December Week 1, 2005

Christian had practice at 0600 again... it definately gets me going in the morning but I am dragging by bedtime. Christy and I went to Colville today... cold but clear, we came back to clouds, it started snowing about 1700... looks like I will get to use my plow again tomorrow... Calie had practice

Got about a foot of snow last night... very pretty, I still imagine that my perception of beauty in snow will be tempered somewhat by spring by the reality of it. My plow worked well and I had ths driveway done in less than a half an hour, when I got back I plowed off the driveway down to the shop too... it was actually fun. We took Calie to see the Dr because she jammed her fingers on Wednesday night and now that the swelling is down her fingers look like they may be broken so we went in to find out one way or the other... This was our first trip to the Dr since moving up here, we went to the Selkirk Community Health Clinic in Ione... We met the Dr and liked him very much, he was very patient and explained everything he was looking at. I actually learned a few things... amazing as that might sound. It turns out her fingers aren't broken, just sprained... the treatment for a break or a strain is exactly the same, bind the fingers together with tape and wait a week.

Calie and Christian had games tonight, Christian played for about an hour, four eight minute quarters, He played a team where the shortest player was 5'11" tall, all the rest were over 6' They lost the game 22 to 62... Calie played for only two eight minute quarters because they only have 6 girls on the Junior Varsity. The team that she played was big too, they only had five players so they put one of the girls from the Varsity on their team to have six. Our team, Selkirk Lady Rangers, won the game by a score of 28 to 18, Calie played the entire game as Point Guard. Monicas game on Thursday was 4 6 minute quarters, Monica played sparingly and seemed to have a hard time figuring out where she was supposed to be.

We got the basement cleaned and in the process we discovered why it smelled so bad... apparently Peanut was using the Cubby Hole under the stairs as his own personal lavatory... damn.

Monica went to her friend's house for a the night and Mike went out with his friends, Calie and Christian both have games at 1500... damn.

Calie's team only scored one basket to get their 7 points, the opposing team from Bonners Ferry got about 34... it was, for all intents and purposes, a rout. Christian's team scores 44, twice as many points as last night but they lost by pretty much the same margin... 44 to 77.

Mike got into trouble or more precisely, Mike's girlfriend's ex boyfriends got him into trouble... they threatened to beat him up. It's a tiny town, Mike has been here just over a month and he has already gotten into trouble at least twice that he has told us about. This does not bode well for the future... three months of Winter and he will have the whole town on his ass, what worries me is that his alienation will carry over onto the family.

We went to Colville today... Christy bought out the Produce Department at Safeway... I bought a new camera... Nikon 7600... so far I am pleased with it.

Think of it as a harmonic convergence of sorts

AUSTIN - We've had two nifty opportunities to study the Bush spin machine at work here lately, both offering such a neat schematic of how it's done that one is tempted to applaud. Or something.

The first was the counter-offensive launched by President Bush on Veterans Day against those who have the nerve (!) to notice that the administration manipulated intelligence in order to justify an unnecessary war. Bush righteously denounced his critics for "baseless attacks," "false charges" and "rewriting history" because they are "fully aware that a bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community's judgments."

That may be true, but it's also true that the Senate investigation did not look at whether administration officials manipulated information once they got it. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence specifically refrained from looking at whether the administration manipulated pre-war intelligence. Got that? All it has done so far is look at the pre-war intelligence by the agencies. It has yet to do the second part of its job, looking at how that intelligence was used or misused.

The Republicans are trying to prevent the committee from doing just that, and Democratic leader Harry Reid is down to using procedural ploys to get around them.

The same failure is true of the "independent" Robb-Silberman commission, appointed to investigate the matter by Bush himself.

Judge Laurence Silberman said, "Our executive order did not direct us to deal with the use of intelligence by policy-makers, and all of us were agreed that that was not part of our inquiry." In circumspect circles, the word used to describe Bush's argument is disingenuous. Among normal people, it is called lying.

