The Dark Bush

With Batmania once again sweeping the nation thanks to The Dark Knight, I suppose it was inevitable that the movie's imagery would be used for political purposes. In today's Wall Street Journal, Andrew Klavan makes a rather odd comparison:

There seems to me no question that the Batman film The Dark Knight, currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war. Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past.

And like W, Batman understands that there is no moral equivalence between a free society - in which people sometimes make the wrong choices - and a criminal sect bent on destruction. The former must be cherished even in its moments of folly; the latter must be hounded to the gates of Hell.

The Dark Knight, then, is a conservative movie about the war on terror. And like another such film, last year's 300, The Dark Knight is making a fortune depicting the values and necessities that the Bush administration cannot seem to articulate for beans.

The chutzpah is breathtaking. Comparing President Bush to Batman? Let's take a moment to stop our heads from spinning and go down a quick list of reasons as to why this is nuttier than a can of cashews. Batman may be psychologically damaged and a bit weird at times, but he does not:

• Respond to the Joker's crimes by killing the Penguin.
• Kidnap the Riddler, whisk him to the Batcave, and torture him until he confesses to crimes he didn't commit.
• Tell Commissioner Gordon to stuff it while blowing up half of Gotham City and spying on the other half.
• Go on TV and tell the world that anyone who disagrees with him obviously loves the Joker and wants to see a large smoking crater where Gotham City used to be.

You get the idea. You can see political parallels in just about any movie, but this one is really a stretch, to put it mildly.

CBS' McCain Makeover

Many progressive bloggers have seen how the media tends to give John McCain a get-out-of-jail-free card on issues for which they endlessly hammer Barack Obama. For example, Jeremiah Wright's rants were replayed endlessly but John Hagee's rants were greeted with near total silence until they got too numerous to ignore.

But Katie Couric and CBS may just have hit bottom.

On last night's CBS Evening News broadcast, Couric asked McCain about Obama's claim that the so-called "Anbar Awakening" did more to quell Iraqi violence than the Surge™ did. McCain answered that, "Colonel [Sean] McFarland was contacted by one of the major Sunni sheiks. Because of the surge we were able to go out and protect that sheik and others. And it began the Anbar awakening. I mean, that's just a matter of history."

Actually, it isn't. McCain has it exactly backwards. McFarland began talking with the Sunni shieks in September 2006. President Bush announced the Surge™ four months later, in January 2007.

For someone whose entire campaign seems to be based on the supposed success of the Surge™, it's a pretty big mistake and makes one wonder just how up to the job he really is.

This is, of course, not the first time he has gotten something so basic so wrong - witness his repeated confusion of Shia vs. Sunni and his Monday claim that there's a lot more work to do on the "Iraq-Pakistan border."

Iraq and Pakistan do not share a border.

More disturbing than McCain's constant demonstrations of ignorance, however, is how CBS edited their interview last night to protect the candidate. When Couric asked McCain the above question, he responded with a confused ramble which didn't sound good at all. So what did CBS do? They took a different answer and pasted it after Couric's question, thus making it look as if McCain was being far more coherent than he actually was.

This is bad. Editing interviews for time is one thing, but cutting and pasting to make a candidate look better is way out of line.

Shocking

The Iraq War will almost certainly go down in history as America's first privatized war. Jobs once done by the military themselves, from housing and food service to vehicle maintenance and security for ranking officers, were instead contracted out to private corporations. And all too often, we have seen how the Pentagon put even egregious profiteering ahead of the safety of their own troops.

KBR, once a subsidiary of Vice President Cheney's former company Halliburton, was given the job of building and maintaining tens of thousands of structures for American soldiers serving in Iraq. The New York Times is today reporting that the electrical work in KBR-built facilities was so shoddy that during a six-month period from August 2006 through January 2007 almost three hundred electrical fires took place. Even worse, more than a dozen soldiers have been electrocuted and many others have been injured.

It now appears that both KBR and the Pentagon knew more than a year ago that the wiring work - frequently subcontracted to Iraqi companies with reputations for cheap labor and a rather lax attitude towards quality control - was substandard and dangerous. At one building complex in Baghdad, soldiers got electrical shocks on an almost daily basis. KBR electricians say they continually complained to company and Pentagon management that the wiring was a disaster waiting to happen, but their reports were ignored.

