I understand the symbolism behind this gesture, but this is just pathetic :

The United States will demolish Iraq’s notorious Abu Ghraib prison in consultation with the incoming government as a way of symbolizing the country’s new start, the White House said on Monday.

The prison near Baghdad, scene of torture under Saddam Hussein and of a prisoner abuse scandal under the U.S. military, would be replaced by a new maximum security prison funded by the U.S. government, the White House said in a statement. The statement was issued ahead of a prime time speech on the future of Iraq by President Bush.

“Under Saddam Hussein, prisons like Abu Ghraib were symbols of death and torture. That same prison became a symbol of disgraceful conduct by a few American troops who dishonored our country and disregarded our values,” the statement said.

“America will fund the construction of a modern, maximum security prison. When that prison is completed, detainees at Abu Ghraib will be relocated.

“Then, with the approval of the Iraqi government, we will demolish the Abu Ghraib prison as a fitting symbol of Iraq’s new beginning,” it added.

Do they honestly think the Arab world will care about this? My guess is that they’ll view this the way European Jews would have reacted to a Nazi promise to tear down Auschwitz and replace it with a “modern, maximum security” concentration camp. The problem isn’t the building and what it symbolizes, but the people who were/are in there committing horrible crimes. If he really wants to throw a bone to the Iraqis, he’s suspend the immunity of the civilian contractors and let the Iraqis use them to test their “sovereign” legal system.

Man, Bush approval ratings are going down in flames like the Hindenburg (I just hope Karl Rove is running around the west wing screaming “Oh, the humanity..”) :

Mr. Bush’s overall job approval rating has continued to decline. Forty-one percent approve of the job he is doing as president, while 52 percent disapprove ? the lowest overall job rating of his presidency. Two weeks ago, 44 percent approved. A year ago, two-thirds did.
. . .
As concern about the situation in Iraq grows, 65 percent now say the country is on the wrong track ? matching the highest number ever recorded in CBS News Polls, which began asking this question in the mid-1980’s. Only 30 percent currently say things in this country are headed in the right direction. One year ago, in April 2003, 56 percent of Americans said the country was headed in the right direction.

The last time the percentage that said the country was on the wrong track was as high as it is now was back in November 1994. Then, Republicans swept into control of both houses of Congress for the first time in decades.

Majorities disapprove of the way Mr. Bush is handling foreign policy and the economy. Terrorism remains the only positive area for the president ? a majority of 51 percent approve of the way he is handling the campaign against terrorism. But that number matches his lowest rating ever on terrorism.

Just 37 percent ? the lowest number in his presidency ? now approve of Mr. Bush’s handling of foreign policy, while 56 percent disapprove. Mr. Bush’s ratings on the economy are similar: 36 percent approve of his handling of it and 57 percent disapprove.

So with Bush in full damage control mode, the only trick in Bush’s playbook is to jump in front of the cameras and do a little dance. Luckily for us, the media has mostly woken up from their (at least) four-year hibernation and caught on to the campaign speech disguised as a presidential address scam :

ABC, CBS and NBC decided not to offer live coverage of President Bush’s speech about Iraq Monday, although the cable news networks planned to pre-empt their regular programming for the address.

Bush was to deliver the first in a series of speeches about the future of Iraq at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pa. CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC all said they would carry the speech live.

The broadcast networks took an unusual amount of time to tell viewers their plans for Bush’s speech ? ABC didn’t decide until Monday afternoon ? because the Bush administration did not formally request the time.

When the White House requests the networks set aside time for a presidential address, it’s unusual for them to refuse.

So with Bush set to unveil his strategy for Iraq more than a year late, the networks have decided that the public would be better off watching Fear Factor. Maybe if Bush wants to get people to watch his next speech, he should set himself on fire and eat a donkey’s nutsack or something.

Goddamn that was a good episode of the Sopranos last night. I still can’t get it out of my mind. One of the best they’ve ever done. I can’t wait to see what goes down in the finale. For those who haven’t seen it yet, beware of spoilers in the comments.

