Tuesday is Newsday!
This is going to be a really short Newsday. I’m working on my next slashcast segment and running an exchange and changing jobs, so you’ll have to forgive me. Your (very brief) headlines for Tuesday, April 11, 2006:
PLAMEGATE (AGAIN): So apparently now that censure isn’t going to happen after the whole thing where Bush lied to the American people and pretty much threw our civil liberties out the window, the senate is focusing on the Valerie Plame leak again, with new information on the situation. It’s been revealed that Plame’s name was leaked to the VEEP by none other than President Bush himself, but as Andrew Sullivan points out, Bush can’t actually “leak” things, he can only “declassify” them by the nature of his office:
“Let's say a president has a political beef against a covert CIA agent. And let's say he outs that agent for political purposes. I'm not saying we have hard evidence this has happened in the Plame case - we don't at all - but let's posit such a hypothetical case. Legally, the president's in the clear. Constitutionally, he's in the clear. But ethically: surely not. In fact, ethically, it seems to me, he would be acting in a way that could well lead to Congressional censure or even impeachment. You don't treat spies' cover as tools for your Beltway push-back.”
So this is more of an ethical issue than anything he’s done that may or may not be illegal, IF, of course, it can be proved that his motives were, shall we say… impure. Again I return to the comparison between Bush’s ethics and Clinton’s-because when it comes down to it, everytime, I’d rather have a president who gets blown in his office that one who outs CIA agents and spies on the American people. At least Clinton was getting LAID. And not, you know, lying and stuff.
BOMB BOMB BOMB IRAN?: You guessed it. We all sort of thought Bush’s next target might be Syria, but it turns out Iran beat Syria to the nuclear weapons punch, so now it looks like Bush might be gearing up for a new method of strategery. By which I mean, he keeps saying that in this case diplomacy is the way to go, but that’s mainly just because we don’t have the troops or the funds to invade every country that may or may not have nuclear weapons AND oil. From Hersh’s piece on Iran:
”One former defense official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the Bush Administration, told me that the military planning was premised on a belief that 'a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government.' He added, 'I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, 'What are they smoking?''
I’m pretty sure they’re smoking CRACK, because that’s the kind of drug that makes you want to start wars and get all up in people’s shizzle. Yeah, um, right. I seriously doubt we’re going to convince the Iranian people to rise up in some sort of Lockean revolution. Because that worked SO well in Iraq. And Afghanistan.
WE ARE AMERICA: If you live in a decent sized American city, you might have noticed the millions of protesting immigrants of Hispanic descent marching in protest. I couldn’t find an article about this, shockingly, but I heard several stories on NPR about the demonstrations. A huge one in D.C., another big one in Houston. I know we had a fairly large one in Austin, and there were protests around the country, basically against the Immigration Bill that would criminalize 11 million illegal immigrants currently residing and working in the US. This is so exciting to see for me, because like, if there’s one group that knows how to start a revolution, it’s Latin Americans. There are 26 million legal immigrants in the US who have historically low voter registration and turn out, but you can bet with this issue strong on the books, the elections in November are going to see a huge immigrant turn out. I think that’s fantastic, and really they’re right when they say, “We are America.” This is what the US is about-immigrants looking for a new life, people joining together to create one very loud, very powerful voice. Their vote has the potential to affect several elections throughout the country. I only hope the democrats don’t fuck this up.
CARRY EACH OTHER: So all y’all out there who keep saying to me, “Oh, the world is so terrible, but there’s nothing I can do about it,” this story is for you. I’m required to tell you that this story may or may not be true, and the source (who may or may not be real) may or may not have requested to remain anonymous. Anyway.
Imagine a senate aide’s office. One senate aide gets a letter from a constituent who happens to be in a government-funded community service program, complaining about the health benefits, or rather lack thereof. The senate aide is shocked that this constituent doesn’t have the same health benefits as every other federal employee. Senate Aide tells her officemate, Senate Aide 2, about this issue. SA2 explains that she also has a friend working for said governmental community service program who has complained about the health benefits. Their boss walks in and they explain the situation to him. Bossman says, “There should be a bill!” And now there will be. Because one person wrote a letter to their senator.
One person can make a difference. Stop being so lazy. Complain to your representatives! That’s why they have aides!
ETA: Heard a story on the way home from work today about the Lacrosse team at Duke and how they might've have kind of sort of raped a student/stripper at a state school in Durham. This feels very The Other Side of the River to me. The student/stripper is black, all the Lacrosse players she accused are white, and it's definitely turning into a race-class issue. Let's face it--duke is a rich private school that is mostly white. The state school the student/stripper attends is a poor state school, mostly black. The twon is taking sides, and it's doing so based on racial-class lines. I haven't seen the evidence and this hasn't gone to trial yet, so I can't say who's right and who's wrong, and we may never know. But I don't have any trouble believing a Lacrosse team from an elite university would gang rape a black stripper, so maybe that tells you something about American culture and racial politics.
Speaking of, I saw Crash yesterday. It was good, if extremely heavy-handed. It's the sort of movie that leaves no room for thinking for yourself; instead it demands that you think a certain way and doesn't give you a choice in the matter. I appreciate what it was trying to say about race, how everyone is racist against everyone else, except that I don't think that lesson is a truism at ALL. I think the film would've done better to focus on one or two storylines and give us a broader range of emotion and thought. Brokeback Mountain was way better, and Hotel Rwanda kicked Crash's ASS. I'm just saying.