And even worse, the Pentagon did nothing even after Staff Sergeant Ryan Maseth was electrocuted in January while taking a shower. They started paying attention only when his family sued KBR to get answers and Congress got involved.

Even today, problems continue - just last month, an electrical fire in Fallujah gutted ten Marine barracks buildings. The displaced soldiers were forced to write home and ask for donations to replace their destroyed personal belongings.

It is a national disgrace that our soldiers, who have already given so much, are forced to fear for their lives - not from a military enemy, but from war profiteers allegedly on their own side. It's even more of a disgrace that Pentagon brass are so wedded to the commercial side of the military-industrial complex that they barely lift a finger to protect their own people.

This cannot be allowed to happen again. The use of private contractors in war-fighting must be reined in.

Comic Relief

Brent Rinehart is a county commissioner running for re-election in Oklahoma City. It appears that his campaign is not the smooth road he evidently thought it would be, for he is mailing out a flyer in the form of a crudely-drawn comic book. And not just any comic book, either.

No, this comic book paints Rinehart as the defender of all things good and depicts him taking on the "liberal good ol' boys" who supposedly run the county government. No big deal there. But then it goes in several very odd directions:

• An angel is seen supporting Rinehart while a devil backs his opponents.
• Rinehart (or his cartoon counterpart) attacks "pedaphiles [sic], polygamists and homosexuals who practice anal sodomy" - which must be the first time such a phrase has appeared in a campaign flyer.
• The flyer blames "the homosexuals [depicted as stereotypical toga-wearing swishy hedonists], the good ol' boy politicians [drawn as shady types in trenchcoats], and liberals to name some" for opposing him.

In a nutshell, it's quite a piece of work which truly must be seen to be believed. One would think a county commissioner would have more important business than bashing gays, but apparently not this guy.

Will he win the election? Or will the forces of evil prevail? Tune in next time!

Know-Nothing Party, 2008 Edition

Back in the 1850s, there was a nativist political movement called the American Party which existed basically to express hostility to immigrants of all types. Party members were reportedly so secretive that when they were asked about party tenets or beliefs, they were supposed to answer, "I know nothing." The party thus became known as the Know-Nothings, an appellation that is still with us today.

Last week, Barack Obama talked about how our schools need to put more emphasis on teaching foreign languages, saying that language skills are more important than ever in an increasingly globalized economy. More language skills = better jobs = more money.

Sounds pretty reasonable, right? Well, our generation's Know-Nothings responded with the vitriol and rage fully expected of ignorant people who know they're going to get creamed in November. Many accused Obama of wanting to force children to speak Spanish. The Weekly Standard called his remarks "snobbery," a line echoed by many in the conservative media who called it just one more example of how he looks down on "real Americans."

Meanwhile, the National Review indulged in some snobbery of its own, claiming that most people are too dumb to learn foreign languages or even anything beyond the three Rs. And in a neat logical backflip, they turned it into another attack on Obama for having the audacity to believe otherwise.

For their part, Fox News brought on Joey Vento, a nativist hero for putting a "This Is America: When Ordering Please Speak English" sign in his restaurant window. Calling Obama "a sick man...a scary man," Vento ranted on how Americans should shun immigrants who do not learn English. (Of course, Obama wasn't talking about immigrants of any kind, but that has never stopped Fox News from attacking him.)

Republicans are already known as the party of deliberate ignorance for their support of creationism, abstinence-only sex education and a general disdain for anything which doesn't fit their ideology. This latest tantrum does nothing to change that.

Strangers in the Land of Egypt

In the Jewish Bible, we are told not once but several times to treat other people well "because you were strangers in the Land of Egypt." It is a central theme of the Passover Seder.

Some Jews apparently need reminding of that simple fact.

Agriprocessors, set among the cornfields of Postville, Iowa, is the nation's largest kosher slaughterhouse and has long been a source of friction between its ultra-Orthodox owners and the surrounding mostly-Protestant community. (The book Postville is a fascinating look at the dichotomy between the two cultures.) It was bad enough when the company was recently raided as part of a crackdown on illegal immigrants, but more is coming out.

