Newsflash: Your Rights and The Constitution Are In The Toilet

One has only to read a paper, or rather browse through Facebook, to come across daily occurrences of blatant disregard of laws and citizens' rights in this country. Ever since 9/11, the most damage those satanic terrorists inflicted in this country has been the rise of a secret police state and the erosion of the legal guarantees and freedoms we all think we still have as we happily watch the fireworks on the 4th of July. It ain't the land of the free anymore.
And guess what? It's a slippery slope. You start with "enemy combatants": no trial, no habeas corpus, no nada, stick them in Guantánamo indefinitely, torture them and force feed them if they go on hunger strike, and next thing you know, every law enforcement department in the country feels free to dump on the Constitution.
A kid in Florida is in jail since February and on half a million dollars bail for making a really stupid comment in Facebook. 
The house of a guy in Nevada is stormed by armed police after he refuses to let them in to conduct a stakeout.
A young woman buys a case of water and is arrested and sent to jail by plainclothes police as if she were Pablo Escobar.
The government keeps track of everything you ever wrote or said, now with broader powers through a secret body of law, etc.
Who's next? I don't ask where's the outrage because it is useless. We are all looking the other way, making no waves, confident that no one is ever gonna come and get us.
Barack Obama pretends to be a champion of change while presiding over the trashing of the Constitution, the disregard for the Geneva Convention, etc.
I voted for the guy twice, as most people I know. His record on immigration deportations is worse than Bush's. Countless human rights abuses happen every minute at the for-profit jails where illegal immigrants fester waiting to be deported. Guantánamo is still there, and not getting any better.
If it were Dick Cheney, you'd be up in arms.

Obama: Cruel And Unusual Punishment

They are not that different. Photo via Gawker.

Barack Obama is great at giving rousing speeches of consolation after every fresh mowing down of Americans, whether it's toddlers in Newtown or runners and their supporters in Boston, but his presidency is marred by having increased some of the cruelest policies in the history of this country. Those who love him, want to pretend this is not happening. They give the guy a pass they would not dream of giving George W. Bush. After 9/11 and with the pretext of fighting terrorism, this country threw the Constitution in the garbage and set it on fire, discarded the Geneva Convention, and imposed a series of unprecedented measures that strongly curtail the safeguarding of individual rights and the administration of true justice. What is going on in terms of lawlessness is directly proportional to our revolting public discourse about freedom and democracy. Revolting.
1. Guantánamo. Wasn't he supposed to close it? There is a terrible hunger strike going on, in which some prisoners are being force fed with tubes up their noses. Some of these prisoners have been festering in there for more than a decade. This defies the Geneva convention, the American Constitution, and every human rights law in existence. This is an outrage. For instance:

In September 2012, a Yemeni man named Adnan Latif died at Guantanamo in what officials say was a suicide. Latif had been cleared by the Bush and Obama administration, and a federal judge had ordered his release. That order was overturned on the Obama Department of Justice's appeal, however, and Latif died after a decade of imprisonment despite never having been accused of a crime. He was the ninth person to die at Guantanamo.

2. Drone attacks in Pakistan. I'm no fan of islamist barbarians, but these attacks seem to hurt far more civilians than they should. They also increase the fanatical hatred that these people harbor for the US.

3. Mass deportations of undocumented immigrants through a cruel, inhumane, utterly repulsive system manned by the Department of Homeland Security and ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), which is based on keeping detainees in private prisons that happen to make money by the inmate. This is appalling.
There have been more deportations in Obama's presidency than at any other period in American history. This has been documented extensively, but if you want your liver to collapse, read William Finnegan's piece in The New Yorker about an American man, Mark Lyttle, a unfortunately brown skinned redneck, who was deported to Mexico twice, despite the fact that he is mentally ill, and as American as apple pie and egregious human rights abuses. Out of 400,000 deportees, about 1% are American citizens who are wrongly deported because of a despicable system that is willfully blind to justice and reason.
Since it looks to the rest of the world that we only shed tears, do vigils, light candles, bring flowers and write poems when Americans suffer, think of your fellow citizens. That could be you on the wrong side of the incompetent, sadistic bureaucrats of the DHS and ICE. Hell, with enough bad luck, someone might confuse you with a member of Al-Qaeda and send you to Guantánamo, where you have no rights whatsoever.
These things not only go on unabated in the era of Hope and Change, but they are pursued with unusual zeal, because Obama's greatest fear is to be accused of being soft on terrorism, of being a tender hearted liberal who doesn't have the balls to stand up to the "enemies" of this country.
So next time he brings a tear to your eye with his oratory, remember, there but for the grace of God you go. We are letting this country become a fascist state. It has become worse during this Democratic presidency. Don't whine later when your rights are trampled.

Now Showing At A Theater Near You

The suspiciously overpraised Zero Dark Thirty.

Now Showing At A Theater Near You

The tragically funny and comically tragic documentary The Queen Of Versailles. It should be called The Collapse of The American Empire. 

Now Showing At A Theater Near You

Two very good movies opening today:

Miss Bala, by Gerardo Naranjo
...and Coriolanus, by my BF, Ralph Fiennes, and William Shakespeare. 

