Whitey Knows Best

This is Laura Silsby. She's a member of a Baptist Church in Idaho and the ringleader of a kidnapping ring.

That's what the Haitians say, anyway.

What's known for sure is that on Saturday January 30th, she and nine other members of her church were arrested at the Haitian/Dominican border with a busload of 33 Haitian children that she and her group claimed were orphaned by the earthquake. They had no documentation saying they were legally empowered to do such a thing, and, in fact, few to none of the children appear to actually be orphans (none of the ones old enough to speak have said they are, and the relatives who gave them to the Americans say that the missionaries said they'd be taken to a better place).

A couple of days ago, they had a hearing, at which, apparently, they fully expected to be released. They were, apparently, surprised and dismayed when they were not.

"We simply wanted to help the children. We petition the court not only for our freedom but also for our ability to continue to help," said Silsby.

Although nine of the ten really didn't know they were doing anything wrong, at least according to their lawyer Edwin Coq, Silsby, the leader and organizer of the expedition, did. "I'm going to do everything I can to get the nine out. They were naive. They had no idea what was going on and they did not know that they needed official papers to cross the border," Coq said. "But Silsby did."

A Little Bit of the Funny from Over on the Other Side of the Pond

(hat tip Bob Cesca)

Posted Without Comment

Failing to pass healthcare reform will succeed in killing 44,000 Americans every year.
-Bob Cesca

Well, That's Good to Know

"Now we know," Kiriakou goes on, "that Zubaydah was waterboarded eighty-three times in a single month, raising questions about how much useful information he actually supplied."

Which is funny, because in 2007, John Kiriakou told ABC is a much-ballyhooed exclusive interview, that Abu Zubaydah cracked after just thirty seconds of waterboarding, while attempting to make the case that the Bush Administration's torture policies were both sound and effective. Later he went to work for John Kerry.

So, just to put this in plain English. In 2007, John Kiriakou, 15 year CIA veteran, went on national TV to make the case that America's torture policy was both necessary and effective. Now, he's written a book in which he admits, off-handedly, in just a single paragraph, that he actually had no idea what he was talking about, had no direct knowledge of that or any other enhanced interrogation, and that he was basically just passing off water-cooler chatter as the cold hard truth to the American people. "In retrospect, it was a valuable lesson in how the CIA uses the fine arts of deception even among its own."

What an asshole. Wonder if there'll be any consequences? I mean, that sure was a useful lie to the folks who sold America's soul so they could get off on torturing terrorism suspects who'd already talked.

True Dat

(note to wingers on both sides: expressing the opinion that Obama is not in fact moderate-lefty in the current US political spectrum, but is instead whatever thing you hate the most, is an IQ test in itself. Try not to fail it)

-John Scalzi

And, bonus quote:

But Obama’s real problem is not Obama or his own policies; Obama’s real problem is that in Congress, his allies are incompetent cowards and his adversaries are smug dicks.

Why Everyone in the Circular Firing Squad Should Turn Around

There was a lot of delusion among progressives who convinced themselves, in the face of clear evidence to the contrary, that Obama was a strong champion of their values. He wasn’t and isn’t.
That doesn’t mean that there’s no difference between the parties, that everything would have been the same if McCain had won. But progressives are in the process of losing a big chance to change the narrative, and that’s largely because they have a leader who never had any inclination to do so.
-Paul Krugman

For what it's worth, I never thought Barack Obama was anything more than a center of the road politician. I appreciated that he at least told the lies I wanted to hear during the campaign, and it was nice to hear lip service being paid to my beliefs and agenda. But I never expected him to be anything other than what he is, which is a politician. Perhaps smarter and certainly more eloquent than the average politician, but a politician nonetheless.

But whatever he is, it remains the case that a good portion of the electorate that voted for him, his 'base' if you will, was the Progressive Left, many of whom did a little projecting, unfortunately, and came to believe, in the face of plenty of evidence to the contrary, that he shared their values and their policy agenda. And to some extent he might have. Probably not as much as they (or I) might wish, but at very least he recognized many of the obvious problems that thirty years of being a 'center-right nation' have caused, and at least paid lip service to solving them.

Now, after months of bickering and mishandling, one of those solutions, Health Care Reform, which is something that's needed doing for several decades if not a centrury now, is on the brink of getting the foundation laid or failing for another generation. And while it's important in and of itself, it's also important in that it provides a rallying point for Progressives to organize around.

