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Saturday, April 22, 2006Firedoglake (found at PJM) complains:Okay, let me get this straight. The Leaker in Chief, George W. Bush, can leak information to Lewis Libby, with no repercussions whatsoever. Deadeye can do the same. But a whistleblower, a member of the CIA’s Inspector General’s office, leaks the existence of illegal black sites to a reporter, because she feels something wrong is being done in the name of the American people, and she gets fired. Not only fired, but pulled out and identified as nothing short of a traitor. In other words, the Nixon rule really does apply. If the president does it it’s okay, but if it’s done by a whistleblower she gets fired, with humiliation and the “traitor” tag waiting for her on her departure. [my bolds]It is not clear whether Ms. McCarthy is a whistleblower saving the world or a partisan holdover from the Clinton era trying to sabotage a democratically elected government's efforts to protect the nation and advance our causes on the world stage. That is, at best, a judgment call. One thing, however, is absolutely clear. Mary McCarthy is not the President of the United States. She was not elected by the people of the United States. By a margin of a few electoral votes and more than a million ballots, the people whose policies and worldviews she believes in were rejected for the powers that George W. Bush exercises. George W. Bush, like him or not, was elected. That brought him the powers a president ordinarily exercises. The democratically elected representatives of the people of the United States further issued a Declaration of War, bringing George W. Bush the exceptional powers a president exercises in a time of war. The democratically elected representatives of the people of the United States have further voted the money to fund George W. Bush's exercise of those powers both ordinary and exceptional. Mary McCarthy has not stood for election. The people of the United States have not elected her to make the decisions to guide a nation through a time of danger. She may disagree with their choice of leader or their leader's actions, but it is not her perogative to decide, by way of leaking information, to effect changes in or complications for U.S. policy. To the contrary, it is the president's responsibility to act appropriately to safeguard our nation in these times, including, if necessary, by releasing information calculated to secure the policies our democratically elected leadership in the face of attempted sabotage. In 2004, the American people were not unaware that George W. Bush could be taken either as a firm commander in chief doing what it took or a rogue crazy hellbent on destroying the world in a bizarre modern day crusade against Islam and the left. The American people decided by a fair margin that they'd take their bets on the first option. It is up to George W. Bush to thenceforth pursue the policies the people elected him to implement. It is not up to Mary McCarthy, nor Joseph Wilson, nor Valerie Plame, to use their unelected posts - not even positions confirmed by the people's representatives - to save us from Bush, even if we need saving from him. There is an old quip, "I'd rather be right than president." John Kerry, Joe Wilson, Valerie Plame and Mary McCarthy are free to shake their heads and believe that this is precisely the position in which they find themselves. But in a democracy, being right and being president are not the same thing. Fairly often, they're exact opposites. As such, Mr. Bush is free to make judgments and exercise powers where Mary McCarthy is not. That is not the result of Cheney-directed conspiracies, sinister plots at Halliburton nor clever pro-war manipulations by a voracious military industrial complex. At least not directly. It is the result of a constitutional democratic system that both entitles and requires Bush to set policy and prevents anyone else from doing so. Firedoglake sees in all this a certain unfairness. But to take up the thread of another old quip (the one about criticising the American president in Washington and Moscow), there is a sort of fairness here: Both I. Lewis Libby and Mary McCarthy are free to leak classified information if the Commander in Chief tells them to. And neither is free to leak classified information otherwise. Should Firedoglake object, he'd best get to work assuring the election of a different sort of president two years hence. Because the requirement for Mary McCarthy being able to leak the sort of classified information she wishes to leak is for her to report to constitutional officers who agree with her about what ought be leaked. Such officers just now being in short supply. 
posted by gbarto at 8:08 PM Thursday, April 20, 2006There's a new DilbertBlog inspired ramble at Wittgenstein's Bastard.Adams says: When I encounter extra-smart people who are also religious, I tend to ask a lot of questions trying to find out why. What I have discovered is this: Under my special powers of interrogation, the extra-smart religious people almost always admit (privately) that their religion is more of a choice than a perception. In other words, for the extra-smart, the concept of God exists, and that concept benefits their lives, independent of any literal truth. It’s a lot like being an atheist while keeping the benefits of being religious. That’s exactly the sort of extra-smart solution you would expect from extra-smart people.I think the real story, though, is not about how educated believers regard the world. It's about the ways you can shape the world you inhabit if you believe in having choices where others think they don't.
posted by gbarto at 8:32 PM Wednesday, April 19, 2006National PhallacityThe subject of tall buildings came up. The logical action was taken: Google it. That brought up this site. And provoked the perhaps un-PC observation, "A lot of these are in Asia." Of course the U.S. has the most. While Taiwan only has two. However, the Pacific Rim, as a whole, has 42 by my count. So, where are the world's 100 tallest buildings? (Numbers = percentages too, for the non-math majors out there). United States: 40 China: 16 Hong Kong: 9 UAE: 5 Japan: 4 Singapore: 4 Canada: 3 Malaysia: 3 South Korea: 3 Germany: 2 Saudi Arabia: 2 Taiwan: 2 Thailand: 2 Australia: 1 Indonesia: 1 North Korea: 1 Philippines: 1 Russia: 1
posted by gbarto at 7:34 PM In response to today's Dilbertblog, how do you know which religion is right... Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven... This is a wish, not a declaration, as far as I understand. It means Christians ought desire to make life on earth as life is/would be in heaven. How to go about it is a trickier question. Different parts of the Bible are more or less specific, but the New Testament has some pretty heady stuff about loving God who created you, loving your fellow man and treating others as you would be treated. I have a suspicion that anything in the text that contradicts this was either miscopied, mistranslated or put in out of sheer bloody-mindedness by folks who errantly slipped their commentary into the divine transcription, as it were. God is welcome to appear to as many people in as many guises as He pleases. I'm not going to try and pin Him down. I know my own personal experience with faith, am glad to share it with those who think it might help. But remembering the "do unto others" bit, I'm hesitant to knock others' experiences with faith if those experiences have brought them love and comfort - have brought them closer to that heaven on earth that we pray for God to help us to make. I fail to see how slamming airplanes into the WTC was an expression of divine love, however. Mostly, it was an act horrible enough in nature and scale to be committed by humans, but not so magnificent in size, scope or delivery of finely meted judgment as to qualify as divine at all. Therefore, this can be written off as nutcases who were messed up, even if they thought they were doing God's work. By contrast, whether Hindu, Muslim, Jew or Christian, if you help those around you to live happier lives whose joys they can appreciate and whose sorrows they can bear, you're probably on the right track, and it'd be pretty goofy of God to have it in for you - though if that be His will, it's beyond my power to stop Him. It doesn't seem likely to me, though, based on my own experience of faith. Jesus taught us to pray that God's will would be done on earth and His disciples taught us that God is love. Where love is, God is. Where love lacks, God lacks. Discussions of holy books, including mine, are interesting, but whether you use the Bible, the Koran or the Rig-Veda to justify hatred, you're off course. Whether you're using the Tao, the Dhammapada or the Elder Edda to call for compassion and understanding, there is something of the divine spark at work.
posted by gbarto at 1:21 PM |
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