Lost in Detention

Yesterday I was flippantly flipping TV channels when I landed on this devastating Frontline documentary about the horrible policies of the Obama administration re the deportation and incarceration of illegal immigrants in this country. This dismal state of human rights abuses is going on in this country every day, and gets reported regularly by the Spanish broadcast media in the US, but it is as if it did not exist at all on the mainstream media. It is a hidden shameful secret, sort of like the Japanese internment camps in WWII. Particularly shameful, since it is happening on the watch of Barack Obama, who should have the decency to know better.
Because of the unwillingness and the inability of Congress and this hypocritical president to enact immigration law reform, what is happening right now is sheer enforcement without legal reform; that is, a police state nightmare. The amount of human rights abuses committed against illegal immigrants has soared. The Bush administration privatized immigrant detention centers, and currently there are 250 of them, some of which are notorious for having housed hardcore criminals in the past. These centers are not under public scrutiny, nor are immigration detainees guaranteed the right to a lawyer. The documentary focuses on one specific center in Texas (hellhole of the Western world, it seems), where scores of sexual abuses of female inmates as well as beatings and racist taunts have been denounced.
A program called Secure Communities is supposed to deport criminal illegal aliens exclusively, but instead stops people because they had a broken taillight or did not signal a turn, and if they find they are undocumented, it sends them to detention centers that treat them as hard core criminals.  The Obama administration has made this program mandatory in every state and it requires the cooperation of local law enforcement, which basically turns the local police force into informers for the immigration authorities. There is something about this entire exercise that seems a violation of human rights. If a cop stops you for a broken taillight, and finds you are undocumented, is that his job, to rat you out to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (the cynically named ICE) so that they can detain or deport you?  There are many hardworking men and women who get separated from their families in this way. If you see this movie without sound, you'd think it takes place in China or the former Soviet Union or some such totalitarian nightmare.
The Obama administration has not only ignored the promises it made to the Hispanic community about immigration reform, it has hardened its stance on illegal immigrants, surpassing the number of deportees and detainees of the Bush years. ICE needs to fill a quota of 400,000 deportees a year, so innocent people get swept into this nightmare. This may include people who entered the country legally but let their visas expire, or simply good people without papers. 46% of illegal immigrants now have families in the US, many of which are comprised of American born children. Mothers and fathers are being deported and held in detention indefinitely, never told when they are going to be deported or released. Families are destroyed, and all this is because Congress and the White House refuse to deal with this dire national policy crisis.
Now, those on the right say that illegal immigrants are criminals and are breaking the law. But as Anthony Romero of the ACLU points out, immigration enforcement is an administrative matter, not a criminal matter. Coming into a country illegally cannot be treated in the same scale as other more heinous crimes. There are degrees of malfeasance; anti-immigration hysterics have got to stop pretending that coming here illegally is tantamount to murder, rape, or other hard crimes.
And why are only the workers penalized for illegality and not the businesses who hire them and encourage them to stay? The people who give illegals jobs are also breaking the law and should also be punished. But Americans want to have their cake and eat it too. They want cheap, unregulated labor for their businesses but at the same time they want to criminalize the workers who are trying to make a living. The sheer hypocrisy is revolting.
I am disgusted with Obama for many other reasons, but this is more than a disappointment; it feels like a huge betrayal. Democrats think that liberals don't have a choice in this coming election, and are scared of a Republican victory so they are going to vote Obama whether they are disenchanted or not. This should not be the case. Hispanics, as one expert said, are not going to vote Republican, since that would continue the same inhumane policy, but they can certainly threaten to withhold their very significant vote until something gets done to correct this situation.
I will not vote for this president unless I see real change, and from what I've seen so far, this is very unlikely. So what if the Republicans win? A Republican administration could not be much worse than what we already have.

The Aftermath of Disaster

This was published in Spanish by Reforma exactly one year after the attacks.

After the initial shock, apparently I went back to my normal, ornery self:

Tuesday, September 11. Night.

South of 14^th Street, the island is cordoned off. Nobody can go below 14^th Street unless they show proof of residence in the area or are joining the rescue mission. Phones don’t work very well. I have less trouble calling my family in Mexico than making a local call. I feel relatively quiet, but I know my emotional distance comes from some automatic defense mechanism and not from my own volition.

The silence on the street is total, except for the sound of police sirens, helicopters and fire trucks, which is rather sparse given the magnitude of the disaster. I get international calls from some concerned friends. They know I live nearby. I watch TV and have internet on at the same time. On TV they regurgitate the horrible images of the explosions and collapses over and over, ad nauseam.

I have never heard such silence in my block, a spot full of usually crowded bars. A city in which people go out to eat, to drink, to dance seven days a week, has been completely silenced. A permanent hum scares sleep away. I don’t understand where it comes from. I open the windows to better listen to it. The smell of burnt rubber invades my apartment. I realize that what I’m hearing is the labored breathing of the buildings. 

Wednesday, September 12.

Today it smells worse. Giuliani has said that we should stay at home and we obey him. Giuliani, resented by many in this liberal city because of his abrasive personality and his puritanical and paternalist tendencies, behaves compassionately, intelligently and prudently, and he inspires trust. I have been cooped up at home all day. The phone rings every 15 minutes. Friends from all over the world call to comfort themselves that we are fine. Their calls make more bearable the loneliness and terror that have settled in the pit of my stomach. My intuition is that they are just as scared of the new world disorder that threatens to engulf us all. The calls are of mutual support. My friend Delia writes that her young daughter dreams at night of people jumping out of windows.

Between the acrid ashes and the media coverage, I’m disgusted. I decide to go outside and sniff around. Kids play under the cloud of dust and ash, followed closely by their parents. Some bars, restaurants and cafes are open. I see clusters of people standing on the corners that look south. I don’t understand what they are looking at. People wander around aimlessly from one corner to the next, shooting pictures and videos.

In this town of screamers, few people talk. At the corner of Houston and Sixth Ave, next to the fire station, a crowd gathers. People cheer every time rescuers or ash-covered firefighters go by. A young woman scrutinizes a lamppost and I decide she is crazy until I focus my eyes on the post and see the flyers with the pictures and names of the missing and the desperate messages imploring for news of their whereabouts.

I cry because these bastards have paralyzed my unstoppable city. But not completely. On the opposite corner, two Italian restaurants have opened their doors and the beautiful people eat pasta and drink wine au plein air, air rife with traces of asbestos, pulverized concrete and what in my view have got to be the human ashes of at least five thousand souls. However, I’m not surprised. I always knew that New Yorkers would never relinquish their inalienable right to go out for dinner, regardless of whatever catastrophe the future may bring. With this logic, I tell my husband, who is safe and sound in Panama, that this is the best week to make reservations at the hottest New York restaurants. But who has the appetite?
Since there is no traffic south of 14^thSt., some people make their dreams come true and glide through the empty streets on their rollerblades and bicycles.

Something never before seen: people look you in the eye as they pass you by. Men see me walking alone and look like they are ready to comfort me (and look like they are ready to be comforted back). The way things are, it seems that this week all the single girls may find a beau.