According to an affidavit, abuse of undocumented workers at Agriprocessors runs rampant, including:

• Workers from Guatemala and Mexico were paid far below minimum wage.
• A supervisor who sold used cars on the side threatened to fire employees who didn't buy one.
• An employee's eyes were duct-taped shut by a supervisor who then hit him with a meat hook. The employee refused to report the incident out of fear of being fired.
• Female employees were routinely pressured for sex in exchange for promotions.
• Employees were required to pay the company for use of protective equipment.
  

And on and on. There is a Yiddish expression, shande far de goyim, roughly translated as "a disgrace to the Jews," which seems to fit Agriprocessors' owners perfectly. It's a safe bet that the owners, who are known for keeping a tight watch on company operations, knew these things were happening and did nothing to stop them.

The image of the greedy, money-obsessed Jew is a stereotype that won't die, and every time Jewish business owners get caught doing something despicable like this, it just perpetuates it.

Undocumented immigrants are among the most vulnerable members of American society. At every turn, they are demeaned, victimized and blamed for everything that goes wrong. One would think that Orthodox Jews of all people would pay special attention to the Biblical injunction against oppressing other people.

But it just goes to show that Jews are just like everyone else. Some are good people, some are bad.

And some, it seems, bring disgrace to all Jews by their actions.

Whine and Cheese

Being a father with two young children, I am well acquainted with the Nickelodeon cartoon The Fairly Oddparents, in which a boy with fairy godparents wishes for all sorts of weird things. When the wishes backfire and turn disastrous, he simply wishes them away and everything returns to normal.

The Nickelodeon writers seem to be handling John McCain's economic policy. The candidate has repeatedly claimed that America's financial problems are all "psychological" and that we can just wish them away. And on Wednesday, McCain adviser Phil Gramm told the Washington Times that all this "recession" business is in our minds.

"You've heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession," he said. "We have sort of become a nation of whiners. You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline."

Buck up, act like a man, and everything will be fine, he says.

Well.

Is it "whining" when we agonize about how to make the mortgage payment? Is it "complaining" when we stay awake at night having to choose between putting food on the table and getting medicine for our kids? And is it "mental" when we worry about how to afford the gas to get to work?

I think not.

Gramm's comments - and McCain's initial support until a public outcry made him back off - betray what he really feels about the rest of us. He and his ilk literally seem to have no clue what is happening beyond their limos and gated communities. Protected by their millions of dollars, they have sealed themselves off from the rest of us, secure that they never have to face the economic squeezes that the rest of us deal with every day.

As long as the fat cats are sitting pretty, the rest of the world can go to hell.

And that is Republican economic policy in a nutshell.

The More Things Change...

It's not enough that John McCain is running on a platform of continuing all of President Bush's disastrous policies - he has to imitate the Decider's worst practices as well.

On Monday, McCain was speaking in Denver at a public venue, a town-hall event described as "open to the public." Carol Kreck, a 61-year-old librarian, took that description seriously and so in the best American tradition of vigorous debate showed up with a homemade protest sign saying simply "MCCAIN=BUSH."

And got arrested for it.

Yes, she got a trespassing ticket at a public event held on public property. Something tells me that if she had held up a sign saying "I (heart) McCain" or "McCain 2008," she would have been left alone. Instead, the Secret Service and the Denver police swept in and removed this purveyor of sedition before she could pollute the minds of right-thinking Americans.

Is McCain's ego really go fragile that he has to be protected from anyone who might disagree with him? Or are his handlers afraid that he might have a flashback to his POW days in Vietnam and go on a rampage?

Or perhaps the McCain campaign wants to continue the Bush Administration's practice of keeping the president in a bubble, surrounded by sycophantic yes-men and free of any troublesome dissent or disagreement.

And we see what that has gotten us.

Informers Among Us

Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, the Bush Administration set up Operation TIPS (Terrorism Information and Prevention System) which was little more than a civilian corps of informers. Anyone whose job takes him or her into someone's home - mail carriers, plumbers, home nurses, etc - was given the job of looking for anything "suspicious" and report it. Millions of perfectly law-abiding citizens could have been turned in for having the "wrong" books on their shelves or the "wrong" pictures on the wall. After it was leaked to the media, an uproar ensued and the program was shut down.

Until now.

The Denver Post is reporting that the White House is up to its old tricks, only under a different name. "Hundreds of police, firefighters, paramedics and even utility workers," the newspaper says, "have been trained and recently dispatched as 'Terrorism Liaison Officers' in Colorado and a handful of other states to hunt for 'suspicious activity' - and are reporting their findings into secret government databases."

