GIN AND TACOS

Looking forward to the 2008 presidential election, as I find myself doing often lately, there are literally dozens of reasons for the Democrats to be optimistic. We can run down a lengthy checklist of positive signs. Polling data showing the incumbent and his party to be incredibly unpopular? Check. Well-funded candidates with money and name recognition?
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Check. A lousy field of GOP candidates with no clear front-runner? Check. Economy going straight into the shitter? Check. Wildly unpopular, expensive, and interminable war? Check. Positive outcome from the 2006 midterms? Check. Yes, it's a great time to run for president as a Democrat.

So why am I so pessimistic?

It's tempting to say that I feel like a fan of the Washington Generals (for those of you who miss that reference, they're the fake team who were created to play, and lose every game to, the Harlem Globetrotters). That would be inaccurate; the system was set up such that the Generals literally could not win.
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The Democrats are not hopelessly unable to compete. Instead, the sad fact is that they are not only able to win but in many cases the odds are in their favor. No, the Democrats are a team that often should win but always finds – invents, if necessary – ways to blow it. They're the political world's Arizona Cardinals. Chicago Cubs. L.A. Clippers. "Lovable losers," if you will, although they're often only half of that statement. Give the Democrats a decorated war hero to run against a draft dodging idiot and they find a way to blow it. That's the sort of thing they do…all the goddamn time.

Am I just being too pessimistic? Have years of being an actual Arizona Cardinal fan warped my mind so that I see defeat looming everywhere? Feel free to sound off and let me know how you're feeling about the odds.
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No matter how many polls I see or how terrible the GOP field manages to look (and make no mistake, it is historically awful) I just cannot shake the feeling that the Democrats are going to go down in flames next November.
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Every comment I hear – be it media or regular voters – has the same pattern: an expression of condemnation of the GOP followed by some sort of suggestive hint that, well, those Democrats just aren't any better. Ergo, if I may complete their mental road map, voting for Giuliani is the superior option. No matter how many people die in Iraq, no matter that the GOP field is laden with neocon cowboys hell-bent on war with Iran, no matter how much real wages fall, no matter how badly unequal our nation's wealth….when shove comes back to push these "middle American"/"undecided"/"average Joe" voters are going to make up some reason to vote for another right-wing gas bag. Said reason, of course, will probably be some fiscally ludicrous round of tax cuts.

So it's time for a verdict on Ed: paranoid or drifting toward the sad truth?

Frank Black wants to know. I want to tell you.

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I assume the whole world is traveling to spend a few quality hours with the uncles who weren't allowed to be alone with you when you were younger. So I will keep this brief – as brief as you will keep the substantive portion of your conversations with Uncle Larry.

Scott McClellan's writing a book. Lo and behold, he will reveal within that many of the things he was told to say were not true. White House Press Secretaries have approximately the hardest job on Earth (maybe that's why Tony Snow couldn't hack it….oh wait, it was because it didn't pay enough). Maybe McClellan should go play tennis with old Clinton human shield Mike McCurry. The latter found himself in a nearly identical situation during MonicaGate. He was repeatedly assured by a man he deeply trusted that there was simply no truth at all to these allegations. Cut to the next scene: Deeply Trusted Man admits guilt.

It's a difficult job inasmuch as they are usually people with strong emotional commitments to the men they serve, but it's only a matter of time until the Press Sec ends up being hung out to dry. I don't believe they're stupid. I think they're willing to trust their presidents. That trust can only tempt politicians for so long until they abuse it by making subordinates unwittingly shill for their lies. The White House insists that McClellan knew everything all along. Is this just image rehab on the part of a forgettable bag of fluid in a cheap suit? I doubt it. More like the tales of a jilted lover.

I don't usually encourage people to spend more time watching television, but do yourself a favor and catch a repeat of the Ted Koppel special "Breaking Point" on Discovery Channel. The show gives an excellent snapshot of our nation's downright insane correctional system and meticulously documents its transition into the post-rehabilitation, purely punitive era.

Since 1980 we have essentially abandoned the idea of educating or rehabilitating the incarcerated in favor of simply warehousing them.
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It's pretty basic – offer tidal waves of rhetoric to scare the crap out of yuppie suburban taxpayers, build more jails (with a healthy dose of privatization), and shift the emphasis to segregating Us from as many of Them as possible. Add a healthy dose of lunatic recipes for overcrowding like mandatory minimums, three-strikes legislation, and boatloads of War on Drugs-sponsored 10- to 15-year sentences. Forget all that liberal nanny state New Deal era nonsense about rehabilitation – the solution to all of our problems is more brown people in more jails for longer periods of time. We don't want to rehabilitate them. The goal is simply to get rid of them.

One scene from the Koppel special merits emphasis. Prisoners suspected of having drugs (a neurotic obsession of the staff throughout the program) are subject to constant searches. In some cases they are suspected of swallowing or inserting drugs into their anuses to prevent detection. To counter this, the guards wrap the suspected inmates in an orange body suit which is sealed with tape at the neck, waist, ankles, and wrists. The inmates must wear the sealed suit for three days (urinating and defecating in their clothes) after which the suit is removed and their excretions are searched for drugs.