A guy gives me a small comic book. The doodles are very modern, but the content turns out to be an exhortation to return to the lap of our lord Jesus Christ, sponsored by one of those sects there’s no shortage of in this country, of loony evangelicals who are way too eager for the end of the world. Of course, they could not take long to materialize. How did they get to New York is beyond me, Greenwich Village even more so. Or were they already here?

At night there is thunder and lightning and military planes zoom by. I’m not scared. I have the air conditioner on to avoid hearing the silence. 

Thursday, September 13. 

North of 14^th Street, Manhattan seems perfectly normal, except taxis refrain from honking their insane horns. In the advertising agency I work at, I learn that one of our colleagues has lost his niece. My eyes tear up with indignation constantly.

Some of our clients have asked us to take a look at our commercials currently on air to make sure they don’t say things like “ A delicious explosion of flavor” or “A bomb of refreshment”. We make jokes in bad taste: “The Osama of sodas”, “A Jihad of nutrition for your family”.

Bush has declared that we all should go out at noon and pray at the worship place of our choice, which seems to me the stupidest idea that can occur to the president of a country in crisis, in a city which may still harbor extremists strapped with explosives. Besides, as an agnostic, I feel frankly discriminated against. In fact, I feel very alone in my distaste for these government-sponsored paroxisms of spirituality.

To judge from the tone that the media here have adopted, from now on we will be exposed to an indiscriminate barrage of sentimentalism and cheap patriotism. I have already started getting despicable chain letters with feelings of unity, prayer and revenge. The news are no longer news. They are lachrymose testimonies of the poor people who are desperately looking for their dead ones. I wonder what they are saying in the Middle East. What does Saddam think, for instance, what has Muammar declared, what’s the story in Kabul. If I watch the local news, I’m never going to find out. Here they are showing a paramedic that found a doll amid the rubble (there’s always one) and he intends to erect a monument with it if no one claims it.

The cloud of acrid dust has spread beyond 14^th street. I search for mouth masks at the drugstores. They are all out.

Bush, who since the incident, has the mien of a kid lost in the supermarket, uses an inflammatory and reductive rhetoric that seems taken straight out of a Hollywood action flick. We’re gonna smoke them, he says, Wanted, dead or alive. I haven’t the slightest doubt that this helps incite the incidents of harassment against members of the Arab-American community, and what is worse, against anybody who wears a beard and/or a turban. An idiot screams at the owner of a falafel joint nearby, “you make money here, but this is my country”, followed by a string of invective. Even though there are four Arabs and one aggressor, they remain silent. Standing half a block away, I can feel their fear. I don’t dare intervene.

Between testimonies, I read in the CNN news ticker the following item: an Islamic extremist in a German jail called the American authorities and warned them that there would be an attack on the WTC. Nobody talks about that. Nobody talks about the fact that Osama was trained by the CIA and that the Taliban is the result of American intervention in Afghan affairs. Nobody mentions these details, except some liberal friends that send me emails with such information. But, like Seamus Milne of The Guardian said, Americans react as if this instance of terror is a sheer impulse of evil that came out of nowhere, random and incomprehensible. They can't conceive that they may have done something to provoke it. They don’t know how much and why they are hated. It’s true. Information exists in this country and it is available to anybody, but few are interested. In general, the lack of American curiosity about the world is alarming.

 Union Square has become a spontaneous meeting ground to write thoughts, leave votive candles, hang pictures, play the congas. A group of young people sing and dance Give Peace A Chance, a song I’ve always found intolerably kitschy. A vigil has been organized at 7 pm. People are asked to light a candle in memory of the victims. A big crowd has gathered. A couple appears dressed as the Twin Towers. They are on stilts, dressed in black velvet leggings covered with shards of mirrors. They dance among the people, who are taking pictures. Why do these expressions of solidarity disgust me so much? Because they are vulgar, childish and innocent. Everything becomes a circus. I go to a movie and spend the entire screening thinking that an extremist is going to blow us all to pieces. 

Friday, September 14.

A regular day. North of 14th St. it looks like nothing ever happened. Taxis blare and create jams, people eat in restaurants.  New York, as usual.  

Saturday, September 15.

A friend who was upstate at the time of the catastrophe wants me to go with him to Canal St., which is now the border of the city. He wants to see something concrete. The only concrete thing to see are hordes of people with little American flags and tourists. People are snapping up postcards with pictures of the towers. The only concrete thing there is to see is a smoking crater at the end of the city’s canyons.

We have lunch at a restaurant where we are treated as if we had descended straight from heaven. Every two minutes they ask us if the food is to our liking. In fact, it is excellent. It is the first decent meal I’ve had since Tuesday. I feel it has been prepared with an intense desire to forget everything and come back to our banal normalcy. It tastes like glory.

A group of friends and I go to the movies. We need to get out of this funk. We pick Barbet Schroeder's Our Lady of The Assassins, based on the book by Fernando Vallejo. The film is in Spanish, which is delicious. And it turns out to have plenty of resonance. It’s about a different kind of terror (drug violence in Colombia), but it is hilarious, blasphemous, violent, and we enjoy it. A lot of its dark humor escapes the small audience. One of us says that when you live with the social injustice that causes this kind of savagery, you have a much more refined sense of irony. A phrase in the film is burnished in my mind. I paraphrase: 

“But child, don't you know that the difference between thought and action is civilization?"

My friends go home but I don't want to go to sleep. I go back to Union Square. The candles and the congas are still there. There’s a group of pale bearded guys and skeletal women with long skirts that sing songs only they know. Another sect. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of lit votive candles, bouquets of flowers, poems, exhortations for moderation, prudence and sanity. The catch phrase of the day is "An eye for an eye and we all go blind". People, respectful, are silent.

I find a Mexican flag. Someone has written on it 500 mexican ilegals (sic) unnamed. I find it an exaggerated number, but I don't doubt it. They are the kitchen helpers, the pizza delivery guys, the bathroom cleaners. I have not seen photocopies of their portraits, nor their names, or faces or teary relatives on TV. 

I can’t say I’m praying for them and their families, but my mind finally becomes silent.