Among the things we didn't know before the war:

The State Department was convinced that the Niger uranium claim was bogus.

The source for the claims about biological weapons was a questionable character called "Curveball," who had a drinking problem and was distrusted by German intelligence, which had worked with him.

We were told with alarm that Saddam Hussein had drones that could deliver weapons, but the Air Force thought that was a joke.

The Department of Energy never believed that the famous aluminum tubes had anything to do with a nuclear program.

Colin Powell's warnings about mobile weapons labs were not based on solid information.

I always thought the single best reason to doubt that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction was that the United Nations inspectors were over there looking and couldn't find any. This was while Donald Rumsfeld was claiming we knew where the WMD were being stored. So why didn't we tell the inspectors so they could go look there? It never made sense.

As author Eric Alterman notes, we've been having a kind of harmonic convergence of bull lately. The administration's first response to challenge is to lie; the second is to attack.

Dick Cheney, always good in the attack role, called critics of the war "dishonest," "reprehensible" and "opportunist." Again and again, anyone who raises questions about the reasons for or the conduct of this war is promptly accused of "being against the troops," "hurting morale" and "helping the terrorists."

According to this pitiful attempt at intimidation, to notice that this war is a disaster is the same as spitting on our soldiers. National security adviser Stephen Hadley, Rumsfeld, Bush and Cheney have all played this card in recent days.

It's just plain old intimidation, trying to scare people into shutting up. It's an old, ugly, mean trick, and it works only against cowards.

The treatment of Rep. John Murtha is a classic example. Murtha, stalwart supporter of the military, described Iraq as a "flawed policy wrapped in an illusion" and called for pulling troops out "at the earliest practicable date." White House spokesman Scott McClellan promptly denounced Murtha for "endorsing the policy positions of Michael Moore and the extreme liberal wing of the Democratic Party."

And the charming Rep. Jean Schmidt of Ohio quoted an Ohio colonel: "He asked me to send Congress a message to stay the course. He also asked me to send Congressman Murtha a message: that cowards cut and run. Marines never do."

But Murtha -- 37 years in the Marine Corps, decorated war hero in Korea and Vietnam and widely respected for his knowledge of military affairs -- is not easily intimidated.

Of the vice president he said, "I like guys who got five deferments and [have] never been there and send people to war, and then don't like to hear suggestions about what needs to be done."

While Washington stands around having a public relations battle over all this, the real war with real people dying goes right on. The main reason we should get out is because we're not doing any good over there. We stayed for years past the point of reason in Vietnam because "they" said there would be a "bloodbath" if we left. But there's a bloodbath because we're there.

Molly Ivins, based in Austin, writes for Creators Syndicate. 5777 W. Century Blvd., Suite 700, Los Angeles, CA 90045

Wishful Thinking Promoted, Truth Jailed

Yes, I’m talking about the American Empire in its postmodern Iraq occupation phase.

Wishful thinking, as embodied in the words repeated authoritatively by Representative Tim Murphy, recently back from Iraq and talking to his fellow freedom fighters recovering at a military hospital.

"This" is, in fact, unfinishable. It is unfinishable in the sense that the objective never included a U.S. military withdrawal. It is unfinishable because it was never intended to liberate Iraqis, or to ensure their self-determination. It is unfinishable because "success" requires the ongoing maintenance of regional lines of communication and a large number of massive military bases in Mesopotamia. It is unfinishable because the invasion was conducted precisely to facilitate and create new operational missions against Syria, Saudi Arabia, and later Iran and Pakistan.

Wishful thinking. We see it in Presidential candidate and the Democrat’s one real chance for the 2008 Presidency, Virginia Governor Mark Warner, who says "the debate should focus on how to finish the job; that Sunni Muslims and Iraqis in general should be involved in reconstruction; and that the United States must convince more allies to help."

Warner is the Democratic chance for the White House because of the political airgap between Mark "we don’t need more troops in Iraq" Warner and Hillary "we do need more troops in Iraq" Clinton. Warner gets points for reflecting the public mood on Iraq while satisfying the establishment’s need to remain in Iraq, control its politics, finances, security and energy policies.

