47 Senate Republicans Violated the Law

How low can the GOP go?  Just when you thought Netanyahu’s invitation to address Congress (without consultation with the President) was bad enough, you can thank Senate Republicans for breaking with two centuries of tradition and legal precedent – in a breach of protocol that effectively breaks our system of government.

I refer to 47 Senate Republicans who dispatched a letter to Tehran that undermines P5+1 negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. The letter states that any negotiated settlement should be considered non-binding because any future president or Congress can reverse it. More than offensive as another example of partisan insurrection, the letter is downright dangerous and reckless:

Violation of Constitutional Law. The language of the Constitution is clear:  “[The President] shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur” (Article 2, Section 2, Clause 2).   Justice Sutherlin of the United States Supreme Court wrote this precedent in 1936:  “[The President] makes treaties with the advice and consent of the Senate; but he alone negotiates. Into the field of negotiation the Senate cannot intrude, and Congress itself is powerless to invade it." 

Violation of Federal Law.  Passed in 1799, the Logan Act states: “Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both."

Violation of Trustworthiness.  The letter undermines the full faith and trustworthiness of the U.S. government in matters of foreign policy.  In a White House statement yesterday, Vice President Joe Biden said:  “In thirty-six years in the United States Senate, I cannot recall another instance in which Senators wrote directly to advise another country -- much less a longtime foreign adversary -- that the President does not have the constitutional authority to reach a meaningful understanding with them. This letter sends a highly misleading signal to friend and foe alike that that our Commander-in-Chief cannot deliver on America’s commitments -- a message that is as false as it is dangerous."  

Borrowing a page from the GOP playbook, it means the foreign policy initiatives of any future Republican administration can be similarly sabotaged.  If war is what Senate Republicans want, then they should be damn careful what they wish for in more ways than one.  How about two wars - one foreign and one domestic!

The ‘Dear Tehran’ letter represents nothing less than a hypocritical and unconstitutional coup d’etat against the Executive Branch … deserving of prosecution under the Nolan Act.  Traitors, the whole damn GOP Senate! 

Smile, you're on Candid Camera

(and nobody's laughing)

"Frat Boy" isn't a term used in praise or admiration or affection very often and if you went to college where fraternities flourished, you'll know why.  Perhaps you have embarrassing memories. Fortunately for us old folks, none of it is likely to have been recorded for posterity in the days when nobody had a video camera in their pocket.  Boys will be boys you know, and by "boy" I mean drunken irresponsible idiot.

I have no way of knowing whether the SAE brothers at the University of Oklahoma will look back 40 years hence with embarrassment or anger at the day when their fraternity was shut down following the surfacing of a video showing some of them on a bus chanting: “There will never be a n***** in SAE.”  Perhaps that's a self fulfilling prophecy as the University immediately closed the fraternity despite the formal apology by the fraternity.

I never pledged a fraternity although I investigated a number of them, preferring the increased freedom, or license if you prefer, in finding my own housing off campus.  I do clearly remember visiting one frat and hearing the song "There'll never be a Jew in Sigma Nu" which, as you might expect, disappointed me a bit, even though I still suspect the implied anti-semitism wasn't all that deep.  But there were no consequences back then, in the tumultuous early 60's.  There were only short term consequences when some black students ran into similar and worse attitudes in other places, but the repercussions were short lived and involved deep snow drifts and frat boys in their underwear, but I won't elaborate.  The school took no actions I'm aware of.  Of course there were plenty of  fraternities free of such retrograde nonsense and with diverse memberships as I'm sure there are at Oklahoma.

But things are not the same, despite the bizarre assertions by some that Selma changed nothing with regard to racism, our tolerance for it and the consequences of  racially motivated actions. Of course today, conversations about race and many other issues across the political spectrum are dominated by institutions, which seem to demand that we use only certain terminology, accept certain axioms and discuss things only within a certain framework before beginning.  I'm sure someone reading this will already be writing something about how I'm just an old white man and don't understand my privileges -- or copying it from some pamphlet or tract. I'm too old to care, but old enough to remember well when the consequences of  racist epithets and actions were few to none and denigrating jokes were many and frat houses mostly Caucasian.  