Dear Barack, It's Me Enchilada

When I have nothing better to do, I like to check in on the souls that read this little blog. There's my loyal reader in Finland, sundry readers who want to know about churros and/or Nazis, or who like me, hate bed & breakfasts, or somebody in Riga, Latvia, in need of info about micheladas.
So imagine my surprise when I saw this in my stats page:

Is David Plouffe coming to get me? Am I a target for a CIA covert assassination plot a la Abbottabad? Or could this be the very Barack H. Obama I've been giving grief to for the last couple of weeks? If this is the case, let me put on my make up. 

Hey, Barack, (you dreamboat, you) if you can hear me: HI!!!!

How's it going? Not too good this Summer, huh?  Well, at least you are not David Cameron. The rioting hasn't started stateside yet.

I'm sure you understand why I'm upset with you. You, of all people, are very hard to accept as a disappointment. I never believed you were a die-hard liberal, but when people start missing the liberal policies of Richard Nixon while a Democratic president is in office (and not any Democrat; you, sir: hope personified), it means we're in deep doodoo. What pains me and many fellow Obamaniacs, is that you seem to have landed to the right of moderate Republicans. We don't understand where you are coming from. You got a raw deal coming after the Worst President Ever, but there is no reason why you should make it rawer. I hate it when I read that your administration is still practicing many of your predecessor's odious policies. I do not agree with your policy of non-confrontation and conflict avoidance. It probably sounds good and lofty enough on paper but in reality it makes you weaker. You cannot be above the fray. You ARE the fray. You won the mandate from the American people and now you have to lead and impose the values that got you to this office in the first place. Screw compromise. Compromise works when the two sides are rational, but this is not the case with your Republican foes.
So please stop being nice to Republicans, listen to Warren Buffett, raise taxes on the rich and the corporations, make sure the horribly watered down health bill goes into effect and don't forget to run the country, instead of a campaign.
If you do this, and raise stimulus spending, stop dicking around with immigration, and please your die-hard constituents like moi, I will vote for you come 2012.
Don't think for a second, and this goes for your campaign advisers too, that I will vote for you no matter how much you screw up because there are no better alternatives. I don't care if this country goes to hell in a hand basket. I will castigate the democratic party if you guys don't get your act together. This may be the first time in my life that I sit out an election. Or I may vote for Rand Paul, just for spite.

xoxo
Enchilada

ps: my best to Michelle (luv her) and the girls.

Plus ça change

Not to ruin your lovely weekend or anything, but here are some fresh remnants of the depravity of the Bush administration.  Immigrant detainees dying in private jails and officials scrambling to cover up their deaths and mistreatment.
Every time stuff like this surfaces, I wonder how is it that Bush and Cheney and their despicable minions roam the Earth unscathed.
Instead of jail, why don't they just deport the people? Do you know that they have detained legal immigrants because of bureaucratic technicalities that then disappear into a nightmarish rabbit hole from which there is no way out? 
Enjoy the outrage!

Liberal Jews: It's About Time.

I have been saying this for years:

About J Street, a new, much needed liberal Jewish lobby in Washington (from the NYT Magazine):

We’re trying to redefine what it means to be pro-Israel. You don’t have to be noncritical. You don’t have to adopt the party line. It’s not, ‘Israel, right or wrong.’ ”

American Jewish voters are overwhelmingly liberal and Democratic, but as Jewish groups moved to the right along with Israel in the 1980s, the groups increasingly made common cause with the Republican Party, which from the time of Ronald Reagan was seen as more staunchly pro-Israel than were the Democrats. Jewish groups also began to work with the evangelicals who formed the Republican base and tended to be fervidly pro-Israel. Indeed, when I met with Malcolm Hoenlein in July, he had just come from a huge Washington rally sponsored by Christians United for Israel, whose founder, the Rev. John Hagee, has denounced Catholicism, Islam and homosexuality in such violent terms that John McCain felt compelled eventually to reject his endorsement during the 2008 presidential campaign.

(AND THE JEWS ARE NEXT, BELIEVE YOU ME. BEING FRIENDS WITH RABID EVANGELICALS IS LIKE THE US GOVERNMENT GIVING MONEY TO THE TALIBAN IN ORDER TO FIGHT THE RUSSIANS. A VERY BAD IDEA)

As Martin Indyk, a former American ambassador to Israel and now the director of foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, puts it, “In the Bush years, when Israel enjoyed a blank check, increasing numbers of people in the Jewish and pro-Israel community began to wonder, If this was the best president Israel ever had, how come Israel’s circumstances seemed to be deteriorating so rapidly?” Why was Israel more diplomatically isolated than ever? Why had Israel fought a savage and apparently unavailing war with Hezbollah in Lebanon? Why were the Islamists of Hamas gaining the upper hand over the more moderate Fatah in Palestine? “There was kind of a cognitive dissonance,” Indyk says, “about whether a blank check for Israel is necessarily the best way to secure the longevity of the Jewish state.”

Abraham Foxman, the head of the Anti-Defamation League, was born in Poland in 1940, and he often sounds as if only eternal vigilance will ward off the Holocaust in the offing. Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, was born in a camp for displaced persons, to parents who were Holocaust survivors. The prophetic voice comes naturally to such men. So does the sense of besetting peril. Important Jewish organizations are normally reached through a series of locked doors presided over by glassed-in functionaries. The peril may be real. But it can also feel like a marketing device. “You know what these guys are afraid of?” says M. J. Rosenberg, Washington director of the Israel Policy Forum. “Their generation is disappearing. All the old Jewish people in senior-citizen homes speaking Yiddish are dying — and they’re being replaced by 60-year-old Woodstock types.”

Time for new blood and new and constructive ideas that will protect Israel, not help destroy it.

As for Norman Putzhoretz, Leon Wieseltier makes a very good case about why Jews are liberal and how Podhoretz is basically talking out of his tuches.

They Are Closing Hutto!