More political hogwash coming later today…

A couple weeks ago, the news was that Bush was planning to skip his daughters’ graduation ceremonies :

President Bush and first lady Laura Bush will not attend the graduation ceremonies of their twin daughters later this month in order to avoid disruptions for families of the other graduates, the White House announced Thursday.

Jenna Bush is an English major at the University of Texas at Austin, while Barbara Bush is majoring in humanities at Yale University.

White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said the president and first lady decided to spare families the rigorous security measures that go along with a presidential visit.

But today on CNN, he gave a stump speech at the LSU graduation ceremony :

President Bush is vowing America won’t be driven from Iraq” in weakness and fear.” In a commencement speech at Louisiana State University, he struck a defiant tone as aides made plans for a prime-time speech Monday.

Bush told graduates insurgents spreading an “ideology of hatred” in Iraq are hoping America will retreat from the challenge, but he says they’re finding “Americans are not the running kind.”

He declared, “When we make a commitment, we see it through.”
. . .
Bush is also attending a GOP fund-raiser near New Orleans before heading to his Texas ranch.

Will he only go to ceremonies that he’s allowed to politicize? Or will he only attend ceremonies that are in swing states? I wonder if Jenna and Barbara think their dad is a total dick right now? I know I would.

Every day there’s new revelations about the Iraqi prison torture. Today there are some new first-hand accounts from inside the prison :

Hilas also said he witnessed an Army translator having sex with a boy at the prison. He said the boy was between 15 and 18 years old. Someone hung sheets to block the view, but Hilas said he heard the boy’s screams and climbed a door to get a better look. Hilas said he watched the assault and told investigators that it was documented by a female soldier taking pictures.

“The kid was hurting very bad,” Hilas said.
. . .
Hilas also said he watched as Graner and others sodomized a detainee with a phosphoric light. “They tied him to the bed,” Hilas said.
. . .
One day, the detainee said, American soldiers held him down and spread his legs as another soldier prepared to open his pants. “I started screaming,” he said. A soldier stepped on his head, he said, and someone broke a phosphoric light and spilled the chemicals on him.

“I was glowing and they were laughing,” he said.

The detainee said the soldiers eventually brought him to a room and sodomized him with a nightstick. “They were taking pictures of me during all these instances,” he told the investigators.
. . .
He said a bag was put over his head and he was made to strip. He said American soldiers started to taunt him.

“Do you pray to Allah?” one asked. “I said yes. They said, ‘[Expletive] you. And [expletive] him.’ One of them said, ‘You are not getting out of here health[y], you are getting out of here handicapped. And he said to me, ‘Are you married?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ They said, ‘If your wife saw you like this, she will be disappointed.’ One of them said, ‘But if I saw her now she would not be disappointed now because I would rape her.’ ”

He said the soldiers told him that if he cooperated with interrogators they would release him in time for Ramadan. He said he did, but still was not released. He said one soldier continued to abuse him by striking his broken leg and ordered him to curse Islam. “Because they started to hit my broken leg, I cursed my religion,” he said. “They ordered me to thank Jesus that I’m alive.”

The detainee said the soldiers handcuffed him to a bed.

“Do you believe in anything?” he said the soldier asked. “I said to him, ‘I believe in Allah.’ So he said, “But I believe in torture and I will torture you.’ ”

Notice the sanitized language in there? The detainees being “sodomized”? The Army translator “having sex” with a young boy? Let’s cut through the bullshit and call this what it is : rape

This is sexual assault of the worst kind and it should be described in harsh language that accurately describes how brutal these monsters are. To use terms that are mostly used to describe consensual sex acts, the reporters here are subtly downplaying the seriousness of this abuse. Not that I think they’re trying to be apologists or anything, but when you tone down the language, you also tone down its impact.

