Carter And Race

In some respects, the former President is the perfect person to make this argument. He's done with politics and has nothing to lose. Anyway he's already hated by the right, so what more can they do to him?

"I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he's African-American," Carter told "NBC Nightly News." "I live in the South, and I've seen the South come a long way, and I've seen the rest of the country that shares the South's attitude toward minority groups at that time, particularly African-Americans."

"That racism inclination still exists, and I think it's bubbled up to the surface because of belief among many white people -- not just in the South but around the country -- that African-Americans are not qualified to lead this great country. It's an abominable circumstance, and it grieves me and concerns me very deeply," Carter said.

The wingnuts are EXTREMELY sensitive to this. Because Carter's coming close to cracking the code here. It's really as much about class as race - corporate-dominated Republicans want the lower classes to fight amongst themselves while they steal the Treasury. But because of our particular history, that manifests itself as a racial issue, because of the disproportionate amount of minorities at the low end of the income scale. And this goes double for undocumented immigrants, which manifests itself as anyone of Hispanic origin.

Digby has more on this. Our lack of what she calls "social insurance" does lead to this animosity toward racial minorities who get "something for nothing." The fact that we're seeing similar animosity play itself out in Europe with regard to animosity toward Muslim immigrants, even while they've had well-designed social safety nets, tells me that this is something of a universal, tribal concept ingrained in our lizard brains, and unwinding it is nearly impossible, at least for some section of the population.

Psychobabble

George Bush is now the latest in a long line of Republican magical thinkers who truly believe that if they gaze with their steely resolve at the world's oil supply they can will the price down.

They can pass energy legislation. I readily concede that it it's not going to produce a barrel of oil tomorrow, but it is going to change the psychology.

Now, you have to go beyond the text a little bit here. Bush has to concede that opening up the OCS or ANWR won't produce a barrel tomorrow because that's simply reality. He goes to the "psychological benefit" point to try and set up this fantasy that oil companies want to drill for oil instead of sitting on reserves. If this gambit succeeded in lowering the price of gas it would not be profitable for the oil companies to drill it out of the ground OCS and ANWR leases are only profitable as pieces of paper to show off to shareholders and raise their stock price.

That's what this is entirely about. It's a giant con game, and the same companies that get rich from $150/barrel oil aren't going to be the ones to take any steps to lower the price. With demand rising in India and China, the only solution is to gradually get off the carbon economy and move rapidly to a post-carbon future. Absolutely no other option makes sense, and this has been true for 30 years since President Carter first proposed it.

Enhanced-ly Interrogated To Death

Burma has taken to using Bush Administration tactics to "get actionable intelligence" out of people.

A Myanmar opposition leader who was arrested during last month's mass protests against the junta died due to torture during interrogation, an activist group said on Wednesday.

In Washington, the United States threatened new sanctions against Myanmar after media reports of the death of Win Shwe.

Maybe they call it "enhanced interrogation techniques," too.

The fact is that societies who use torture aren't actually using it to obtain information. It's easier to get genuine information through a battle of wits or earning trust or a variety of legal means. Torturers employ it to dispose of enemies and intimidate anyone else from speaking out. And apologists in this country will refuse to admit that we are headed right down the same path.

Bret Stephens performs the favorite conservative trick of defending the use of torture by defining methods of torture which he favors as "not torture":

"For the record, count me as one who does not object to the interrogation to which KSM was reportedly subjected, including waterboarding. This is not because I take the use of waterboarding lightly (although I have a hard time concluding that a technique, however terrifying, to which CIA officers are willing to subject themselves experimentally can properly be counted as torture). It's because I take the threat posed by KSM seriously."

Waterboarding is torture. It was devised by torturers as a method of torture. CIA officers subject themselves to this torture as part of their training to withstand torture. Bret Stephens supports torture.

So does the US government, though it's sacrilege to admit it if you're Jimmy Carter.

And another thing. I'm sick and tired of politicians like Hillary Clinton trying to play it both ways, rejecting torture while giving a wink and a nod to defining what torture really is. Obama and Edwards have been crystal clear. Hillary is keeping her options open ever so slightly, though in the full context of her remarks it kinda sorta sounds like she's taking a bright line. The fact is that waterboarding is torture, we pretty much know that the United States has been waterboarding, and you can safely come out and say that we're torturing, and that this makes us no better than the junta in Burma or despots around the world. Hillary is trying to somehow appease wingnuts and hold fast to a notion of amassing executive power by defaulting to "we don't know exactly what's been going on." Obama is right to attack her over this.

Barack Obama thinks that America's policy on torture needs to be a lot more explicit than the winks and nods she has seemed to put forth on this important issue.