You can bitch and blog all you want, and God knows I do plenty of both myself, but at the end of the day, you gotta get in there and do your duty as a citizen. You gotta write the letters and make the calls and put the pressure on your elected representatives, because if you don't, they'll just listen to and aim to please the people that do, starting with the people that pay for their campaigns. Votes are great, and we all know that nobody gets elected without them, but money comes in a close second, and it certainly concentrates influence more than votes do.

Progressives may not have the leverage we think we deserve, and perhaps we never will, but we have more now than we've had in decades, and it's more important than ever that we use it. For most of the last decade, we could howl and scream all we wanted, but the people in power (i.e. Republicans) weren't going to listen because it wasn't our votes that elected them.

But that's all changed now. Obama and the 111th Congress need us in order to stay in power, which means that, if we act in sufficient numbers and with a modicum of discipline, we can influence the direction of policy more than we could in the recent past. If we can actually get some legislation enacted, like Health Care Reform (imperfect though it is), then it will make life better for people, which will go a long way to convincing them that our ideas are better than the ideas of the people on the other side of the aisle. We're already halfway there, because the folks on the right had the whole damned government for six or eight years and everybody saw how well that went.

But now we own it, at least in the eyes of the public. So that means we have to make it work.

Eyes on the prize, people. It's a long, hard slog, and it'll be filled with disappointment, but if we aren't willing to get in there and make it happen, nobody else is going to.

In Defense of the Democratic Party

There is no realistic scenario in which the electorate is impressed by policymakers who spend a year doing the hard work of tackling a seemingly-impossible challenge, pass the landmark legislation, and then somehow manage to come up short anyway.

-Steve Benen

Look, I hate the Democrats as much as anybody. They're feckless, and gutless, and they lack the courage of their convictions. They're in bed with many if not all of the same kleptocrats as the Republicans. But they do at least try to govern effectively when they're in power, and they do try to identify and solve the many looming crises that hang over our world and our nation like the proverbial Sword of Damocles. Yes, they must often compromise the best solutions to those problems, because the people with whom they negotiate have pretty much abandoned the notion that government is for anything other than handing out fat defense and energy contracts to their friends and the people and corporations who subsidize their campaign efforts. And they're a little too like Jesus, turning cheek after cheek until they're red and raw both top and bottom.

I wish they'd fight harder. I wish they'd get more accomplished.

I wish they'd at least realize that the other side isn't interested in finding common ground or even common sense solutions to the serious problems we as a nation, a people, hell, even a species, face.

But there really aren't any other options. No other game in town, except for the Republicans, and they've already amply demonstrated that they think campaigning is more important than governing, and when they do manage to get ahold of some power we end up with an endless series of debacles like the George W. Bush presidency.

For those, like me, who would pursue a largely Progressive agenda, who would like to see real problems addressed and life made better for everyone, both at home and abroad, there really isn't another credible vehicle for making the change I desire, the change I believe, in my inmost heart, is needful if we all are to survive for much longer. It may break my heart, and does on a regular basis, but the Democratic party, with its big, dysfunctional tent and its penchant for the circular firing squad, is pretty much it if what I want is Progressive legislation.

And that is what I want.

Thoughts on Caprica

I loved about half the run of Battlestar Galactica. I was totally addicted to it for the first season, when emergency after emergency came up and it seemed as if at any moment it might be curtains for humanity. Then they lost me, when it started to be more of a soap opera than a far-flung sci-fi adventure series. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of character development and the human drama associated with big events like the near extinction of humanity and the headlong flight into the unknown reaches of space with the agents of said near extinction in hot pursuit. But the series was more interesting when it was about the hard choices and the sacrifices demanded. Once things got to be about how everybody felt about each other I became less interested, and once they started playing political campaign I found it difficult to suspend my disbelief. When they found a planet and then the Cylons came and conquered them it got a little more interesting, but by the time the revolution was over and they started looking for Earth again I just stopped caring, and watching.

So it was with mixed feelings that I approached the prequel series, Caprica, which takes place fifty-odd years before the Second Cylon invasion. For what it's worth, I paid no attention to any of the hype or the previews. Knew nothing about the plotlines or anything besides what the Directv description on my DVR had to say about it. Not a perfect beginner's mind, but close enough.

There will be spoilers in what's to follow. Caveat lector and such.

Too Funny