Cuba Libre

A normally routine bit of Washington bureaucracy could have a big impact on U.S. relations with Cuba, either ushering in a long-stalled detente or slamming the door on rapprochement, perhaps until the scheduled end of the Castro era in 2018.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry must decide within a few weeks whether to advocate that President Barack Obama should take Cuba off a list of state sponsors of terrorism, a collection of Washington foes that also includes Iran, Syria and Sudan.

Cuban officials have long seen the terror designation as unjustified and told visiting American delegations privately in recent weeks that they view Kerry's recommendation as a litmus test for improved ties. They also hinted the decision could affect discussions over the release of jailed U.S. subcontractor Alan Gross, whose detention in 2009 torpedoed hopes of a diplomatic thaw. 

There's more there, including the reminder that taking this action would not change anything with regard to the half-century economic embargo against the island nation.

My opinion is that the Obama administration would be savvy if it were to completely normalize Cuban relations not only by removing them from this list, but also lifting the embargo and taking other steps necessary to realize the economic potential an open relationship with Cuba could present. Anybody still want to call me a socialist?

Fidel Castro has one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel. His brother Raul wants to pull a Pope Benedict (in five years, anyway). As for Cuba's best friend -- it hasn't been Russia for more than 20 years -- well, there's a changing of the guard in Venezuela, as you may aware. The times are ripe for more change.

By opening markets between the two countries, the president would give a unexpected boost to the US economy.  He would signal that the US does not wish to antagonize or provoke confrontation everywhere in the world (as it is perceived to be doing in Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Korean peninsula, the Middle East, etc.). On the heels of a generally well-received trip to the Holy Land, and in a speech full of the awe-striking rhetorical flourish which is the foundation for his global reputation, another olive branch extended to a long-time adversary in our own hemisphere would be a significant, sea-changing development and a broad brush stroke in a legacy he has shown interest in burnishing.

But the greatest blow to be struck would be entirely political in nature. Obama could crush the GOP in Florida -- and elsewhere -- by taking bold and peaceful commercial action in the Western hemisphere. Just as a generation of Cubans came to despise JFK (and Democrats generally) after the Bay of Pigs, so an American president could seal a relationship with that generation's children and grandchildren... for another couple of generations.

Noramlizing relations would also diminish a sore spot with the rest of the vast Latin American community: ending the "wet foot/dry foot" immigration policy that causes so much resentment among Mexican Americans would further advance the already-bright prospects for CIR.

Just to make clear, I am not advocating another free trade agreement in Latin America. It needs to be fair trade. And while I agree with the many views that the situation with Alan Gross should be resolved beforehand, a full and complete normalization of relations with Cuba is long overdue.

Removing Cuba from the terrorist-state list would be the proper first step in the right direction. And there should be more to quickly follow it.

Hall of Shame roundup

-- Disgraceful. John Zerwas and the rest of the Republicans in the Lege are content to watch Medicaid expansion (read: poor sick people) wither and die. Of course they couldn't do it without Rick Perry's help. What Kuffner said, especially this part.

1. The reason that so few doctors are taking new Medicaid patients is because the reimbursement rate is so low. Of course, the reimbursement rate is entirely at the discretion of the legislature, which Zerwas doesn’t mention, so this problem is entirely within their power to solve if they wanted to. Yes, that would cost more money, but it’s not like having millions of uninsured people isn’t costing us a ton already.

2. There’s still no clear idea what the Republicans want in a non-Medicaid solution. I presume they’re aiming for something like the Arkansas plan, once their pipe dreams of no-strings-attached block grants are officially beheaded, but nowhere does Zerwas say what he thinks the answer should be.

3. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The Republicans have had ten years to do something about the appalling lack of health care access for so many people in Texas. They have done exactly nothing, unless you count all the things they have done to make the problem worse.

-- Harris County commissioners continue to perform the same acute neglect on the Astrodome. Ed Emmett in fact seems to be following the same script as Zerwas ("this is not a good idea, but don't ask me if I have a better one"). NFL commissioner Roger Goodell unhelpfully fills the void.

-- Another thing your governor doesn't give a shit about: anybody's opinion on whether the Texas Enterprise Fund needs an audit, internal or independent. When you see so much bipartisan legislation emerging to rein in Governor NoCare in some form or fashion, you know he's overstayed his welcome.

But a lot of Republican voters are going to have to be convinced NOT to vote for him in 2014. Either that or Democrats are going to have to register, and turn out, an enormous number of people who do not typically vote in non-presidential years. To which would you assign a greater probability of occurrence?

-- Steve Stockman Tweets his brain farts. Don Rumsfeld does, too. My favorite response to Rummy was from comedian Patton Oswald, quoting Walter Sobchak from The Big Lebowski: "STFU Donny, you're out of your element".

-- Get ready for another long, hot, dry summer. Rick Perry's long-range weather forecast is the same as his "solution" to gun violence: Pray harder.