Of course, "suspicious activity" is defined so vaguely as to encompass practically everything. The TLO's training materials advise informers to watch out for anyone "taking photos of no apparent aesthetic value, making measurements or notes, espousing extremist beliefs or conversing in code." This would ensnare realtors, surveyors, journalists, shutterbugs, public speakers, and a whole host of other entirely innocent people.

Joseph Stalin would be proud of the national security state we are constructing. When everyone spies on everyone else, and when people are afraid to speak out, we have become the sort of repressive society Osama bin Laden would love.

An Odd Definition of Slavery

Jonah Goldberg, who once said it's a peachy idea to bring back literacy tests to let only "properly" educated Americans vote, is at it again. In his Los Angeles Times op-ed column this morning, he actually claimed that Barack Obama's proposal of national service is akin to slavery:

There's a weird irony at work when Sen. Barack Obama, the black presidential candidate who will allegedly scrub the stain of racism from the nation, vows to run afoul of the constitutional amendment that abolished slavery.

For those who don't remember, the 13th Amendment says: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime ... shall exist within the United States."

I guess in Obama's mind it must be a crime to be born or to go to college.

In his speech on national service Wednesday at the University of Colorado, Obama promised that as president he would "set a goal for all American middle and high school students to perform 50 hours of service a year, and for all college students to perform 100 hours of service a year."

He would see that these goals are met by, among other things, attaching strings to federal education dollars. If you don't make the kids report for duty, he's essentially telling schools and college kids, you'll lose money you can't afford to lose. In short, he'll make service compulsory by merely compelling schools to make it compulsory.

Is he kidding? Does he really not know (or care) that many schools already require some form of community service as a graduation requirement, or that the No Child Left Behind act similarly threatens to withhold federal funding from schools?

Or does it count as "slavery" only when a black Democrat suggests it?

For that matter, students are required to do all sorts of things like, um, show up for class and, er, take exams. Does that mean all students are slaves, or that all children who are told to clean up their rooms and take out the garbage are slaves?

And while many children (or those who are just childish) may scream "slavery!" at being told to do anything at all, grownups know better. Goldberg really should as well.

Perhaps he should have paid more attention in school.

Desperately Seeking Distractions

John McCain is a campaign manager's nightmare, spouting endless bloopers and gaffes which make one wonder if Arizonans keep electing this guy because the sun has fried their brains. For example, he insisted yesterday that he still would have voted for invading Iraq even knowing what we have learned over the last five years - no WMDs, no 9/11 connection, no Al Qaeda connection, massive quagmire, etc.

With McCain demonstrating every time he opens his mouth why he shouldn't be president, his handlers needed a distraction badly. And they got one.

Sunday morning on CBS' Face the Nation, retired general Wesley Clark said quite reasonably that McCain's military service and time as a POW during the Vietnam War do not by themselves qualify him to be president, no matter how often he says it. The candidate's surrogates got down on their knees, thanked Jesus for the deus ex televisia, and got out the long knives, howling that Clark somehow "insulted" or "denigrated" McCain's service.

This is, of course, a total lie. Clark didn't say anything even approaching that, only how McCain can't get away with relentlessly flogging his military service as reason #1 why he should be elected. "I certainly honor his service as a prisoner of war," he said on Sunday. "He was a hero to me and to hundreds of thousands and millions of others in Armed Forces as a prisoner of war. He has been a voice on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and he has traveled all over the world."

When host Bob Schieffer mentioned that Barack Obama had never served in the military, Clark came back with "Well, I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be President."

Simple and straightforward, and so naturally the GOP pounced on it via Fox News and other propaganda outlets. Obama cringed and criticized Clark's comments, dismaying supporters who were looking forward to a candidate who fights back against manufactured Republican outrage rather than caving in. Naturally, that was not enough for the GOP jihadists, who demanded that Clark be jettisoned from the campaign altogether.

Obama should fight this, and fight it hard. If he gives in now, he will give the GOP carte blanche to go after him on every ridiculous distraction between now and Election Day. The Republicans know they're in deep trouble, so that gives them every incentive to fight dirty. Obama should not surrender to their darkest instincts.