An unnamed “politically active producer” allegedly told Arianna Huffington:

“The old ‘say one thing and do another’ bit isn’t going to fly this time,” a politically active producer told me. “We’re not ready to go through another experience where we back a candidate not ready to speak the truth. We kept our mouths shut and fell behind Kerry but, to quote the Who, ‘We won’t get fooled again.'”

First, unnamed sources aren’t convincing. So, until it’s clear who said what, I’ll just take this to be someone fictional Huffington is telling a story through.

Second, consider the similarity of this message to Hillary Clinton’s message about universal single-payer health care (it isn’t “politically viable”, according to Sen. Clinton):

“One major party donor, who is supporting Hillary even though he is against the war, told me that Clinton had assured him that she, too, was “against the war” but believed that there was no way a woman could ever be elected president while being against the war. “She is convinced,” the donor told me, “that she’d be attacked as soft on defense and unable to deal with national security and the war on terror. And I think she’s right. I’d rather she be anti-war, but I can’t argue with her reasoning.”

I can and do argue with her reasoning and the reasoning of this anonymous character, but not along the thin lines Huffington defends. Political viability is circular reasoning. Arguing viability in this way is just a matter of perception without acknowleding the will of the electorate, not a deep investigation of what actually happened (illegal and unethical invasion and occupation based on lies), who’s responsible (most Democrats and Republicans), and what we can do now (get out of Iraq immediately). Good speechwriters understand the mechanics of manufacturing opinion: say that “reasonable people” believe this or that and you’ll simultaneously create the opinion you want to support while placing that belief in the mouths of people who seem credible to the lazyminded. The Democrats are largely pro-war not because they’re secretly anti-war and think anti-war talk has no traction, nor are they (as Huffington later says) just saying pro-war things “for the yokels”; Democrats are largely pro-war because they know that their corporate backers are pro-war. As the country expresses increasing sentiment against the war in Iraq, talking pro-war “for the yokels” makes no sense; these “yokels” aren’t for the war.

The businesses that back political campaigns are organizations that lobby 24-7 and expect something in return for their financial support. They have the guts to withdraw support that isn’t working. People aren’t spoken to by the Left in such a way that encourages similar lobbying and return on their support. The Left loves to bring up big issues that individuals can’t hope to do anything about alone, issues that even large groups can barely adequately address (like millions in the streets being unable to stop the invasion and occupation of Iraq). And most coverage of these big issues leaves the audience with no practical message—here’s 5 things you can do in the next week to help end the occupation of Iraq, 3 bills you can write your Congressional representatives about, and so on. But I digress.

Getting back to Huffington’s article: since when is Al Gore anti-war? Let me remind you that Clinton/Gore oversaw US military action against Iraq that was far more lethal than this occupation has been so far: 500,000 Iraqi children died as a result of those sanctions. The bombings+sanctions killed over a million Iraqis. The Clinton/Gore regime bombed water treatment plants and medicine manufacturing facilities, further harming the people who depended on those facilities. The lack of chlorine to clean the water caused lethal disentary and diahrrea.

Al Gore is no anti-war candidate. I can still remember watching President of the Senate Al Gore gavel black Congressional representatives off the podium for daring to mention that there was a problem in the election that needed to be addressed immediately. Gore, or his former running mate Sen. Joe Lieberman, could have provided the signature needed to allow those representatives to be heard, but neither signed. Where was anything on this in Huffington’s essay?

So, yes, proper Leftists across the country will vote Democrat even though there’s plenty of reason not to. It won’t really matter what the Democrats stand for, and we’ll again be thrust into the argument of “At least they’re not Republicans!”. Least-worst strikes again, saddling us with a diminishing duopoly.

If Gore is what the Democrats offer up, it will further confirm that the Democrats are no opposition party and that they need to be replaced with an individual or party that truly supports what the public wants (which polls consistently show is not what either business party offers). But this won’t happen if a real contender shows up because the Democrats and Republicans will again collude to make sure that this opponent doesn’t get anywhere near the ballot. The two major business parties get along when they see a mutual threat even if that means one party helping out the other just like Microsoft helping Apple during Microsoft’s antitrust case. An opponent you can control is very valuable.

On today’s Democracy Now! (audio, high quality audio, video, high resolution video), Gov. Bill Richardson (D-NM) was interviewed and he is up for re-election. Contrary to what Amy Goodman says repeatedly on her show, transcripts of DN! segments are not always available online (some, like this interview, are only partially there and some are missing entirely). I’ve transcribed the following from the audio recording available on archive.org.

Gov. Richardson won’t criticize the invasion in any substantive way, and he supports the Iraqi sanctions that killed millions of Iraqis; he joins former Secretary Madeleine Albright that the death of half a million children was “worth it”:

Leslie Stahl: We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?

Secretary Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price — we think the price is worth it.