I wrote about this disgraceful prison for illegal immigrant detainees (and their children), after reading an alarming article in the New Yorker.
Apparently, the Obama administration is going to "reform" and make "more civil" the detention centers for illegal immigrants. I find it interesting that these news appeared exactly two days after the NY Times claimed that the Obama administration is continuing the inhumane policies of Bush's persecution of illegals. Things that make you go hhhmmm...
This is one case in which public outcry can bring about changes in policy and I feel like screaming hurray!, but I am wary of the Obama administration's claims of reform. Lately, they seem to be applying this word too liberally to stuff that isn't really changing all that much. Like health care, for example. Or torture. In Hutto's case I was exultant, until I read that they are going to transform it into a detention center for illegal female immigrants. Hutto was conceived as a maximum security prison, and the premises are not fit for the detainees, who are not dangerous criminals.
Still, it looks like we should count our blessings with this administration.
It's not change; it's change, kind of.

Grading Obama

CNN has a fun and kinda stupid interactive report card for Obama's 200 days. It's interesting to look at the numbers. Everybody is unhappy with the performance so far. But the flaw of the grading system is that it doesn't say why. Both blue and red states give him bad marks on health care, but perhaps for totally opposite reasons. One can't tell from the poll. But a good thing is that except for 12 benighted states, the rest of the union gives the Republican party an F. This is encouraging.
CNN asks people to comment (read comments at your own peril.). Here is mine.

I give Obama an average of C-.
Obama has been disappointing for many of us liberals that voted for him for a number of reasons. The government bailout of the banks seems to have been conducted by insiders to benefit their banker pals, and even though it is possible that the measures may be helping stem our economic decline, unless more stringent regulation of banking practices in enacted, it's going to continue being business as usual and an ethical scandal.
I am extraordinarily disappointed with Obama and the Democrats' handling of health care reform. This country needs a single payer system, even if it means more taxes. Our health cannot be beholden to the greed of insurance companies. It's a pity that the people who are most affected by this unjust state of affairs are the ones who complain the loudest about getting health care for all. Obama is too busy trying to be liked by everybody to have the cojones to push real reform. In this case, he looks like politics as usual to me.
In terms of foreign affairs, anything is better than the preceding 8 years and we have regained some of our standing in the world. But he needs to stop the grandstanding and get down to brass tacks. Let's get out of Iraq as soon as possible. Let's push aggressively for a solution to the Palestinian issue. Let's understand exactly why we are in Afghanistan, what is it going to take, and if it's going to work. Let's look at our south of the border neighbor more actively, and push for improvements on the immigration problem and the drug war, which Mexico is waging on it's own to satisfy the insatiable demand for drugs of American citizens.
Obama promised to stop torture and close Guantanamo. It's not clear that this is happening.
The Republican leadership is an undignified freak show. They are imploding and they deserve it. They are completely out of touch. They are bizarre.
Congress in general is disgraceful. Our elected representatives work for the corporate lobbies and not for the citizens, regardless of party affiliation. There must be political reform.
The media is pathetic. There is no real coverage of what is happening in Iraq and Afghanistan. More time is devoted to Michael Jackson or to absurd and offensive fringe movements like "birthers", than to informing the American public of the real issues facing us. No news organization can be trusted, because none is delivering the news. The media is overrun by hysterical personalities that bring the lowest polarizing discourse to the table. Walter Cronkite and the likes of him are gone forever.
Obama needs to act on his promises and he needs to stop behaving as if he is still courting favor with red states and blue states. He is the president now. Time to put his foot down.

Let's get outta there! NOW!

Colonel Reese, an American adviser in Iraq, is saying in no uncertain terms, (blunt is how the Times puts it) that it is time to say Adios amigous! and leave Iraq.
Hey, not a moment too soon! What took you so long?
His memo makes for great reading, even though it has the tone of a superior being who has finally ran out of patience with the pesky, stubborn natives. That is, the tone of a colonialist from the 19th century.
In a nutshell: we can't change their ways and we are not welcome anymore, plus they're bleeding us to death.
He says, let's declare victory and call it a day. I have a problem with the victory part, because it don't look like no victory to me, but just call it what you please, and let's vamoose.
Why do Americans insist that other people are going to abandon their culture and their entrenched ways and embrace, digest, and ape a totally different culture in a matter of months? Is this the height of naiveté or arrogance, or both? We can't even change our own culture HERE.
The US invades and occupies a country under false pretenses. This country is ruled by a truly evil bastard whose only way to keep the ethnic chaos in check is through a reign of utter terror. This is a deeply abused and traumatized country, but Americans think that they will "liberate" it and all of a sudden the grateful Iraqis, who would not know democracy or freedom if it bit them in the ass, have not known it and will not know it for the next thousand years, are going to all start acting like Thomas Jefferson. Instead, they start a massive bloodbath against themselves and the occupying forces.
We cannot invade a country over false pretenses, because of sheer greed and then pretend we were there to save it. And who should be held accountable for this criminal mess? To the gallows!

To clean up the mess we are leaving behind would probably require at least 50 years and too much money to count, neither of which we can afford. As many commenters say, let's bring the troops back and use the gazillions we are wasting over there for better things at home; i.e, single payer healthcare.

I quote Mr. Byron Jones from Pennsylvania:

...we spend trillions of dollars for stupid "regime changes" aka Vietnam, Nicaragua, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. without so much as flinching. Saving lives and providing affordable medical care for our own citizens, well, that is something entirely different. Can anyone explain the logic? In other words, you can use my tax dollars to kill someone I don't know, but God forbid that you use my tax dollars to help my neighbor obtain affordable health insurance!

Bring the troops home NOW.

And no, it's not refreshing if you can't speak English while in office, or while running away from it.

I've had it with the people who think that inarticulateness in politics is charming and refreshing.
Go read a fucking book!
And I am always amazed that the people who champion this ignoramus are the same people who get all bent out of shape when immigrants don't speak the King's English. For crying out loud. At least they are immigrants. They already speak one language. And they are not the governor of anything.
Having said this, the edited version of Palin's resignation speech is very much fun and a good grammar lesson to boot.
Thanks to Ethan for posting in FB!

P.S.: And yes, the "liberal" media laughs at you, because you are laughable. You fully deserve the excoriation.