Read that again and let it sink in. Upon seeing this, I beg any rational person to ask: Is it even remotely surprising that these people are like animals when they get out of prison? Anyone shocked that they fail to rejoin society as productive members? The system treats them like animals and they become exactly that. Then the Tough on Crime crowd can point at them and say "Look! How can animals like this be rehabilitated?"

Welcome to another step in America's journey to a third-world society. 10% of the country controls 99% of the wealth, 80% of the population (the wage earners) live in debt/fear/insecurity, and the remaining 10% are entirely superfluous. You just have to get rid of them. Third-world countries send out paramilitary skull-crackers to round up and kill them. We enlightened Americans demonize, warehouse, and brutalize them until their lives are forfeit. That's really all the War on Drugs is about.

UPDATE: Speaking of the devil, here's a front-page CNN story on Taser deaths. Good timing, Ed.

By now we've all seen the video and read the news about the unarmed Polish immigrant tasered to death by the RCMP up north. Sad, alarming, and so on. What bothers me is not so much this isolated incident (and let's be honest, it is rare for people to die from a taser) but the shocking willingness of police to use what are antiseptically called "less lethal" (formerly "non-lethal") weapons.

I do not like cops. Sorry. I realize that many cops are good, decent people. Many more of them are not. I wholeheartedly subscribe to the generalization that they are adult incarnations of junior high bullies who overcompensate for mediocrity with authority. Beyond that, the attitude that their actions are above reproach (especially by those of us who haven't walked in their shoes and don't know what it's like**) coupled with a monolithic bunker mentality is enough to make me puke pure bile. So now that my biases are out of the way…

The average cop in the post-Reagan, War On Drugs, COPS, kicking through doors, smashing through windows, militarization of law enforcement era needs boundaries. For the most part I believe those boundaries are provided by the law. They understand that they are being watched and videotaped, and that we know what is and is not acceptable behavior. Unfortunately I believe that the use of pepper spray, tasers, less-lethal projectiles (beanbags, rubber bullets), CS gas, and the like are an area in which no real boundaries exist. And I do not trust cops to "use their judgment" to effectively restrain themselves.

The problem lies with the original nomenclature: "non-lethal" means. We've played a neat little semantic game and re-named them "less lethal" since, well, the non-lethal weapons were killing a lot of people. But I believe the damage has been done. The police and their apologists (the kind of people who bend over backwards to excuse every video of 5 cops wailing on a black guy or shooting an unarmed immigrant 41 times) have so thoroughly convinced themselves that pepper spray and tasers are "harmless" or no big deal that cops' restraint is approaching zero.

A taser is just like a little electric shock! Stun guns only give victims "an owie." Pepper spray causes a little bit of burning for a few minutes – no biggie. Rubber bullets only leave a tiny welt and can't kill. Yes, all these things are so unbelievably insignificant that….well, there's just no harm at all in using them. Why not just approach every suspect with the pepper spray in hand? If he gives you any lip, empty it in his face. Since it's "temporary" and "minor pain" and "less lethal" and all those other things, why not? Why not disperse every crowd with some flying beanbags and tear gas? No lasting harm done, right?

Most police – and I mean 99.99999% of them – realize that they can't respond to any and all threats by whipping out the pistol and plugging away. I doubt many of them feel the same way about their "less lethal" methods. High profile incidents like the UCLA library taser incident or the now-infamous "don't tase me, bro!" video show that using weapons (and remember, less lethal items are exactly that) is no longer a last option for the police. I'd say it's a second or third option these days. Ask yourself, in either of those two campus incidents, why the police did not simply pick up the suspect and carry him out of the room. I understand the concept of resisting arrest, but I'm pretty confident that 8 cops can carry a 180-pound sophomore – even a struggling one. Why bother? It's so much easier to whip out the taser and zap away.

Well, unfortunately "less lethal" tends to be Pretty Lethal when used repeatedly. Incidents of people dying from pepper spray are not common by the percentages, but when the sample size is dramatically increased…..well, the raw numbers start to be consequential regardless of the probability. We see people dying to celebrate the World Series. You have almost 100 people being given an impromptu death sentence since 1990 by police who douse them in pepper spray regardless of how insignificant their offenses were (see here or here, or just as your friend Google about pepper spray deaths).

The fact is that the status of these weapons as non-lethal or less-lethal is probably already too ingrained in the minds of law enforcement (and a pitifully large percentage of the public) to do anything about it now. There are too many excuses about "isolated incidents" and phony internal reviews in which police departments investigate themselves and determine (shockingly) that the deaths were due to other factors. But the poor, poor police are just so badly overmatched by pissy college kids. Under such circumstances we should be downright thrilled to be tased.

**(This is why people like Bill O'Reilly would never criticize college professors. They understand that, not having been professors, they cannot possibly pass judgment on the profession)

For the second consecutive day I will not only mention George Will but also tip my hat to him. Don't worry, it's in the context of tearing him a new one.

Kudos to Mr. Will for recommending Curveball by devoting his Nov. 12 column to it. If this book were mandatory reading for every American adult I can guarantee you that we'd avoid the impending aerial fireworks display over Iran. Alas, it is not required reading. But if you feel like being really angry (or have an academic interest in group decision-making along the lines of Scott Plous' Psychology of Judgment and Decision-Making) don't wait another minute to read it.