Face it, it's better now.  It's a lot better and if progress threatens those who prosper by protesting the lack thereof, perhaps it's time to shut down other fraternities on and off campus.

Net-N-Yahoo Trolls Foggy Bottom

If you've been following this story as assiduously as I have, then you probably have some very strong opinions ... as I have.  Consider this an open thread.

High for Today - 84 Degrees

Perfect beachcombing weather to make frozen landlubbers jealous. Remember, there are two zones on any given beach: The Swash Zone (where waves break upon the sand – the zone of turbulence and emergence) and the Wrack Line (where flotsam collects at the high tide line). Just in case any of you decide to head south and visit your intrepid Captain Fogg or your fishy and slimy cephalopod, here is a Wrack Line poster to keep you busy:

Click on image to enlarge

So what does it mean

Not to "love" America?  The question is unanswerable without asking what is meant by love, because in the era of accepted error, of laissez faire definitions, it can mean anything. So why ask? Certainly the intended audience of the assertion that Mr. Obama does not "love" the country that elected him aren't asking because their reasoning is circular, or perhaps because their ability to question things has been eroded by the linguistic dumbing down of our speech. In the mouth of Rudy Guiliani, I'm deducing that love means something rather nebulous and involves jingoistic nationalism, selective memory, denialism, a dash of megalomania and a psychopathic lack of conscience. 

During the Vietnam years, the trope: 'loving America,' became a euphemism for blindly supporting the war, its conduct, it's stated goals, it's dishonest reasons against any and all criticism. It included defamation of all those who did not blindly follow. It included death threats, sometimes implemented against those who had doubts.  According to a large number, you either "loved" America or you were advised to leave the country. Some of us did. 

Many of us who were raised in the post war atmosphere of America as the savior of freedom and the leaders of the "free world" began to smell something as the flag marched by and the bombs fell and a generation was decimated and thought of Orwell.  Love is hate, war is peace and freedom is slavery.  Indeed, when people fling loaded words around like irritated apes fling dung, that famous quote from 1984 seems less cynical than it once did and more of a sad acceptance of hopelessness. Language has to change as the needs and wants of the oppressors and exploiters require it.  Freedom fries, pre-owned cars, processed foods, assault weapons: define and conquer.

Indeed anything can mean anything and so language no longer guides our thoughts or acts as a structure or armature upon which to build and with which to communicate the truth. Perhaps it never has been otherwise.  Arbeit macht frei, after all and it's our manifest destiny to take whatever we can get away with taking.


"Obama doesn't love America" is a statement without reference to evidence, dependent on idiosyncratic and plastic definitions and without any hint of supporting evidence.  It's so much like statements insisting he's a Muslim, or that he's just like a king or that he hates white people.  Such things depend on what the meaning of is is and nobody is asking.  Is is as likely to mean isn't as bad is to mean good.

Of course Rudy and many of his compatriots simply have so little in the way of valid criticism that they must keep their maledictions on the level of the subliminal. The half-unconscious associations that words are surrounded by become definitions. Just ask your kids' English teacher. Ask the people who tell you pornography is rape, who call a trailer an "estate Home" who call that package of bread mix artisinal.

Murdering two million civilians becomes a noble cause and we do it out of love. We love America, the greatest country that ever was, is or will be! We kill, exploit, deport and impoverish under the rubric of love and freedom.   Freedom?  Well it's what we support in any military activity. Hence  anything done to make our country safer, healthier more decent or anything else we associate with a loving attitude is by accepted definition: Not Loving America. No real explanations are needed, because love means anything the abuser intends it to mean. Language just has to change and if you question that?  Why, like that colored fella in the White House, you just don't love America!

So?

Back in the 1930's, it seems to have been common to start one's sentences with "say," sometimes drawn out for emphasis as we do with words and tropes we use to emphasize our own connectedness with the segment of popular culture we have chosen, consciously or unconsciously. Picture Jimmy Cagney as a gangster: "saaay, you  dirty rat. . ."  Hey, don't laugh. Do you drop the R in gangster or whore and think it makes you hip?  Tell the truth, white boy.