Of course, prison rape has become something of a joke here in the States over the last few years. As Human Rights Watch noted “Rape…was no aberrational occurrence; instead it was a deeply-rooted, systemic problem. It was also a problem that prison authorities were doing little to address.” Granted, this is describing prisoner on prisoner rape, the public’s response to this problem has been to either ignore the problem or laugh at it altogether. Hell, laughing at prison rape is so mainstream it was a joke in a 7-UP commercial.

The implication behind American reactions to homegrown prison rape is clear : if you’re in prison, you did something that makes you deserve to be raped. When you add some post-9/11 xenophobia and hysterical fear about future terrorist attacks, it’s not hard to see why people have been willing to look the other way for so long. If Americans can’t be bothered to care about our own prisoners, who would have expected them to give a shit about some foreigners?

If the Bible is the literal word of god, what does that make these people?

Thank the Lord — and the proofreaders at Peachtree Editorial and Proofreading — that the Bible refers to ??our ancestors” instead of ??sour ancestors,” and calls for an end to ??factions” — not ??fractions.” The proofreading service caught those typos and others before the latest edition of the Holy Book went to press.

At Peachtree, attention to detail is more than a job description. It’s a calling.

??Bible readers are less forgiving of errors because they expect perfection in the Bible text,” said June Gunden, who founded the business along with her husband, Doug.

Peachtree Editorial and Proofreading Service is believed to be the only one of its kind in the nation — and one of only a few in the world — to specialize in proofreading Bibles.
. . .
A list hangs in the Gundens’ office as a reminder of just how much rides on their work. The list, a collection of notorious typos found in the Bible, features one prominent error from a 1631 King James edition: ??Thou shalt commit adultery.”

??Obviously, you try to make sure anything that says, ?You shall not,’ you make sure you have the ?not,”‘ Doug Gunden said.

While such long-ago errors are good for a chuckle, the Gundens, who have been in the proofreading business for more than 25 years, realize that proofreading a Bible is serious stuff.

With an ordinary book, ??you can put up with more because it’s not something you’re basing your whole life on,” June Gunden said. ??It’s information, but it’s not really life-changing information. It’s not something you believe to be infallible.”

But wait a sec….I thought that people who were “blessed” with the job of translating the Bible were “guided by the hand of God”. If there’s enough screwups in there to consume a 16-person staff for two years, does that mean the Bible isn’t perfect?

Jeez, next you’re gonna tell me the Easter Bunny is fake or something…

At this point, there’s little question that Bush has been a horrible president. Now the question among historians seems to be who to compare Bush to :

The reasons stated by some of the historians for their choice of the presidency that they believe Bush?s to be the worst since are worth repeating. The following are representative examples for each of the presidents named most frequently:

REAGAN: ?I think the presidency of George W. Bush has been generally a failure and I consider his presidency so far to have been the most disastrous since that of Ronald Reagan–because of the unconscionable military aggression and spending (especially the Iraq War), the damage done to the welfare of the poor while the corporate rich get richer, and the backwards religious fundamentalism permeating this administration. I strongly disliked and distrusted Reagan and think that George W. is even worse.?

NIXON: ?Actually, I think [Bush?s] presidency may exceed the disaster that was Nixon. He has systematically lied to the American public about almost every policy that his administration promotes.? Bush uses ?doublespeak? to ?dress up policies that condone or aid attacks by polluters and exploiters of the environment . . . with names like the ?Forest Restoration Act? (which encourages the cutting down of forests).?

HOOVER: ?I would say GW is our worst president since Herbert Hoover. He is moving to bankrupt the federal government on the eve of the retirement of the baby boom generation, and he has brought America?s reputation in the world to its lowest point in the entire history of the United States.?
. . .
HARDING: ?Oil, money and politics again combine in ways not flattering to the integrity of the office. Both men also have a tendency to mangle the English language yet get their points across to ordinary Americans. [Yet] the comparison does Harding something of a disservice.?