Fear is your best friend

Great article in the Times about intuition and how it can save lives in battle.
One would have thought it obvious, but now that they are mapping the brain they can see how this works physically.
I'm reproducing parts of the comment posted by one Tom Colton, an ex-soldier. I don't know if it's true, but it is quite compelling:

Lots of infantry platoons have a guy who can sense an ambush. The keys to knowing if you should rely on him are: Success. Does he keep you alive on a regular basis? And adjustment. Is he squared away, or a neurotic? If the latter, then his senses may be more often than not, skewed...
And something else was noted frequently in Vietnam by those who conducted combat actuarial studies:
In a firefight, Jocks are the first ones usually killed, because they never learned about fear during sports.
Thugs and Gangstas get killed next, because they have an inflated idea of their prowess.
Then the Bullies buy the farm while trying for the first time to move beyond their real cowardice.
And finally: In Combat-The four eyed pencil necked geeks rule, because they work as a team, follow orders, feel responsible for and protective of the other guys in their rifle squad and and most importantly-they paid attention during training. They advance thru their fear, surmount real terror and commit great acts of selfless heroism. And they almost never get a medal.
This country is full of dopey lookin' old guys who once confronted stark terror in extreme danger and carried out great acts of valor and sacrifice against armed enemies engaged with them in a combat zone. Most of these guys are never honored at the time and their families will most likely never know. Instead, we worship phoney war heroes like Bob Kerrey, John Kerry and John McCain who milk their hero status for power, wealth, trophy wives and adulation.
I was never a hero, but I saw regular guys do things that no Bruce Lee, Bruce Willis, Chuck Norris, Steven Segal, nor Arnold Schwarzenegger, or any other phoney Hollywood hero would ever do. Hunches about danger and escaping from it is baloney. Hunches about danger and fighting thru it to complete your mission are what really counts..."I am the Infantry... Queen of Battle...Follow ME!

As I think Mr. Colton is saying, we are the only country on Earth with an inflated and deeply distorted sense of heroism, which among other things is responsible for bullshit like saying "Mission Accomplished" at the beginning of an endless, tragic war. If we were more respectful of fear, perhaps we would not be in this predicament right now. Too much fear can of course be cowardly and paralyzing, but lack of fear is arrogance and hubris.

Inauguration Nation

Joy.
Lovely to see all those happy people at the Mall, (for once, it's good to go to the mall). Many proud African Americans who came from all over to witness history. Right on!
I loved Aretha. I loved her Of Thee I Sing, with that voice of hers that moves mountains. And I loved the hat. A big, huge present with a big fat ribbon to the nation. Right on!
Rick Warren was totally out of tune with the sobriety the occasion requires. It was like inviting Dr. Phil. Like inviting a game show host. Like inviting a guy in a gorilla suit. Nowhere near the same league as the rest of the proceedings. What a fake fuck. I found his mentions of Jesus utterly offensive. What does Jesus have to do with anything? Warren reminded me of those ridiculous people who pray so that the garage door opens or so they can find a lost can of tuna. Totally wrong fucking choice.
I hope Obama learned his lesson.
Particularly since he was kind enough to mention us unbelievers in the part about the religions that make up this country. And he made a point about restoring science's rightful place in America. This means we are moving to the present! Everybody, don't forget your belongings from the dark ages! Yay!
As for 43. I thought I saw a shade of pain and humiliation. He looked stunned and lost. It must be hard to sit through a most joyous, unequivocal and universal celebration of your departure. In the White House he was sheltered from the people's scorn, but outside its walls, he is defenseless, and that is how he looked. Supremely depressed and uncomfortable. I almost feel sorry for the putz. But not quite.
Now, my Hispanic colleagues, sartorial experts that they are, upon seeing Barbara Bush and Bush Pere, were alarmed by the fact that both were wearing retina burning purple scarves. According to them, people wear purple to funerals. I wouldn't put it past them. Regardless of whether it's some sort of inside snide joke or they are tasteless and clueless, they looked absurd. She seems like a rock, but he looks wobbly and frail. I guess his son's debacle hasn't been good for his health.
The speech was great.
This is the speech in essence: We are in deep shit together, so get your shit together, and maybe we can get out of the shit. I liked that he started out giving us a lengthy list of bad news. I'm no dreamer, is what he's sayin'.
It was beautifully delivered, nicely written and it had some wonderful remarks here and there. About not sacrificing our values for our safety, for instance. About his own father, who 60 years ago would not have been served had he entered a restaurant. About irresponsible greedy people. About all the touch points (Orwellian marketing speak) that got him elected.
He's promising a whole lot. God knows how he intends to deliver.
But as Malia says, it better be good.

In other words: impeach the bastards

It's nice to be able to rely on Frank Rich when one is just too tired for outrage. He has the goods, and commits them to paper:

THREE days after the world learned that $50 billion may have disappeared in Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, The Times led its front page of Dec. 14 with the revelation of another $50 billion rip-off. This time the vanished loot belonged to American taxpayers. That was our collective contribution to the $117 billion spent (as of mid-2008) on Iraq reconstruction — a sinkhole of corruption, cronyism, incompetence and outright theft that epitomized Bush management at home and abroad.
The source for this news was a near-final draft of an as-yet-unpublished 513-page federal history of this nation-building fiasco. The document was assembled by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction — led by a Bush appointee, no less. It pinpoints, among other transgressions, a governmental Ponzi scheme concocted to bamboozle Americans into believing they were accruing steady dividends on their investment in a “new” Iraq.

Now it's our duty as citizens, and I wish I could invite Mr. Obama to join us, but I doubt he'll follow through, to demand accountability and put those motherfuckers in front of the firing squad they so richly deserve.
It's funny how people are outraged about Bernie Madoff but they brush off the 8 years of unmitigated corruption and slime of the Bush administration. If they channeled a small percentage of that outrage towards Bush and Cheney, those two would be in jail.

