CULT

The latest Giuliani-Romney "Real World" battle is over the idea of Sanctuary cities. Now sanctuary cities is something that "holier than thou" liberal cities usually declare. The reasoning of course outside of political correctness and a "we are the world" coca-cola moment is that undocumented immigrants are more likely to report crimes including domestic abuse, get treatment for diseases that may be communicable, and otherwise participate in activities that support the common good. The argument against is that it encourages illegal immigrants to move to these communities, as if making 5 bucks a day shoveling gravel in Chiapas, running away from machetes in Sierra Leone, or escaping countryside gangs in El Salvador is enough to make you want to take that gamble on Wal-Mart, clean water and the American dream.

Mayor Giuliani of course was the leader of the city with the most immigrants in America, (ok, likely, LA but work with me here) and they're all not here on H-1B visas making microchips, and as Romney governed Massachusetts, the People's Republic of Cambridge among others led the movement to provide "protection" to undocumented residents. Of course, most public servants, police and fire included have little desire to become immigration agents, there's a lot other work to do, then ask everyone "paper's please." The key to this type of politicking is it really part of what sells easy to Americans, not any sense of large scale policy or realistic change. And the image that some crazy liberal cities are offering backrubs and jacuzzi's and limo rides to people who are flaunting the law while they're punching the clock really roils them in Peoria.


ED ANGER, WE HARDLY KNEW YA
This week's Washington Post weekly reported sad news. The Weekly World News would cease to be published. For a guy like myself, who neglects research and kinda writes off the top of my head, mostly based on some weird picture, this loss is of huge historic significance. The Weekly World News brought me though some tough times, the end of the Reagan years, the Bush years,even to Clinton's first administration. It was not often a week would come without reading it, to find out what was happening in the alien world, what old friend and early right wing crazy adopter Ed Anger was "pig biting mad" about, and finally the evolution and chase of the Bat Child around the country by the FBI.

The Internet was the death of the Weekly World News as the profound collection of idiocy and strangeness in the world collected itself around one nexus. Ah but that bat child, hopefully he'll rise again.

Presidential Updates

Wow, wedding season, busy work and gardening and summer illnesses are kicking my @ss. I think about stuff all the time to write about, the summer doldrums are upon me and I just don't write that well right now, but things are heating up and thinning out. I continue with my Romney and Giuliani obsession, wondering how the hell the Republican party ended up with these two insignificant, self-absorbed political bottom dwellers as front runners and waiting for the Democratic field to implode under its own weight.

Romney Picks Up Some Straws
In the cavalcade of events that leads up to the Iowa caucus, the Republican Ames straw poll is the kickoff. It is not without irony that the pretty boy of the field wins this beauty contest. John McCain and Rudy sat this dance out. The straw poll is mostly a fundraiser for the Iowa Republican party but for some it can be a graceful exit or a way to make a little noise in the campaign if your organization can stand the cost and the wear and tear of your candidate constantly eating fair food and trying to find clever aprons.

As the frontrunner, ole flip flop Mitt begins to open himself up to the sniping of the media and our old friend, history and the truth. Mitt is a helluva manager, looks at data, talks to experts makes a decision but as a leader is an empty shirt. Mitt had the occasion to misspeak this week when asking about his 5 sons and their (lack of) military service, Mitt said that different people serve in different ways, and that his sons were serving the country by supporting him as a Presidential candidate. Thus indirectly and likely unintentionally comparing his son driving a Winnebago from county to county in Iowa to a soldier or marine serving in Afghanistan or Iraq. As if there were IED's and snipers on the way from Sioux Falls to Ames. This disconnect that the candidate has from reality is likely to be his downfall. His fake folksiness and concern for the common man is trumped by his arrogance and pursuit for power.

I'll give Romney this, he is a much more trustworthy and honest man than the one licking at his heels, Rudy Giuliani. Romney would do well and place himself in the general election to be true to himself and true to his beliefs rather than flowing with the prevailing wind. It is sad to say that we may look for a Presidential candidate as the one who would do the least harm.

A Pandering We Will Go

The early campaign season is a time to pander to special interests. Candidates uncomfortably go on hunting and fishing trips, find jeans to wear uncomfortably to county fairs, and the diners in Iowa and New Hampshire apparently filled with people who have the time to spend their days not at work and drinking coffee are haunted by both major and minor applicants for the most important job in the world. Both sides generally will say whatever the group they are talking to wants to hear. No matter the cost to the federal taxpayer, or the the cost to America at large. Republicans generally will be seen with farmers and "regular people", gunowners, the evangelicals and big pumpkin growers.

Democrats run to the unions. The biggest target of the Democratic candidates attention is the NEA, the umbrella union that represents teachers and other educators. Some polls say that over 85% of teachers will vote Democratic, so this becomes a valuable ground for donations, field workers, and of course the votes needed to get the nomination.

So what you do is attack standardized tests, accountability, and NCLB in general while clamoring for higher teacher pay and more federal money for education without any kind of accountability for the money spent. Little of the argument is spent in reality, talking about student learning is done only in the abstract, reduce class size which of course means increasing the number of teachers in the union and educate the whole child, generally a codeword for no high stakes testing. Good teachers are among the hardest working people in the world, but changes such as merit pay, more pay for mathematics, science and special education teachers, and greater accountability and standards for high school graduation are essential for success and to suggest that no change is necessary is insanity. There is little research that will tell you that across the board higher pay for teachers leads to student achievement.

Obama seemed to deviate a bit from the formula, suggesting merit pay as a potential solution to the dismay of the crowd. I generally choose not to write about education but to see any candidate without the courage to deviate from the party line is terrifying. Certainly there are issues with NCLB and Ed Reform has seemed to falter and stall in many ways. But these are the days of big promises and asking for little in return but their votes. And this is not only for the educators but the corn farmers, the gun toters, and others who think that their issue is bigger and more important than anyone elses. Again where is the courage, where is the courage to look at the disastrous educational experience that many students face. This is not to place the blame at the feet of America's educators, but to say that American education needs more than platitudes for teachers and placing the blame on a standardized testing system.

Tommy Gun Calls it a Campaign
Struck by his failure to gain any traction in the Ames straw poll and flattened by his own irrelevance Tommy Thompson dropped out of the 2008 presidential race. I'm unsure why Tommy decided to run in the first place. Not enough white guys?, a lack of ex-governors? Free haircuts? Likes Iowa barbecue?

So now builds "Huckmentum". Mike Huckabee called out the Republican party, defying it not to become the "party of plutocrats." Thus starting the class war from the right hand side. The Republican party has done well for itself, working on the politics of fear, both internal and external, the myth of the destruction of the family and the fear that the Democrats want to take all your money. Thus the Halliburtons, Enrons and Big Oil and Pharma of the world have managed to get aligned with the blue collar worker who often begins to vote against his own financial interest. Huckabee has made an interesting comment and a very strong tactical move, he knows he has little to lose by going the populist route.

The early races in Nevada, South Carolina, Iowa and New Hampshire are filled with those Republicans who feel they've been screwed, screwed by immigration, by free traders, by big corporate America. So skinny Mike moves up slightly in this oddsmakers book. Rolling the dice on working Republicans who fear the half million dollar speech giving of a Rudy Giuliani or the slice and dice capitalism of Bain Capital's Mitt Romney and sketching the "Two America's" is fair play for the John Edwards of the right.