Gov. Richardson’s interview starts at 47 minutes 32 seconds into the show:

Amy Goodman: Cindy Sheehan has been going around the country speaking out, she lost her son Casey in the war. You are the first Governor to have your state, New Mexico, provide life insurance for national guardsmen on active duty. But I didn’t want to ask about that. I wanted to ask: as she travels leading up to the big anti-war protest that will take place in Washington D.C. on Saturday, on the 24th, she came through New York. And there she was fiercely critical of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and her authorization of war, standing with the President to authorize the invasion. What are your thoughts about that? She’s saying Democrats enabled this as well as Republicans, it was not just President Bush.

Gov. Bill Richardson: Well, look, I believe that Senator Clinton has a sound policy on Iraq, I believe that she is calling for an exit strategy, for a sensible policy. You know, I want to tell you that in those days when there was information about weapons of mass destruction, when there was information about Saddam Hussein and his very tortuous activities with his own people, I could have seen a senator taking the vote that he or she did. Right now, there is no link to Al-Qaida, there are no weapons of mass destruction, so in retrospect I believe that those votes taken but without the proper information may have not been the correct votes. I believe that the President should have met with Cindy Sheehan. She is somebody that lost a child, lost a son. This is why I provided health insurance—$250,000—because the death benefit was shameful. It’s $11,000. And I said our state is gonna step up and we’re gonna do $250,000 life insurance for every one of the New Mexico national guardsmen. But again, in retrospect, when you had bad intelligence, I can see how those senators voted the way they did.

Amy Goodman: But many say that although President Bush led this invasion, that President Clinton laid the groundwork with the sanctions and with the previous bombing of Iraq. You were President Clinton’s U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

Gov. Richardson: Well, I stand behind that. I think the strikes that we made, the efforts to disarm Saddam Hussein, there were weapons of mass destruction, the sanctions were the correct policy. Was the correct policy to invade? That’s probably another question. But to think that Saddam Hussein was benevolent dictator in the best thing to do would be to ignore him, I think that would have been very very bad foreign policy because what we have in the area is potential threats to Israel, we’ve got Saddam Hussein who acknowledged that one of his objectives was to threaten not just U.S. interests but the surrounding countries. He went to war with Iran, he greviously violated human rights of thousands of people.

Amy Goodman: But the U.N. sanctions, for example, the sanctions led to the deaths of more than a half a million children, not to mention more a million of Iraqis.

Gov. Richardson: Well, I stand behind the sanctions. I believe that they successfully contained Saddam Hussein. I believe the sanctions were an instrument of our policy.

Amy Goodman: To ask a question that was asked of U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Madeleine Albright: Do you think the price was worth it? 500,000 children dead?

Gov. Richardson: Well, I believe our policy was correct. Yes.

On KPFA‘s coverage of the Judge Roberts confirmation hearings, host Larry Bensky identified Senator Chuck Schumer’s second round questioning as “filibustering”. This is an interesting choice of words for a reason Bensky showed no sign of being aware of—Schumer might want to come off as asking tough questions but by filibustering he is actually keeping Judge Roberts from answering the questions Schumer posed or responding to the points Schumer raised, thus helping Roberts.

Throughout the KPFA coverage yesterday and today, you can hear Bensky, Deepa Fernandez, and their co-hosts point out how there’s only one woman on the Judiciary Committee and how there are no African-Americans on the Committee. This is essentially asking for more African-American people and more women on the Judiciary Committee. The problem here is the problem of identity politics—assuming that more women or more blacks would ask different or better questions on issues of importance that have gone unaddressed. There’s an underlying assumption that women and blacks will naturally ask the questions the Left would like to hear asked.

But such a request is easily trumped. What would happen if someone with Condoleezza Rice’s sentiments or political leanings were on the Commmittee? She’s a black woman, therefore she fills KPFA’s implicit request yet it’s reasonable to assume that she would not ask the tough questions the Left long to hear.

With such low criteria for what the Left would rather see or hear, it’s easy to get past the request in a way that maintains the imbalance of power. Better to admit that one’s request is problematic (stuffing the Court with like-minded Justices?) and get around to asking for questions on particular matters of interest and analyzing in terms of the questions posed, not the skin color or sex of the questioner.

Dave Lindorff and John Walsh have interesting articles in Counterpunch on how the Democrats work against the anti-war movement. Interesting, but ultimately compatible, disagreement on Democratic Party cowardice as well.

On Democracy Now! today (33 minutes 12 seconds into the show), Kathy Kelley, founder of the anti-war group Voices in the Wilderness, spoke on why her organization won’t pay the US$20,000 fine they have been ordered to pay by Judge John Bates in a Washington, D.C. Federal Court (transcript). But any member of the organization would be willing to go to prison, if that were ordered: (emphasis mine)

“[…] it was interesting that Judge John Bates in Washington, D.C. Federal Court concluded a 17-page opinion by quoting the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King. And he quoted from King’s letter from a Birmingham jail in which Dr. King said, “Those who break an unjust law should do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty.” And what we want to say to Judge Bates and to the United States government is that if Judge Bates were to choose to put any one of us in jail, then we would go openly and lovingly, but we won’t pay one penny, not one dime, to these war criminals to continue putting U.S. productivity into attacks against Iraq’s people or into the imperial designs to seize Iraq’s oil revenue. It’s something that, relying on Dr. King’s teachings, we in conscience cannot do.”