Just to be clear, by "establishment," I am referring to the big government, big oil, and big military-industrial-congressional complex that is actively strangling the last bit of life out of an already unconscious American Republic.

Mark Warner attended the 2005 Bilderburger meeting in Italy. He was the only governor to do so this year, and I think they approved. Thus vetted, his interest in the Presidency is now revealed, and his campaign theme may well be "A Wish for America" or "Hope Rising."

It will sell, and the establishment will get its share, its access, its murder, death and chaos, in Iraq and elsewhere. Americans, vaguely aware that we are in the early stages of a long economic decline and the eventual and costly collapse of the great American empire, will today heartily support more hope, more joy, and more state. As Americans clamor for these things, they will be only partially satisfied. Hope and Joy will be discussed, but only more State will be delivered.

Wishful thinking is promoted. But what of its competition? Truth, that poor relative, always hard to face, never needing anything and yet creating a certain discomfort among others in the room, remains a smoldering problem for Washington.

But she is easy to deal with. Give truth some exposure and commendation, and then pat her on the head and send her away. If she doesn’t go away, we can always ignore her.

Sometimes, as in the case of Sgt Kevin Benderman, truth must be jailed. Benderman told the truth about Iraq and about America, and he is safely ensconced for a fifteen-month prison term. SSgt Al Lorentz spoke truth, and he was both bad-mouthed and marginalized, as not a team player and worse. Captain Ian Fishback tried to do the right thing; not a single West Pointer stands up beside him, and his career may be over. Isolate, punish, pressure, torture. It’s what Truth deserves, isn’t it?

The House Committee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations, led by Representative Chris Shays, was planning to hold a December 6^th hearing on national security whistleblowers in a post 9-11 era, to look at the government’s systematic personal and professional abuse of government truthtellers. Shays has, thus far, refused to hear testimony from any of the members of the most active and current of government whistleblower groups, the National Security Whistleblower Coalition, founded by 9-11 FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds. A letter-writing campaign by the NSWBC and many supporting organizations who stand for truth and accountability has resulted in the postponement of this hearing. Stay tuned as our elected public servants continue to wriggle.

The truth about Iraq is jailed. The truth about our military interference with countries that have something that neoconservatives, oil conglomerates and/or military contractors covet is jailed. The jailers work overtime, and the most obscene of them are the congressmen and media that sample the truth, and politely comment on its pungency and flavor, but decide that lies are sweeter, more plentiful, and far more profitable.

We come to the final solution, so to speak, one that is subtly encouraged by the establishment, by the military and by the administration. This is the solution that West Point full professor and active duty Army Colonel Ted Westhusing apparently discovered for himself.

Described as "one of the Army's leading scholars of military ethics," and by all accounts a great officer, teacher, friend, father and husband, in May 2005, Colonel Westhusing "received an anonymous four-page letter that contained detailed allegations of wrongdoing by USIS." USIS has a small $79 million contract to train Iraqi police to conduct special operations.

Colonel Westhusing was observed by colleagues to be increasingly bothered by lack of ethics and misconduct he saw in Iraq. But that’s ancient history now! A few weeks later, on June 5^th, 2005, Westhusing was found by a USIS manager in a pool of blood, dead by what was determined by the Army to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

The Army looked into the allegations of corruption that had been of noticeable concern to Colonel Westhusing, and (surprise!) found nothing to write home about. A government official (speaking anonymously!) had this to say, "As is typical, there may be a wisp of truth in each of the allegations." A wisp of truth, but not enough, never ever enough, to change what we are doing, of course.

Reward wishful thinking and fuzzy logic. Imprison the truth. Isolate and punish those with honor. It’s the Bush-Cheney style. Ironically, the style favored by this pair of draft dodgers has completely permeated the Department of Defense.

Rumsfeld, known for torturing logic, language and loose taxi drivers, just announced that Iraqi insurgents will henceforth be known as either terrorists or "enemies of the government."