Perhaps you've observed the phenomenon in the way we use the word "selfie" with  gleeful ostentation -- the way my dog runs up and down the hall with a stolen sock. "I'm using it!  I'm saying Selfie!" It's the word, not the picture. The very first pictures take were self portraits. But try to find a CNN.com home page in the last year or so that doesn't display the word and a list of the week's best selfies.  Haven't you been trying to work it into your conversations so that people will know you're no outsider to the hip world, the hip-hop world, the world of constant contact, constant entertainment and  Cell Phones -- the real world, that is?

The real world, not that stuffy world where the discomfiture of Napoleon at Waterloo sounds like his boots were pinching his toes and  not that he was routed. We don't want you reading that slop anyway when the interests of this or that special interest group are what matters. We will tell you how to think about the very, very rich by proclamation, by definition, by calling them either plutocrats or "job creators."  We'll tell you whether you're a racist, an antisemite, a Communist, misogynist or a fascist by fiddling with the terms. And they do tell me.  I've been chastised recently for calling one of those conical straw hats a 'coolie' hat. Perhaps in India, Hindi speakers are racists for calling day laborers coolies, the Hindi word for it or perhaps not. Perhaps Joe Biden is a racist for using the word Orient  to describe Singapore, perhaps not. It all depends on what and to whom we're selling and to what purpose and not on the feelings or intentions of the user. After all, we're the police and we'll tell you what you are, punk.

I digress.  My intention was to point out that there is a fairly sudden and fairly recent tendency to start sentences with  "so." So I'm just pointing it out, and perhaps you'll notice it too.  So perhaps your grandchildren will, if it persists, giggle about the dated idiom:  "so I'm like" instead of  "I said" So have you noticed? So I'm just sayin'. Language gotta change and so everything you say will mean something else by Thursday next and everything you write down will be laughed at or called communist or fascist or something else depending on what the language police are yelling about.

So there he goes again, old Fogg, harping on the way language changes and spitting in the eye of the "language gotta change" school of English that encourages you to ignore and accept in the same way as one might encourage another not to get out of bed in the morning -- because after all, "people gotta die."

People like me: people who love language and the freedom available to those who master it are not appreciated by the "lets let the dog choose what we have for dinner" school of rhetoric and perhaps it's because such arguments feed the dogs of  commerce, propaganda and mind control.  Those who control definitions control minds.  So isn't it strange that the people who sneer at "language police" will beat you as  senseless as Rodney King if  you question the definitions of words like sex and gender?  So isn't it strange that we can sternly be told that making a joke about Chinese speakers not being able to pronounce the letter R is racist  as though speaking Chinese made one Chinese?  The language actually uses a harder R than American English, but that's beside the point.   Not strange when you consider the goal of defining nearly everything as racism in order to bully the populace into supporting your fight against racism.

So is it that precise language, as Orwell told us, is the enemy of  verbal manipulation? 

Hell no!

Brian Williams -- seriously?  6 months suspension with no pay for "misremembering" an incident from the early days of the Iraq war.  Bush's war, the one based on blatant and documented lies.  Did they actually fire at Williams' helicopter 12 years ago or not?  That's what matters. Sure, it was a bit of braggadocio on Williams' part, he should be ashamed to be no better than most politicians with padded resume's and he will be punished. 

Fox News will not be punished for reportage that according to those who supply facts to back it up, supply us with an estimate of  40% outright lies about substantive matters  Another 38% are partly false. Less than 25% of their reportage is really true and the electorate makes their decisions based on damned lies.  They're still on the air.  Is this a double standard?   Is this a country where any use of the term ethics is ironic enough to make the Devil giggle with delight?

Is Brian Williams to be compared with an entire network of burning pants sociopaths?

Stuart Varney:  "It will cost $50,000 per enrollee in Obamacare over the next 10 years."  

Steven Emerson:  "There are actual cities" like Birmingham, England, "that are totally Muslim where non-Muslims just simply don’t go in."

  

Megyn Kelly: A new Colorado law "literally allows residents to print ballots from their home computers, then encourages them to turn ballots over to ‘collectors.’ " 

George Will:  Some doctors say Ebola can be transmitted through the air by "a sneeze or some cough.