It’s worth noting that Voices is (in other sections of this interview and in their own statements) quite clear that the corporations which also violated the Iraq sanctions have not paid any penalty for their illegal acts; no fines, no higher-ups or decision-makers have been sent to prison, etc.

With that, is Voices making a distinction between kinds of punishment here—imprisonment is okay, fines are not—even though inaction against corporations virtually gives them the green light to illicitly trade against sanctions?

Couldn’t Voices raise the argument that corporations can’t be imprisoned (as corporations have “no soul to save and no body to incarcerate”, as one of the Barons Thurlow warned), and since none of their leaders have been imprisoned, imprisonment is also unfair?

Two articles to read:

• Peter Jennings on the Iraq War—summaries of articles written by his detractors (supporters of the invasion and occupation of Iraq).
• Why we need universal health care in the US—”The argument over a national health program is no longer whether it amounts to “socialized” medicine in the capitalist U.S. It’s now whether our refusal to enact a national system – Medicare, for example, for all – is going to wind up devastating our economy.”.

Two issues of importance to large groups of Americans with little political power—Blacks and Latinos—have come up in the Leftist press lately and for good reason:

• The Death Penalty—Justice Stevens condems the Death Penalty. I’ve written about this before, including the racial bias in who is executed by the state, and the situation is only getting worse—” According to the anti-capital punishment Death Penalty Information Center, more than three dozen death row inmates have been exonerated since 2000.”. Kent Scheidegger, advocate for the Death Penalty, claims that there is no systemic flaw in the Death Penalty: “I wouldn’t say that 20 or 30 cases out of 8,000 constitutes a broken system.”.
• Voting Rights—Today’s Democracy Now! has a number of segments of interest to those who want to preserve their voting rights. We must keep in mind that neither major corporate party cares about insuring the right to vote for non-Whites and the poor (which includes some Whites). In 2000 in Florida, some poor Whites but chiefly Blacks and Latinos were “scrubbed” from the voting rolls because their names coincided with the name of a convict, not because these people were convicts (which is a problem in itself, ex-convicts ought to have their rights restored or else one is arguing for perpetual punishment). The Democrats and Republicans were both able to run a series of campaigns for various offices and not raise the issue of restoring voting rights to those who never should have lost them. In 2006 many of those adversely affected still can’t vote. Not renewing the portions of the Voting Rights Act up for renewal in 2007 means setting up the entire country up for the kind of mistreatment those Floridians have suffered. This should be intolerable.

During the 2004 US Presidential election, former US President Jimmy Carter was happy to wail about Ralph Nader’s campaign and endorse a pro-war Sen. Kerry.

But now, according to the AP, former US President Jimmy Carter claims the war in Iraq is “unnecessary and unjust”:

“I thought then, and I think now, that the invasion of Iraq was unnecessary and unjust. And I think the premises on which it was launched were false.”

Whatever rationale he brings to support this assertion should be weighed in terms of whether it was true in 2004 in addition to whether it is true today.

Ralph Nader was one of the few candidates you were allowed to hear from every once in a while who took then and maintains now a firm anti-Iraq-war position (I’m not sure where he stands on war in general or on the war in Afghanistan). But, and I hope you’re sitting down, apparently Carter’s partisan views mean more than standing up for the right principles, even when he has nothing to lose by taking positions the DLC doesn’t like.

Keep this in mind the next time he opens his mouth to tell you why you should vote for the upcoming Democrat in 2008. Someone who will probably be another pro-war candidate (perhaps Sen. Hillary Clinton).

With no apologies to Sonny & Cher (the ever-persistent defenders of an infinite term of copyright, damn the public domain and all that they have gained from an unrewarded commons of African-Americans who seeded what is now known as rock music), we get another dose of Democratic party wisdom: pro-war candidate Paul “Hack” Hackett.

Update: Paul Hackett was interviewed about his loss on Democracy Now!. Hackett mentions his military service as if that gives him special privilege to escape the accusations of being murderous thugs, accusations that Progressives call higher-ups in power. For a fuller examination of the electoral picture in that special election, the Counterpunch article linked to above does a better job of illuminating salient concerns.

One can convey a much stronger anti-war message by not joining a war or endorsing others join war. One should not criticize on the basis of being a “chickenhawk” or “mismanaging” the war (as Hackett does in his DN! interview) without mentioning the real problem at hand—should we have invaded and occupied Iraq in the first place and is war & occupation an ethical response.

Hackett sees military recruitment as a “choice that you have made”, with no mention of economic disenfranchisement or economic coercion; it’s no secret that the poor are targeted for military recruitment. Hackett also raises the false spectre of Iraqi civil war as a reason to stay in Iraq. Apparently he doesn’t acknowledge the consequences of what he sees as a losing battle turning into civil war due to our presence (Iraq is “in a terrible condition today as a result of the insurgency phasing into civil war”). “Phasing into civil war” is proof that our presence did not forstall civil war and it further highlights the insanity of continuing our occupation of Iraq another instant.

Another issue involving Hackett’s campaign: the election results. Interesting suspicions on Whiskey Bar. Thanks to Carl Estabrook for the link.