Update: No HOS roundup would be complete without mentioning Harry Reid's latest capitulation, on the assault weapons ban. The Senate Majority Leader is looking like a bigger loser than Alan Colmes used to on Hannity, and as pathetic as the Republicans at CPAC. When you regularly get your ass kicked by the weakest link, Harry, it might be you and not the other guys.

Update II: Louie Gohmert's one-day record for stunning technological ignorance (not his "Huffington Post simpletons") is broken by... Louie Gohmert. I tried to leave him out, folks, I really did. He forced his way in.

Texas Tea Fascist

Really though, who is surprised?

As recently as 2003, the president of the Greater Fort Bend County Tea Party had a very different title: director of propaganda for the American Fascist Party.

James Ives, a prominent Tea Party activist who has hosted statewide rallies and political debates and has been a regular contributor on conservative radio, was the AFP's fourth in command, commenting about the party’s principles on a fascist message board. An image of Ives in what appears to be a black uniform with yellow shoulder patches can be seen in a 2006 promotional video for the party.

The man insists it was all a gag, a ruse to infiltrate the organization and write a book.

Ives tells a more nuanced story; the Richmond, Texas, resident says he stumbled across the fascist party — which supports extreme right-wing authoritarian regimes — online in the early 2000s as an “amateur political science student and frustrated novelist” and was merely curious.

[...]

He said he believed he’d uncovered an underground cabal — and decided to stick around to do research for a “political novel of intrigue.”

“I thought, ‘I can blow the lid off of this. … I can go inside and find out what’s going on,’” Ives said.

Ives never wrote a novel. He did write a range of posts on the party’s Yahoo message board, communicating with his fellow “blackshirts” and the party’s chief organizer, a man who identified himself as the “Glorious Leader.”

In one post, he channeled Benito Mussolini, the World War II-era Italian dictator and founder of that country’s National Fascist Party, saying building up the fascist movement in America was “our spirit, our calling.”

“It will be our greatest challenge, and our sweetest victory, to finally surpass this dark menace, this numbing threat from the shadows, and replace it with the pure sunbeam that is our Fascist Faith, our Fascist Truth,” he wrote.

When even Dan Patrick and Debra Medina have to disavow you because you're too extreme...

(Patrick), whose radio station has regularly hosted Ives’ political commentaries in recent years, said that if his past connections to the American Fascist Party were legitimate, the station would no longer put him on air. Patrick said Ives had “never been on our payroll, never been an employee.” He called the promotional video and online postings “very disturbing, no matter how far in the past it is.”

[...]

... Medina, a well-known Tea Party activist who ran against Gov. Rick Perry in the 2010 Republican primary, said she isn’t familiar with Ives and isn’t in a position to judge his dealings with the fascist group. But she said part of the challenge of working with the grassroots is that it’s “so hard to know who you’re working with sometimes.

“Even with the best intentions — and I can speak from my own experience — you can be judged by those who work around you and are supportive of you,” she said. “It tends to tarnish the work that others are doing, and cause people to go, ‘Here we go again.’”

In a comment to the FB page for the Trib, someone named Christopher Malone posts both the press release containing Ive's response to the Trib's report and the link to it at the GFBCTP:

“Before jumping to conclusions about my involvement in the now defunct left-wing fascist group, I ask that you go back and read all of my speeches, posts, radio podcasts and writings over the past five years. All are public record and available any time. You will clearly see that the theme of my works, which are public, is my fervent love of my country, God, my family, liberty and The Constitution."

Our first clue that Mr. Ives was among the first of his generation to be home-schooled is his contention that the AFP is "left-wing". Fascists are not now and never have been left wing; this is a contrivance of the profoundly ignorant conservative hive mind. It's just part of the string of epithets that ties together nicely with "socialist", and "Kenyan-Muslim".

But as stated at the top... does this surprise anybody? Anyone at all? It shouldn't. This is who they are and what they are. They are out and proud. Nobody who shares their beliefs is shocked, nor are any of us who do not.

When people like Patrick or Medina feel compelled to put distance between themselves and Ives and his ilk, they are simply responding to the social nuances of living in the public eye. It's the same thing essentially as when Todd Akin  talks about 'legitimate' rape (or Ron Paul and "honest rape"); as when Mitt Romney talks about the 47% as moochers and freeloaders in quiet rooms. You say -- and do -- things like Ives said in public fora because you don't think anyone who does not agree with you will actually hear it or read it.

The Republicans just had a national conference where they discussed how important it was for them not to change what they believe... just keep it hidden a little better.

THIS. Is. What. They. Are. Top to bottom. They can only be differentiated by degrees of strength. In chemistry it's called alpha, or ionization yield.

It's still the same acid.

Ten years after

Nope. Still not over it.

"Simply stated, there is no doubt that the regime of Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction."

-- Dick Cheney, 9/8/02

"Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."

-- George W. Bush, 10/7/02

"We will win this conflict. We will win it easily."

-- John McCain, 1/22/03

My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence."

-- Colin Powell at the UN, 2/5/03

"[T]he area in the south and the west and the north that coalition forces control is substantial. It happens not to be the area where weapons of mass destruction were dispersed. We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."