Brit Hume:  President Barack Obama is "sending a much larger (force) " to deal with Ebola "than ISIS is getting."  

  

Ann Coulter: A friend’s sister "died from Obamacare" because Blue Shield "completely just pulled out of California."  (they're still there)  

Lyin' Bill O'Reilly:  "The 'Denver Post' has actually hired an editor to promote pot." (Oh really?  No, O'Reilly)  

Sean 'Insanity' Hannity is in a league of his own.

Are there any standards at all when it comes to promoting the interests of the bigots, plutocrats, and the deranged?   Hell no!

Typhoid Mary's Revenge

Reductio ad absurdum.  Its a common tool used in informal debate both properly or improperly, but although I won't say it's more common with the arguments we hear from the self styled Right, arguments such as this one seem to need no assistance from any opposition to reduce themselves to the ridiculous.  Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) told us this week that the government has no business demanding that the people who handle our food should wash their hands after using the toilet. If you don't see this as ridiculous, you probably shouldn't read further because I'm going to insult you. In fact I mean to insult everyone who considers himself rational but, like all of us, is not. 

Putting principle above survival and practical necessity seems to be a widespread form of  communicable idiocy, for when I mentioned this bit of crepuscular wisdom in jest to some friends last night I got no laughs but rather some grim recitations of the formula "we have too much regulation."  It's the same reaction although from different people, that I got when mentioning that the disastrous BP oil spill would not have resulted if regulations had been followed.  "We have too much regulation."  If you've been listening to the yapping from the Republican kennel for as long as I have, you'll see it as new bullshit in old crocks -- or from old crocks if you prefer. We want law and order but without the law. That absurdum enough for you?

If we assume that in fact we do suffer under excessive regulatory burden, I should think it would be obvious that the gap between that debatable observation and a valid attack on any specific regulation isn't easily leaped with anything but blind faith or the kind of stupidity that removes all obstacles. "All laws reduce freedom -- this is a law -- this reduces my freedom."  Do we really need to ask Aristotle to explain such sophistical refutations? CAn you honestly proceed from a false statement to a valid one? Do laws facilitate freedom? Without law, how do we protect life and liberty?  Who decides what is excessive without laws providing us with the power to do so?  Principle!  it's the defense against having to answer such impertinences.

 Sometimes freedom needs to be reduced, else I could show Mr. Tillis, inter alia, just how much the laws restricting my freedom might be useful to his health.  Getting from the proposition in question to eliminating any particular regulation requires dismissal of the specific need, benefit and effectiveness thereof.  Since I'm sure that regulations against poisoning him wouldn't be on his list of excessive regulation, we can assume that he does give regard to his own safety if not to yours and mine.  Is that dishonest?  Does that reveal some unmentioned contradiction in his logic?  Does it matter when people, all of us, steadfastly believe what suits us to believe irrespective of any native intelligence?

I won't waste much time waiting for Tillis to explain his temerity however.  His audience isn't asking for one, a false syllogism being satisfying enough and as is so common and in line with our ancestry and ancient habit, we put principle above survival, follow it up with brandy and a cigar and call it an evening.  Things will turn out in the end, the invisible hand of the market spreading pestilence more effectively than it spreads wealth and opportunity and justice.  "Restaurants that kill customers will eventually go out of business," is the fallacious foundation of the Tea Party argument -- unless they remain unaccountable in the absence of all regulatory agencies. I wonder too, how much he worries about FAA regulations when he gets on an airplane, or whether his doctor or his cook washes his hands but sure -- consistency and hobgoblins and little minds and besides when it's his ass on the line it's different.

48 million Americans get sick from food born illnesses and 3000 die every year, yet the government has a very hard time doing anything to stop it:  principle, you see and the inviolate rights of corporations.  But Tillis at least is standing up for the little guy, the right of individual free and sovereign citizens to wipe their asses with your lunch.  Principles matter, you know and it's good we have him standing up for freedom.