Now, I don’t want the José Padilla treatment, and I’m not quite a terrorist. But "enemy of the government" sounds like a compliment!

Karen Kwiatkowski, Ph.D., [send her mail] a retired USAF lieutenant colonel, who spent her final four and a half years in uniform working at the Pentagon's Near East/South Asia bureau. She lives with her freedom-loving family in the Shenandoah Valley, and among other things, has written on defense issues with a libertarian perspective for militaryweek.com, hosts the call-in radio show American Forum on Saturday nights, and blogs occasionally for Huffingtonpost.com.

Funny Money Business

The Washington Post reports that the Bush administration has decided that China is not manipulating its currency to gain economic advantage, which, in the language of politics, means that Washington believes that China is doing precisely that. Oh, the shock and horror!

Senator Schumer is distraught. "The administration’s lack of action today hurts all Americans by refusing to acknowledge the obvious – that China manipulates its currency," cried the Senator, proving another obvious fact: that he’s a blithering idiot. To demonstrate his concern for the American public, Schumer, with Senator Graham, is sponsoring a bill that would put a 27.5% tariff on all imports from China.

Wait a minute! What is bothering these heroic Senators is that Americans are buying too many Chinese goods. And why are Americans doing that? Because the price is right, of course! If the legislators have their way, those prices will be raised, by, perhaps, 27.5%, if the full cost of the tariff is passed along to the consumer. This will result in an increase in the cost of living for the very Americans whose "plight" now causes such hand-wringing by the Schumers among us. True, cheap Chinese goods may put some American workers out of work, but the buyers of Chinese goods far outnumber the American workers who would produce similar goods – and those workers are consumers, as well. The Senator’s concern about Americans being hurt by Chinese imports is not for the great disorganized mass of Americans, but for the much smaller, but tightly organized union membership.

American manufacturers believe that the Chinese yuan is undervalued by about 40 percent. How did they arrive at this figure? I suspect they did so by calculating how much more expensive the yuan would have to become in order to discourage the sale of Chinese goods in competition with similar goods manufactured here. How else?

If I printed paper money in my basement, calling it Hein notes, and you did the same in your basement, calling it Smith notes, how would we arrive at an exchange rate between the two currencies? Holders of my notes would have no claim upon anything of mine; the same would be true of holders of your notes against you. The numbers printed on my notes would have no relation whatsoever with amounts of anything; ditto for yours. My notes would not be issued in response to any deposit of anything; the same with yours. And, of course, my "notes" would not be actual notes at all, any more than yours. So how would we arrive at an exchange rate? The Bush administration thinks that, when it comes to the yuan vs. the dollar, that the market should decide. But how? How would a manufacturer selling his product for Hein notes know how much to charge in terms of Smith notes? Weigh them? Measure them? Compare their buying power? But there could be no buying power prior to the establishment of a conversion rate. Otherwise, the seller of goods in Hein-land, with a fistful of Smith notes, wouldn’t know what he could get for them in Hein notes when he took them to the bank; and not knowing that, he wouldn’t sell his goods for Smith notes.

Treasury undersecretary Tim Adams thinks it "absolutely critical" that the Chinese authorities establish a flexible type of currency system. He declined to say how China could do that, admitting, "I don’t have a particular standard in mind." Well, maybe that’s because standards have nothing to do with it. A standard is a fixed amount, a reference point. What possible standard could exist between currencies, neither of which have reference to any amount of anything? To bemoan the manipulation of fiat currencies is to bemoan the fact that north is opposite of south. How could it be otherwise?

I seem to recall reading the aphorism: freedom and fiat are incompatible. If the people about whom Schumer and his ilk express such concern are to be free and prosperous, they must use their own wealth as a medium of exchange. There can be no "exchange rate" between an ounce of silver and an ounce of silver, regardless of what you call them. Politics would have nothing to say about it – which explains why we have fiat, and the problems that are inescapable with its use.