It's about drawing lines in the sand and being unequivocal. Torture is wrong. Those who engage in it or oversee it should face the fullest extent of the law.

A Roman Catholic priest accused of collaborating with the Argentine military dictatorship more than two decades ago was convicted Tuesday of crimes against humanity and sentenced to life in prison.

(Christian Federico) Von Wernich was accused of passing on to authorities sensitive information gleaned from prisoners and others who trusted him as a priest. He also was the confessor of a provincial police chief who was notorious for overseeing the arrest, torture and killing of suspects considered "subversive."

The prosecution said Von Wernich abused his clerical status by offering spiritual comfort to prisoners, then informing on them to the police. The prisoners later were tortured and killed.

There are some things that aren't negotiable.

A Labor Day Windfall

As we celebrate the working man today, a large group of them have endorsed Sen. Edwards.

John Edwards won the endorsement of the United Steelworkers and the United Mine Workers of America as more than 1,000 union members cheered the Democratic presidential candidate.

“America was not built on Wall Street. America was built by steelworkers and mine workers,” Edwards told supporters at a downtown Labor Day rally and parade [...]

Earlier, Edwards suggested New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign represents politics-as-usual in Washington and that Edwards represents a break from the past.

“We just have a disagreement,” Edwards said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “Sen. Clinton defends Washington lobbyists and the system that exists in Washington and thinks she can work within that system. If that were true we would already have universal health care. If that were true America would already be attacking global warming in a serious way.”

Edwards has also received the Carpenter's Union endorsement. Chris Dodd locked up the IAFF (firefighter's union), and Hillary Clinton has the machinist's union and the transportation workers, although the machinists also said that if their members wanted to vote Republican they should go with Mike Huckabee.

John Edwards appeals to workers because he talks about their issues. He cares about the fact that we have to work longer and for more hours just to get by in today's economy. He cares about all of us struggling with health care, even if we have insurance, even if we are the son of a famous scion like Sandra Day O'Connor. He cares about all of the manufacturing jobs leaving this country in droves, and the substandard imports coming from places like China, and the resistance to regulate them in any meaningful way. This is why he has earned the respect of people like President Jimmy Carter.

"I can say without equivocation that no one who is running for president has presented anywhere near as comprehensive and accurate a prediction of what our country ought to do in the field of environmental quality, in the field of health care for those who are not presently insured, for those who struggle with poverty."

Edwards is clearly betting it all on Iowa, with a message of populism and fighting powerful entrenched interests. It's an unusual campaign that the country may be ready to approve if they get to see it.

Carter

Not really following this Carter/Bush war of words very much, but it was amusing to me to see Carter confronted over the controversy while he was in St. Bernard Parish putting up the ONE THOUSANDTH HOUSE in that area, with Habitat for Humanity. What should have been the headline there? "Ex-President Doing Far More For New Orleans Than Current One?"

...also, it amuses me that there are somehow "unwritten rules" about what an ex-President can or can't say about the current resident in the White House, when we have an Administration and a set of Republicans that has broken every unwritten rule governing American politics over the past two centuries (Cabinet officials who have obviously broken the law should resign, you should redistrict only once a decade, signing statements shouldn't overrule statute, etc.)

You Stay Classy, Republican Party

Glenn Beck, for whom the phrase "falling upwards" was invented, yesterday managed to, in one radio shift, call for the assassination of Jimmy Carter and say Hillary Clinton can't be elected because she's the "stereotypical bitch." Quite the exacta. Today, he claimed isn't a bitch but just sounded like one, which is an enormous difference that explains everything.

Then there's Fred Thompson, who has decided that a great way to kick off his Presidential run would be to make a play for the anti-Gandhi vote. Jon Swift does a good job applying the rapier wit to that, so I'll go no further.

Gandhi might be a hero to some people, but not to Fred Thompson. "When American's [sic] think of heroism, we think of the young American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, risking their lives to prevent another Adolph Hitler or Saddam Hussein." By opposing the war in Iraq liberals are, like Gandhi, on the side of Hitler.

Mark Noonan at Blogs for Bush lines up with Thompson as well, bringing the number of those on the side of the British Empire against one guy who went on a hunger strike and became the world's greatest symbol of peace and nonviolence in history to, um, two.

I'm really not offended by a whole lot that a conservative can say, other than the fact that the likes of ABC and CNN will dutifully pay money to broadcast it, and the entire conservative movement will support a candidate who spouts it. The point, as made by Hughes for America, is that this is the face of the Republican Party in 2007. This is pretty much who they are and what they believe. It's worth not forgetting.