Trotsky, White Supremacists, and the Origins of "Racism"

As I am wont to do, I was skulking around the dark back alleys of the internet, and accidentally stumbled across a newly-revived myth, one that I hadn't heard in over a decade. It was such a ridiculous idea, even at the time, that it didn't make much of an impression on me.

To be honest, I couldn't tell you when, exactly, it started. I first ran across the idea shortly around the turn of the century. Somewhere around 2005 or so, I came across a concept on some white supremacist websites, where they were claiming that the word "racism" was coined by Leon Trotsky as a term to browbeat dissenters in the Communist party, and has now been adopted by the "radical left." The year that he was supposed to have done this ranges from 1927 to about 1934, depending on where you find the claim. In fact, I'll let some reprint of a reprint from the white supremacist website Stormfront explain it.

The word "racist" has for a long time been the single most effective fear-word in the leftist and neoconservative arsenal. For decades, they have successfully used it in the political arena to slander traditionalists, shut down debate, and leave opponents running for cover. In the social arena, they have caused even more damage by using it to brainwash impressionable children and young college students, and to teach people to hate their nation, their cultural traditions, and worst of all, themselves.

What surprisingly remains almost totally undiscussed, even on the hard core traditionalist Right, is the word's origin. Did it come from a liberal sociologist? A 60's Marxist college professor? Perhaps a politician in the Democratic Party? No. It turns out that the word was invented by none other than one of the principal architects of the 74-year Soviet nightmare, the founder and first leader of the infamous Red Army, Leon Trotsky.

Take a look at this document if you would, dear reader.

Славянофильство, мессианизм отсталости, строило свою философию на том, что русский народ и его церковь насквозь демократичны, а официальная Россия -- это немецкая бюрократия, насажденная Петром. Маркс заметил по этому поводу: "Ведь точно так же и тевтонские ослы сваливают деспотизм Фридриха II и т. д. на французов, как будто отсталые рабы не нуждаются всегда в цивилизованных рабах, чтобы пройти нужную выучку". Это краткое замечание исчерпывает до дна не только старую философию славянофилов, но и новейшие откровения "расистов".

This is Leon Trotsky's 1930 work, "The History of the Russian Revolution", from which shown above is a passage. The last word in that passage is "расистов", whose Latin transliteration is "racistov", i.e., "racists". This work here is the first time in history one will ever find that word.

Almost sounds intellectual, doesn't it? Like he did his homework? Maybe knew what he was talking about, right?

Yeah, it sounds that way. It's total crap, of course, but it sounds really smart.

See, this is a basic ad hominem fallacy, where you "shoot the messenger" instead of taking on the argument itself. "This is a concept created by a monster from the old Soviet Union! Nobody ever used it before him! It's evil and tainted and can never be used!"

Except for one little problem. A quick look at the etymology of the word shatters the very premise of the argument.

See, right around the turn of the century, the English-speaking world was using terms like racialism, or sometimes race hatred or race prejudice (one of my personal favorites, dating back to the 1800s, was negrophobia). Around that same time, the French were using raciste or racisme (particularly, a few decades later, to refer to the Germans and their philosophies).

For example, the terms pensée raciste (racist thought) and individualité raciste (racial individuality) appear in La Terro d’oc: revisto felibrenco e federalisto from 1906.

The Oxford English Dictionary cites Richard Henry Pratt in 1902 for the first use of the word "racist" in English.

There are probaly earlier versions in both languages, but who needs them? We've already destroyed the basic premise of the argument.

Once again, the Right (and in this case, the Extremely Far Right) is trying to create a little revisionist history to give cover to their sins.

"Arbeit Macht Frei"

By Jeffrey Berger

These days the sunlight almost seems total.  A few men and women, trees,

stand between heaven and earth.  In the light of their shadows

we others are reading, still, messages the dead have stopped sending,

these days of almost fatal sunlight.  (Henry Braun, The Vergil Woods)

Seventy years have passed since the liberation of Auschwitz.  This post remembers a maternal great-grandfather who perished in the Holocaust.  It honors missing persons of a family tree whose fates will never be known. It commemorates innocent victims of persecution whose life possibilities were cut mercilessly short.