-- Donald Rumsfeld, 3/30/03

"There's a certain amount of pop psychology in America that the Shia can't get along with the Sunni and the Shia in Iraq just want to establish some kind of Islamic fundamentalist regime. There's almost no evidence of that at all."

-- Bill Kristol, 4/1/03

"Who said war never solved anything?"

-- Brendan Miniter, The Wall Street Journal, 4/8/03

"The only people who think this wasn't a victory are Upper Westside liberals."

-- Charles Krauthammer, 4/19/03

TED KOPPEL: "[Y]ou’re not suggesting that the rebuilding of Iraq is going to be done for $1.7 billion?"
ANDREW NATSIOS (Agency for International Development): "Well, in terms of the American taxpayer's contribution, I do. This is it for the U.S."

-- Nightline, 4/23/03

"(Liberals) can't deny that President Bush has won his two wars, and won them resoundingly."

-- Paul Mirengoff at Powerline, 4/26/03

"The three-week swing through Iraq has utterly shattered skeptics' complaints."

-- Tony Snow (later Bush's press secretary) on Fox News, 4/27/03

Five years later:

As the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq neared, Vice President Cheney flew unannounced into Baghdad on Monday and declared the U.S. effort to install democracy and stabilize Iraq a "successful endeavor" that has been "well worth the effort." … The vice president used the opportunity to reassert that there was "a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda" before the U.S. invasion, despite reports that have found no operational ties between the two.

And five years ago today:

Cheney: On the security front, I think there’s a general consensus that we’ve made major progress, that the surge has worked. That’s been a major success.
Martha Raddatz: Two thirds of Americans say it’s not worth fighting.
Cheney: So?
Martha Raddatz: So? You don’t care what the American people think?
Cheney: No.

Here also...

The History of the Friedman Unit

(Below from 5/18/06)

For weeks now, liberal bloggers have proposed a new measurement to mark the mildly optimistic, if farfetched, pronouncements on Iraq coming from many pundits, Republicans, and White House spokesmen: the 'Friedman Unit' or ‘F.U.’ It equals six months, and is named after famed New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, a longtime supporter of the war who, for nearly three years, has repeatedly declared that things would likely turn around there if we just give it another six months.

The full listing of Friedman Unit pronouncements.

Bush Lowballed the Cost of the Iraq War by $6 Trillion



What We Did to Iraq

The US public was always carefully protected by its media from full knowledge of what the US government did to Iraq. The networks had a rule of never showing blood. They almost never showed wounded Iraqis with bloody bandages. Of course, they never showed dismemberment (bodies blown up, unlike in Hollywood movies, don’t just pile up whole). Since Arabic satellite TV showed such images every day, the Arab world and the US saw two different wars on their screens. US media almost never interviewed Iraqi politicians (magazine shows like 60 Minutes very occasionally took up that task). Frequently, Pentagon talking points were swallowed whole. Propaganda about ‘al-Qaeda’ and Zarqawi being responsible for “80%” of the violence was used to hide from Americans that there were both Sunni and Shiite resistance movements against American occupation, and that they were Iraqis and widespread. 

The US created a power vacuum and exercised a pro-Shiite favoritism in Iraq that fostered a Sunni-Shiite civil war. At its height in 2006-2007, as many as 3,000 Iraqis were being killed a month by militias. Many showed signs of acid or drilling or electrical torture. The Baghdad police had to establish a corpse patrol in the morning to collect the cadavers. How many Iraqis died as a result of the US invasion and occupation will never be known with any precision, but I think 200,000 would be the lower minimum. Since three to four times as many people are typically wounded as killed in conflict situations, that would suggest that as many as one million Iraqis were killed or wounded, some 4% of the population.

The US rounded up some 25,000 Iraqis at the height of the conflict, and their Shiite Iraqi government allies held another 25,000. The vast majority were Sunni Arabs. This 50,000 were in a vast gulag at any one time, but tens of thousands circulated through this system. Many were arbitrarily arrested, for simply being young men in the general vicinity of a bombing or other guerrilla activity. Very large numbers were tortured.

US troops sometimes committed excesses. One national guard unit was known for laying down suppressive fire whenever a bomb went off in their vicinity. This tactic ensured that they killed Iraqi pedestrians after a market bombing. US troops sometimes shot drivers who did not know English and could not understand commands to slow down at checkpoints. How widespread actual atrocities were is always difficult to gauge in the fog of war.

Do you feel safer?

Update: The Last Letter, by Tomas Young.

I write this letter on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War on behalf of my fellow Iraq War veterans. I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines who died in Iraq. I write this letter on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of veterans who have been wounded and on behalf of those whose wounds, physical and psychological, have destroyed their lives. I am one of those gravely wounded. I was paralyzed in an insurgent ambush in 2004 in Sadr City. My life is coming to an end. I am living under hospice care.  

[...]

I write this letter, my last letter, to you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. I write not because I think you grasp the terrible human and moral consequences of your lies, manipulation and thirst for wealth and power. I write this letter because, before my own death, I want to make it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans, along with millions of my fellow citizens, along with hundreds of millions more in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and what you have done. You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole.