All posts by James

About James

James Seidler is a writer living in Chicago. The editor for the now-defunct humor publication FLYMF, he has now decided to maintain his web presence and smart remarks through this blog.

Planning for a Post-Bush Future

Politics,

Mother Jones‘ September/October issue, “Exit Strategy: How to Fix a Post-Bush Nation,” offers a comprehensive breakdown of Bush-era bungling. Exploring topics ranging from executive power to domestic priorities, the magazine examines what went wrong (at no small length) and offers a primer on how the next President can recover from Bush administration misconduct and incompetence.

A few stories stood out as particularly relevant:

Jack Hitt’s “Pursuit of Habeas” outlines the origins of habeus corpus and details why the Bush detainment policy was counterproductive as well as illegal.

James K. Gailbraith’s “How to Burn the Speculators” shows how increasing deregulation of the financial industry, stretching back to Reagan, is tied to today’s financial meltdown. (McCain economic advisor Phil Gramm plays a leading role, but the blame is widely spread.)

Finally, “Bush’s Reign of Error: A Timeline,” provides a quick-hit summary of the 43rd President’s many lowlights. Looking back, the scope of his malfeasance is pretty breathtaking. Among other things, I’d forgotten that Henry Kissinger was initially selected to head the 9/11 commission.

U.S. Attitudes Toward Torture

Politics, ,

There have been many distressing political developments over the past seven years, but the one I find most upsetting is the acceptance of torture as a tool of the U.S. government. The Atlantic blogger Andrew Sullivan has an alarming post on the subject today. Evaluating the results of a World Public Opinion survey on torture, he writes:

A new survey of global public opinion [PDF] reveals the appalling truth. Americans are now among the people on earth most supportive of government’s torturing prisoners. The United States is in the same public opinion ballpark as some of the most disgusting regimes on the planet:

Support for the unequivocal position was highest in Spain (82%), Great Britain (82%) and France (82%), followed by Mexico (73%), China (66%), the Palestinian territories (66%), Poland (62%), Indonesia (61%), and the Ukraine (59%).   In five countries either modest majorities or pluralities support a ban on all torture:  Azerbaijan (54%), Egypt (54%), the United States (53%), Russia (49%), and Iran (43%).  South Koreans are divided.

So America’s peers in the fight against torture, in terms of public opinion are Azerbaijan, Egypt, Russia, and Iran. This is what America now is: a country with the moral values of countries that routinely torture and abuse prisoners, like Egypt and Iran. Even the Chinese, living in a neo-fascist market state, oppose torture in all circumstances by 66 percent, compared to Americans where only 53 percent do! More horrifying: a higher percentage of Americans – 13 percent – believe that torture should generally be allowed than in any other country save China, Turkey and Nigeria. And in the last two years, as the American president celebrates and authorizes the torture of people who have not been allowed a fair trail, support for torturing terror suspects has increased from 36 percent to 44 percent.

The only other countries where support for torturing terror suspects has grown are India, Nigeria, Turkey, South Korea and Egypt. In all other developed countries, support for an absolute ban on torture has actually risen in the past two years. America is now leading the way in legitimizing and celebrating torture as a legitimate tool for governments.

David Foster Wallace

Books

I’m not overly familiar with the work of David Foster Wallace, although I did appreciate the piece he wrote for the Atlantic on the American Idea. With his suicide, though, have come a number of appreciations on the Internet, and one of these led me to the following commencement speech by Wallace. It’s well worth reading.

Here’s an excerpt dealing with what I like to call “the bookkeeping”:

And I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense. Let’s get concrete. The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what “day in day out” really means. There happen to be whole, large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine, and petty frustration. The parents and older folks here will know all too well what I’m talking about.

Palin Profile in the New York Times

Politics,

The New York Times continues to probe Sarah Palin’s record. The most recent profile, “Once Elected, Palin Hired Friends and Lashed Foes,” explores the governor’s history of favoring loyalty over competence in Alaska political positions. Alarmingly, there’s also a history of nontransparency, with Palin using private e-mail addresses and behind-the-scenes dealings to conceal the workings of government.

WASILLA, Alaska — Gov. Sarah Palin lives by the maxim that all politics is local, not to mention personal.

So when there was a vacancy at the top of the State Division of Agriculture, she appointed a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, to the $95,000-a-year directorship. A former real estate agent, Ms. Havemeister cited her childhood love of cows as a qualification for running the roughly $2 million agency.

Ms. Havemeister was one of at least five schoolmates Ms. Palin hired, often at salaries far exceeding their private sector wages.

When Ms. Palin had to cut her first state budget, she avoided the legion of frustrated legislators and mayors. Instead, she huddled with her budget director and her husband, Todd, an oil field worker who is not a state employee, and vetoed millions of dollars of legislative projects.

And four months ago, a Wasilla blogger, Sherry Whitstine, who chronicles the governor’s career with an astringent eye, answered her phone to hear an assistant to the governor on the line, she said.

“You should be ashamed!” Ivy Frye, the assistant, told her. “Stop blogging. Stop blogging right now!”

Ms. Palin walks the national stage as a small-town foe of “good old boy” politics and a champion of ethics reform. The charismatic 44-year-old governor draws enthusiastic audiences and high approval ratings. And as the Republican vice-presidential nominee, she points to her management experience while deriding her Democratic rivals, Senators Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr., as speechmakers who never have run anything.

But an examination of her swift rise and record as mayor of Wasilla and then governor finds that her visceral style and penchant for attacking critics — she sometimes calls local opponents “haters” — contrasts with her carefully crafted public image.

Throughout her political career, she has pursued vendettas, fired officials who crossed her and sometimes blurred the line between government and personal grievance, according to a review of public records and interviews with 60 Republican and Democratic legislators and local officials.

More Doubts on Palin

Politics, ,

Both the New York Times Editorial Board and columnist Bob Herbert share many voters’ concerns about the qualifications of Alaska governor Sarah Palin to be Vice President.

The Editorial Board:

What made it so much worse is the strategy for which the Republicans have made Ms. Palin the frontwoman: win the White House not on ideas, but by denigrating experience, judgment and qualifications.

The idea that Americans want leaders who have none of those things — who are so blindly certain of what Ms. Palin calls “the mission” that they won’t even pause for reflection — shows a contempt for voters and raises frightening questions about how Mr. McCain and Ms. Palin plan to run this country.

Herbert:

While watching the Sarah Palin interview with Charlie Gibson Thursday night, and the coverage of the Palin phenomenon in general, I’ve gotten the scary feeling, for the first time in my life, that dimwittedness is not just on the march in the U.S., but that it might actually prevail.

How is it that this woman could have been selected to be the vice presidential candidate on a major party ticket? How is it that so much of the mainstream media has dropped all pretense of seriousness to hop aboard the bandwagon and go along for the giddy ride?

For those who haven’t noticed, we’re electing a president and vice president, not selecting a winner on “American Idol.”

Ms. Palin may be a perfectly competent and reasonably intelligent woman (however troubling her views on evolution and global warming may be), but she is not ready to be vice president.

With most candidates for high public office, the question is whether one agrees with them on the major issues of the day. With Ms. Palin, it’s not about agreeing or disagreeing. She doesn’t appear to understand some of the most important issues.

I think Herbert’s lede sums up why the media is actually doing its job for once in probing Palin’s beliefs and qualifications. If the Republicans are good at anything, it’s not blinking as they pull off the big con. The slight of hand involved here is just too egregious to be overlooked, though.