The exact death toll at Auschwitz remains elusive. Many inmates were undocumented, and large amounts of incriminating evidence were destroyed in the final weeks of war. The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum sets the official record:

1.1 million - total victims

960,000 - Jewish victims

438,000 - Hungarian Jews

300,000 - Polish Jews

69,000 - French Jews

60,000 - Dutch Jews

55,000 - Greek Jews

75,000 - non-Jewish Poles

21,000 - Romani

15,000 - Soviet POWs

15,000 - disabled and other

The Red Army liberated Auschwitz on January 27, 1945. Only 7,500 emaciated prisons were found alive among 600 corpses, 370,000 men's suits, 837,000 women's garments, and 8.5 tons of human hair.  Among the survivors who recovered and resumed full and productive lives:

Elie Wiesel (awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986), Simone Veil (served as President of the European Parliament), Rudolf Vrba and Alfréd Wetzler (escapees who saved an estimated 120,000 to 200,000 inmates), Thomas Buergenthal (judge of the International Court of Justice), Imre Kertesz (writer and Nobel Laureate in Literature for 2002), Joel Lebowitz (mathematician and physicist who won the prestigious Max Planck award), Vladek and Anja Spiegelman (parents of American cartoonist Art Spiegelman), and Jack Tramiel (founder of Commodore International) ...

Little is known of my great-grandfather.  He was an author, a philosopher and college professor living in Prague when the Nazi army occupied Czechoslovakia.  No letters or literary works survive apart from anecdotal accounts handed down by word of mouth – until the trial of Adolph Eichmann in 1961 revealed his fate.

According to trial testimony, Eichmann ordered the SS to stop a deportation train headed for Auschwitz.  Aboard that ill-fated train was a 'nettlesome agitator' for human rights. Eichmann ordered his execution by firing squad. This man was my great-grandfather. 

Everyday in 1961, my mother and grandmother watched the Eichmann trial on TV.  I recall their stunned silence when the name of my great-grandfather — and his final fate — was revealed during trial testimony. A family chapter was finally closed.

Are some people more predisposed to obedience than others - willing to follow even the most heinous orders?  Yale University research psychologist Stanley Milgram tested this hypothesis, with disturbing results:

The percentage of test subjects willing to inflict pain on command was constant across all population groups – ranging from 61 to 66 percent regardless of ethnicity, gender, nationality, or circumstance.

Milgram’s experiment reveals a grim truth about human nature: Everywhere in the world are people innately capable of unspeakable savagery.  Genocide did not end with World War II.  It happened again in Tibet (1959-1966), in Cambodia (1975-1979), in Bosnia-Herzegovina (1992-1995), and in Rwanda (1994).  Even today, atrocities continue unabated in Darfur, Iraq, and Syria.  The record of human history is long and grim:

Wars of aggression and oppression; true believers versus infidels, Christians against Christians, Muslims against Muslims; vainglorious empires, colonialism, greed; whites enslave blacks; Nazis murder Jews, Hutus slaughter Tutsis; inquisitions, persecutions, pogroms, endless cycles of retribution and revenge and unrelenting violence … since the beginning of time.

Yet, there are deniers and revisionists who still dispute the indisputable, and madmen who target innocent civilians. Is one massacre worse than another? Does the tragic history of one people invalidate the tormented history of another?  Either no account is valid, or every account is valid and deserving of remembrance.

Consider the diversity of life that has evolved on Earth over eons of time.  Here is a single species united in time but divided in language, culture, customs and tribe.  ‘Ecce homo.’  Behold the lot of humankind constantly at war, each committing acts of violence upon another.

‘Arbeit macht frei.’  Perversely cynical words intended to exterminate, not liberate. Words more aptly inscribed above the Gates of Hell: 'Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.'

How will humanity ever find peace?  Shall we segregate people by geography, by race, religion, and custom?  Shall we end all commerce and cultural exchange?  Shall we prevent the free migrations of people and the free exchange of human invention?  Or …

Shall we learn how to integrate and tolerate – even appreciate – the diversity and rich cultural heritage of all humankind?

There will be no peace, no hope, no freedom from tyranny and war until people come to terms with their darkest impulses.

© February 1, 2015