The joyful aftermath

Now that I have been able to collect my thoughts, scattered as they were by more powerful emotions such as joy and relief and pride and amazement, here they are:

McCain's concession speech was the greatest moment of his campaign. Had he sounded and acted like last night throughout, he may not have been trounced the way he was. Call me paranoid, but I thought that making it about African-Americans at the very beggining of the speech still had a whiff of scaremongering amongst his base. It was over 100 million people who voted, it was about more than African Americans. Thus, I didn't find the speech as gracious at the very beginning, but maybe it's just that there is a certain tone-deafness in McCain's camp in general. Then McCain corrected course. When alluding to the mistakes he made, I could not help but parse this as the major blunder of choosing Palin for a running mate (against his wishes, according to a New Yorker article). About her, there is no need to expound. She showed who she was, or rather who she wasn't from the very beginning and it just kept getting worse. The way she was manipulated by the campaign and used to unleash ugliness was not only cynical and disgusting but a terrible setback for women and for everybody in America. There were many other mistakes that showed McCain was out of touch with the reality of most people. The condescension towards Obama, the racial baiting, the patronizing tone towards the American people (Joe the Plumber?) but most damaging was the ideological tunnel vision of his campaign strategy. Their base, to which they pandered and because of which they floundered, is irrelevant today. Most American people have more common sense and more authentic decency and, as the results show, more pressing problems, than those fringe lunatics that Steve Schmidt and Karl Rove think can win them an election. Republicans showed that they live in a dangerous ideological bubble of their own making that has now felicitously (for us) and disastrously (for them) exploded. The fact that they pretended that G.W. Bush, the biggest elephant in the room in the history of the world, wasn't there, didn't help any. The entire McCain campaign symbolizes neatly and beautifully everything that is wrong with the Republican party. Now they have four years to regroup and fix it, and perhaps they can become a viable party again for those tax-obsessed people who believe in total self-reliance, not for evangelical loonies and intolerant bigots and ultra-rightist extremists.

I was struck by the cold indifference of McCain's body language as he patted Palin in the back and as he almost forgot that his Barbie wife was standing beside him (who must have been the most relieved American of all). He barely acknowledged her, and not for the first time. Compare that to what goes on with the Obamas and I'm just thrilled we have a power couple finally who seems to be having an actual, living, breathing intimate relationship. They are a real couple. I'm thankful just for that. I believe it is more important than it seems (think the Nixons, the Fords, the Clintons, the Bushes and the Bushies. I rest my case). I also love Biden's wife. She seems authentic.

And then we have our winner, who is not only intensely charismatic and capable and intelligent and a magnetic orator (and super duper handsome), but who ran, as he himself said, the best political campaign ever. If he runs this country with the intelligence and strategic acuity and steadfastness and nimbleness with which he ran his campaign, we may have a formidable president. For a spine-chilling comparison in leadership styles just think back to Hillary Clinton's debacle and/or the McCain campaign. Both seem rudderless and opportunistic and willing to shift and pander at any cost for the big prize. Meanwhile, "That One", breezes through on message, on point and without psychodrama. That's who we need at the helm.

I found it interesting that the victory music playing was no Motown or Stevie Wonder. It was a bombastic film score from John Williams for The Patriot. As an inside joke it works real well. But it is also a cunning choice because, like Obama's victory speech, it is about America, not about our different particularities. The Clintons used Fleetwood Mac (Don't Stop). It would have been a joyous get down and boogie had the Obamas used any of the magnificent music that is the African American legacy to this country, but it was politically right to use something generic, because this presidency, as Obama mentioned time and time again in the speech, needs to be about everybody, not about him being a Black man. Still, in the speech, he did not disappoint in this respect. Nobody can accuse this man of being an Oreo. The speech was perfectly nuanced between inclusiveness and the acknowledgment of his historical reality and its astounding implications for America and the world. When he mentioned what that 106 year old Black lady who got out and voted had been through to get to this day, through Birmingham, Montgomery and Selma (and I will add Katrina), he brought it all home.

But images can speak louder than words even as magnificent and adroit as our new President-Elect's. The faces in Grant Park, a veritable mosaic of color; the booing faces in Arizona, a sea of white. Guys, I have news for you: that is not America anymore. Hasn't been for a while now. America is more like Obama, an amalgam of races and nations and colors and creeds. Sasha and Malia beaming, their parents looking and acting like parents and like a couple. And I was surprised by Obama's gravitas, no doubt influenced by the sad loss of his grandmother, but also I'm sure by what he correctly deemed appropriate for the moment. He looks like a statesman, talks like a statesman and acts like a statesman. I'm in love.

I'm also in love with Michelle Obama. I can't wait for her to be the first lady. She rocks.

I have been reading the comments in the NY Times (the schmaltziness gets boring pretty fast). Apparently, Australians are uncommonly happy about the results. But I have not seen comments from Israel. Israel should be rejoicing just like the rest of the world. This man is committed to a foreign policy that will restore America's standing in the world and I'm sure this will include plans for a lasting peace in the Middle East (which means more peace for all the planet). Jews need to understand that he and Biden, not the macho bluster and evangelical craziness of Bush and the Satanic self-interest of Cheney, will be in the best interests of Israel and of the Palestinians.

Lastly, I heard the message that outgoing POTUS sent Obama. It sounded like a frat boy talking to a buddy. Awesome dude! I must agree, but it is so below the standards the occasion requires. Luckily, we can look forward to the winds of change from now on. Oh, happy day.