Good work, George. Unfortunately, even in your best moment you cannot hide what a pedantic, smug, and condescending tool you are. To wit (emphasis mine):

(Curveball) claimed to have been deeply involved in Hussein's sophisticated and deadly science, particularly those notorious mobile labs. Notorious and, we now know, nonexistent.

A few months ago I wrote about the Republican Unburdening of the Soul (RUotS) ritual, for which I have exactly zero patience. The nation is littered with middle-aged white guys who are just so gosh darn upset about this war for which they were mindless cheerleaders in 2002 and 2003. They wander around seeking absolution and loudly speaking of lessons learned. Will is doing the pundit's version – the I Made an Honest Mistake ritual. Put in the uncomfortable position of having to rationalize how they got Iraq so completely, mind-bendingly wrong, pundits' choices are limited. If they're not going to go Bill Kristol (i.e., "Wrong? I'm not wrong!") then the only tactic left is….Well golly, folks, how on Earth was I to know that the entire case for war was based on a mountain of happy horseshit? Will titles his column "Seeing what's not there is a dicey strategy" like a man who speaks from experience. And yet he still won't accept responsibility for it.

Yes, George, "we now know" that the WMD stockpiles and the cartoon drawings of mobile bioweapons labs were nonexistent. Of course there was just no way of knowing that at the time, nor was there even the slightest cause for skepticism. That's odd, given that I recall reading quite a bit about the Judith Miller – Chalabi – Curveball dog & pony show long before the White House sent Uncle Colin's credibility on a kamikaze run to the U.N. We hear a similar, if not identical, argument from Hillary Clinton (and John Kerry in 2004) – "I voted for the war because I believed the President. How on Earth was I to know, or even suspect, that the entire administration is full of shit to the bursting point?" Such rationalizations leave only two possible conclusions: either they (Hillary, Will, etc) are flat-out lying or they are criminally stupid. To expect us to accept that they swallowed the White House's story with less skepticism than the average American uses to shop for a new car is beyond insulting.

My advice to the gentle reader: let no one (columnists or random right-wing acquaintances) wash off the blood so easily. There are 4,000 servicepeople and untold six-figure numbers of Iraqi civilians dead on account of their thundering ignorance. Indulging their quest for forgiveness and accepting "It was an honest mistake based on what we knew at the time!" is simply the most efficient way of ensuring that no one learns anything from this experience – meaning, of course, that we will be repeating it presently.*

So please blow it directly out your ass, Mr. Will. Take your guilt to your grave. There will be ample time for your rationalizations then, and you will need them.

*No, I am not using that incorrectly. "Presently" means, in the classical sense, "imminently."

On Sunday's edition of This Week on ABC, the panelists engaged in a discussion about the overall mood of the electorate in which Cokie Roberts characterized it as "slightly Democratic." Many commentators, for example the folks at Crooks & Liars (where I continue to get good plugs every time Mike, who apparently hates me, goes on vacation and leaves the Round-Up to guest moderators), have mocked Roberts for her biased or flat-out incorrect assessment of the current political landscape. They cite both polls and commentary by well-respected political scientist John Judis as support for the idea of a strongly Democratic swing in the electorate. I will now put myself in the awkward position of defending the likes of George Will and Cokie Roberts.

The C&L author comments, "Um, hello? See that forest, Cokie? It's made of trees." Oh, Cokie sees the trees alright. And she knows quite well how they behave. A year prior to the election they will all voice appropriately loud discontent with the Republicans. They'll talk about how they're tired of the war in Iraq (they are either legitimately sick of it or afraid of looking like a moron for voicing their support for it). They will voice outright hatred for George W. Bush. And they will claim, in the most extreme cases, that they are done with the GOP altogether.

Twelve months from now the election will require action, not just complaining. Complaining is easy and cost-free. People can say whatever the hell they want right now because it doesn't matter. Making a decision will have consequences. It is easy to offer sweeping criticism of the Republicans in 2007, but Cokie understands that when shove comes back to push the Republican Issue of Last Resort – taxes – will sway oh-so-many of these newly discontented suburban Republicans. They have 12 long months to rationalize why voting for Giuliani or whoever is "different" than supporting the incumbent administration. The right-wing media will give them dozens of excuses for why Rudy ain't so bad (or, more likely, why Hillary is Too Horrible to Imagine Let Alone Support).

In those 12 months they'll slowly – and so terribly predictably – decide that they're really against the war in Iraq, but……golly, ducking the Alternative Minimum Tax sure would be sweet. They'll reassure their friends that they really think the GOP is corrupt and incompetent, but…..boy could they use that Capital Gains Tax cut. They value human life, but the sad truth is that they value paying 31% in federal income taxes instead of 33% just a little more.

No, Cokie Roberts is not intelligent. On this point, however, she is either correct by accident or showing a deeper understanding of the selfish, solipsistic trees than her critics realize.

(PS: Apologies to a favorite regular commenter for the political flavor of Friday's NPF)