So like I said, really short Newsday. I’ll do better next week, I swear. And no Friday is Shiny! lecksee is coming to visit and I will be far too busy having fun to recap the week’s television.
PLAMEGATE (AGAIN): So apparently now that censure isn’t going to happen after the whole thing where Bush lied to the American people and pretty much threw our civil liberties out the window, the senate is focusing on the Valerie Plame leak again, with new information on the situation. It’s been revealed that Plame’s name was leaked to the VEEP by none other than President Bush himself, but as Andrew Sullivan points out, Bush can’t actually “leak” things, he can only “declassify” them by the nature of his office:
“Let's say a president has a political beef against a covert CIA agent. And let's say he outs that agent for political purposes. I'm not saying we have hard evidence this has happened in the Plame case - we don't at all - but let's posit such a hypothetical case. Legally, the president's in the clear. Constitutionally, he's in the clear. But ethically: surely not. In fact, ethically, it seems to me, he would be acting in a way that could well lead to Congressional censure or even impeachment. You don't treat spies' cover as tools for your Beltway push-back.”
So this is more of an ethical issue than anything he’s done that may or may not be illegal, IF, of course, it can be proved that his motives were, shall we say… impure. Again I return to the comparison between Bush’s ethics and Clinton’s-because when it comes down to it, everytime, I’d rather have a president who gets blown in his office that one who outs CIA agents and spies on the American people. At least Clinton was getting LAID. And not, you know, lying and stuff.
BOMB BOMB BOMB IRAN?: You guessed it. We all sort of thought Bush’s next target might be Syria, but it turns out Iran beat Syria to the nuclear weapons punch, so now it looks like Bush might be gearing up for a new method of strategery. By which I mean, he keeps saying that in this case diplomacy is the way to go, but that’s mainly just because we don’t have the troops or the funds to invade every country that may or may not have nuclear weapons AND oil. From Hersh’s piece on Iran:
”One former defense official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the Bush Administration, told me that the military planning was premised on a belief that 'a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government.' He added, 'I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, 'What are they smoking?''
I’m pretty sure they’re smoking CRACK, because that’s the kind of drug that makes you want to start wars and get all up in people’s shizzle. Yeah, um, right. I seriously doubt we’re going to convince the Iranian people to rise up in some sort of Lockean revolution. Because that worked SO well in Iraq. And Afghanistan.
WE ARE AMERICA: If you live in a decent sized American city, you might have noticed the millions of protesting immigrants of Hispanic descent marching in protest. I couldn’t find an article about this, shockingly, but I heard several stories on NPR about the demonstrations. A huge one in D.C., another big one in Houston. I know we had a fairly large one in Austin, and there were protests around the country, basically against the Immigration Bill that would criminalize 11 million illegal immigrants currently residing and working in the US. This is so exciting to see for me, because like, if there’s one group that knows how to start a revolution, it’s Latin Americans. There are 26 million legal immigrants in the US who have historically low voter registration and turn out, but you can bet with this issue strong on the books, the elections in November are going to see a huge immigrant turn out. I think that’s fantastic, and really they’re right when they say, “We are America.” This is what the US is about-immigrants looking for a new life, people joining together to create one very loud, very powerful voice. Their vote has the potential to affect several elections throughout the country. I only hope the democrats don’t fuck this up.
CARRY EACH OTHER: So all y’all out there who keep saying to me, “Oh, the world is so terrible, but there’s nothing I can do about it,” this story is for you. I’m required to tell you that this story may or may not be true, and the source (who may or may not be real) may or may not have requested to remain anonymous. Anyway.
Imagine a senate aide’s office. One senate aide gets a letter from a constituent who happens to be in a government-funded community service program, complaining about the health benefits, or rather lack thereof. The senate aide is shocked that this constituent doesn’t have the same health benefits as every other federal employee. Senate Aide tells her officemate, Senate Aide 2, about this issue. SA2 explains that she also has a friend working for said governmental community service program who has complained about the health benefits. Their boss walks in and they explain the situation to him. Bossman says, “There should be a bill!” And now there will be. Because one person wrote a letter to their senator.
One person can make a difference. Stop being so lazy. Complain to your representatives! That’s why they have aides!
ETA: Heard a story on the way home from work today about the Lacrosse team at Duke and how they might've have kind of sort of raped a student/stripper at a state school in Durham. This feels very The Other Side of the River to me. The student/stripper is black, all the Lacrosse players she accused are white, and it's definitely turning into a race-class issue. Let's face it--duke is a rich private school that is mostly white. The state school the student/stripper attends is a poor state school, mostly black. The twon is taking sides, and it's doing so based on racial-class lines. I haven't seen the evidence and this hasn't gone to trial yet, so I can't say who's right and who's wrong, and we may never know. But I don't have any trouble believing a Lacrosse team from an elite university would gang rape a black stripper, so maybe that tells you something about American culture and racial politics.
Speaking of, I saw Crash yesterday. It was good, if extremely heavy-handed. It's the sort of movie that leaves no room for thinking for yourself; instead it demands that you think a certain way and doesn't give you a choice in the matter. I appreciate what it was trying to say about race, how everyone is racist against everyone else, except that I don't think that lesson is a truism at ALL. I think the film would've done better to focus on one or two storylines and give us a broader range of emotion and thought. Brokeback Mountain was way better, and Hotel Rwanda kicked Crash's ASS. I'm just saying.
So like I said, really short Newsday. I’ll do better next week, I swear. And no Friday is Shiny! lecksee is coming to visit and I will be far too busy having fun to recap the week’s television.