Enchilada de Pundit

Photo by Jim Burg/Reuters

Since everyone is a pundit, here are my two cents:
Cent number 1:
Obama is very smartly not falling into the trap that the McCain campaign has tried to set up for him. They want to bring up civil rights, because they want him to behave like a put upon Black man and they incite this through terrible speeches and absurd accusations. But he is not taking the bait. He refuses to make it a race issue because he is not going to give them the satisfaction of confirming their stereotypical expectations of him, or of behaving like a victim or a whiner, which is what they are trying to provoke in order to remind those undecided of their own fear of a Black man.
The McCain campaign insidiously played the race card allowing and inciting the craziness at their rallies and it was a terrible miscalculation.
I'm sure our country is full of racist people and even more full of people who do not consider themselves racist but are very prejudiced. However, I don't think that anybody in this country, except for people with a penchant for wearing white pointy sheets on their heads, wants to turn back the clock and go back to the kinds of ugly racial divisions we have managed, through great sacrifice, to leave behind. Nobody wants to go back to pre-civil rights America, nobody wants to revisit the nastiness of racism and segregation, and most especially nobody wants the remote possibility of race riots. There was a very disturbing ghost of that ancient nastiness in the ugliness of Palin's rallies and it did not help. It actually hindered their cause. The McCain campaign may be in touch with the lunatic fringe base of the Republican party but they are hopelessly out of touch with the majority of Americans of both persuasions. And luckily, Barack Obama is intelligent and collected enough not to stoop to that level. I'm extremely impressed with the way he has handled himself.
Cent number 2:
The unfounded Muslim accusation leveled against Obama is a convenient way for prejudiced people to hide the fact that they don't want to vote for a Black man but they don't want to admit it. In this day and age, such opinions are so embarrassing that they are better left unsaid. So you can substitute the word "Muslim" for "Black" and voilá, you can smugly pretend yours is some sort of a patriotic concern. At this point, even though a lot of people may still believe in this canard, which is as nasty and effective as the worst kind of antisemitism in that it sticks no matter what the evidence is, the Muslim argument can't be really taking hold. And the reason for this is that it is plain to see that Obama, regardless of color or origin or middle name is simply a much superior candidate.
But even if Obama were a Muslim, why is this considered to be such a terrible thing? Islam is one of the three major monotheistic religions; as long as he was not a fundamentalist or a standing member of an Islamist terrorist organization, why would this be a problem? What if he were a Buddhist or a Mormon, like Mitt Romney, or a Jew (in which case he'd be in a very similar situation, lots of people just not ready to vote for a Jewish person)? I pine for the day when we can swear in a non-believer. That is the day I hope for with all my might.
Bonus cent:
I knew from the beginning, (not because I'm a seer, but because it was obvious), that the choice of Sarah Palin was beyond hubristic and inappropriate and it would come back to bite McCain in the ass. In fact, if there is one big reason for McCain's eventual loss, I think it could safely be chalked up to this one decision. You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time (who said this?). The Palin debacle is a perfect emblem of the absolute collapse of the Republican party. They don't have a single fresh idea, not one serious, useful proposal, they have been taken hostage by extreme ideologues that do not represent the core of America's true values and now they are paying the price. They have been corrupt and arrogant and completely out of touch with the reality of Americans and no amount of cynical moralizing and revolting displays of empty patriotism can disguise their incompetence and their hypocrisy. And to top it all, this is their legacy: a country in the worst economic disarray in almost 100 years, a United States without credibility in the world, having lost its moral compass, a country dangerously diminished by their contempt for science and reason, an empire crashing to the ground. I don't know why we had to wait all these terrible years for the Republicans to finally crumble, but it is happening as we speak. The McCain campaign is just a pure reflection of who they are, and how low they have fallen.

All Points West: Fascist state

I love order and civilization. That is one of the reasons why I live here. I love the fact that you can go to a rock festival and everybody is so orderly and people are on their best behavior. I love the fact that you can put concert goers on a ferry and the boat is not going to capsize due to disorderly conduct or disorganization. The event is extremely well organized, the bands appear on time, all is lovely. Because I come from Mexico, where people have yet to understand the concept of forming an orderly line, I am always astounded at the civility of young Americans. These are the best behaved people in the world (at least in their own country).
So why are the organizers compelled to establish a host of rules that are insulting and ridiculous? To wit: Everybody gets carded for booze. 65 year-old weathered hippies have to show their id in order to get a freaking beer. Everybody gets a bracelet, like inmates in a mental institution, like newborn fucking babies in the incubator, just so that God forbid nobody who isn't 21 fucking years old (don't get me started on the minimum age) can get a sip of beer. You'd think they are selling Absinthe with a heroin chaser, for crying out loud.
Still, my fellow Americans, meek and mild and I frankly wonder if not lobotomized, politely complain, almost in a whisper, "this is ridiculous", "this is so stupid". Nobody storms the barricades. But it gets worse. Soon after buying the beer, we realize we are penned in and are not allowed to leave the premises with our beers in order to enjoy them in the grounds at large, as we listen to the music and frolic in the grass. Hell no, we need to finish the beer inside the pen and then go back to our places. This, I have to say, IS TOO MUCH.
This is why we have a president who behaves like a toddler. Because we are treated like babies.
Adults are not allowed in this fucking paranoid puritanical fascistoid country to decide how many beers they want to have and where they want to have them. Because if you must know, the bracelet has a limited number of tabs (a generous 5) so that once the tabs are gone you cannot purchase more beer. Oh, and last call is at 8:30 pm. I have never seen anything like this. Not in the first world (Europe) and not in the third world (everywhere else). A fucking baby in a crib has more freedom. Where is the concept of personal responsibility? Next thing they're going to make you have your beers at home, before you even show up. FASCISTS.
Meanwhile, everybody's smoking pot like crazy, which is allright by me. Stick it to the Man, etc, etc.
Apparently, the Nuremberg Beer Laws are applied with a zealousness not accorded to the confiscation of doobies, which is luckily non-existent. Sheer absurdity, if you ask me.
I regret to inform you that the contact high is, sadly, a myth. But I respectfully submit that the alcohol policy of All Points West is insane, stupid, inhuman and unreasonable. Card 80 year-old people with walkers, see if I care, but let people have their fun. Nobody goes there expressly to create mayhem. People are there to chill out and listen to music. We are paying not an inconsiderable sum to enjoy a music festival, not to be treated like retards who can't take care of themselves. Not to be treated like freaking adults.
I will continue because I am drowning in my own bile:
As I stood in the pen with all those meek and mild, young and old Americans, I really thought this country has gone to pot. What has happened here is a general lobotomy, with corporations and the government administering the shocks and the numbing pills in the guise of Nurse Ratched. Conformity has won. Blandness, marketing, complacency, overconsumption, too much TV, too much contentment. I know l sound like an old hippie, but man, it is beyond pathetic. It seems to be beyond repair.
We have a war going on and young Americans killed and maimed forever, and nobody utters a squeak. We have a bunch of criminals running the country, and nobody demands their execution, let alone their ouster.
The pen where I was forced to drink my beer, which has got to be the least satisfying beer I have ever had, was right behind the Statue of Liberty, who, fittingly, was turning her back on us.

By the way, Radiohead was great.