McKINLEY: ?Bush is perhaps the first president [since McKinley] to be entirely in the ?hip pocket? of big business, engage in major external conquest for reasons other than national security, AND be the puppet of his political handler. McKinley had Mark Hanna; Bush has Karl Rove. No wonder McKinley is Rove?s favorite historical president (precedent?).?
. . .
EVER: The second most common response from historians, trailing only Nixon, was that the current presidency is the worst in American history. A few examples will serve to provide the flavor of such condemnations. ?Although previous presidents have led the nation into ill-advised wars, no predecessor managed to turn America into an unprovoked aggressor. No predecessor so thoroughly managed to confirm the impressions of those who already hated America. No predecessor so effectively convinced such a wide range of world opinion that America is an imperialist threat to world peace. I don ‘t think that you can do much worse than that.?

The guy who actually conducted the survey didn’t exactly have a favorable opinion of Bush either :

My assessment is that George W. Bush?s record on running up debt to burden our children is the worst since Ronald Reagan; his record on government surveillance of citizens is the worst since Richard Nixon; his record on foreign-military policy has gotten us into the worst foreign mess we?ve been in since Lyndon Johnson sank us into Vietnam; his economic record is the worst since Herbert Hoover; his record of tax favoritism for the rich is the worst since Calvin Coolidge; his record of trampling on civil liberties is the worst since Woodrow Wilson. How far back in our history would we need to go to find a presidency as disastrous for this country as that of George W. Bush has been thus far? My own vote went to the administration of James Buchanan, who warmed the president?s chair while the union disintegrated in 1860-61.

Who has been the biggest beneficiary of the horrible terrorism that struck our nation in September of 2001? The answer to that question should be obvious to anyone who considers where the popularity ratings and reelection prospects of a president with the record outlined above would be had he not been able to wrap himself in the flag, take advantage of the American people?s patriotism, and make himself synonymous with ?the United States of America? for the past two years.

That abuse of the patriotism and trust of the American people is even worse than everything else this president has done and that fact alone might be sufficient to explain the depth of the hostility with which so many historians view George W. Bush. Contrary to the conservative stereotype of academics as anti-American, the reasons that many historians cited for seeing the Bush presidency as a disaster revolve around their perception that he is undermining traditional American practices and values. As one patriotic historian put it, ?I think his presidency has been the worst disaster to hit the United States and is bringing our beloved country to financial, economic, and social disaster.?

Some voters may judge such assessments to be wrong, but they are assessments informed by historical knowledge and the electorate ought to have them available to take into consideration during this election year.

My favorite part of the whole article is this perfect summary of Bush’s economic policies :

Cut taxes three times, sharply reducing the burden on the rich, reclassified money obtained through stock ownership as more deserving than money earned through work. The idea that dividend income should not be taxed?what might accurately be termed the unearned income tax credit?can be stated succinctly: ?If you had to work for your money, we?ll tax it; if you didn?t have to work for it, you can keep it all.?

God, I hope we’re not doomed to repeat another Bush presidency…

I hate, hate, hate, hate Texas (via Kevin, Patrick, Julia…) :

According to the office of Texas Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn, a Denison Unitarian church isn’t really a religious organization — at least for tax purposes. Its reasoning: the organization “does not have one system of belief.”

Never before — not in this state or any other — has a government agency denied Unitarians tax-exempt status because of the group’s religious philosophy, church officials say. Strayhorn’s ruling clearly infringes upon religious liberties, said Dan Althoff, board president for the Denison congregation that was rejected for tax exemption by the comptroller’s office.

“I was surprised — surprised and shocked — because the Unitarian church in the United States has a very long history,” said Althoff, who notes that father-and-son presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams were both Unitarians.
. . .
What constitutes religion? When and how should government make that determination? Questions that for years have vexed the world’s great philosophers have now become the province of the state comptroller’s office.

Questions about the issue were referred to Jesse Ancira, the comptroller’s top lawyer, who said Strayhorn has applied a consistent standard — and then stuck to it. For any organization to qualify as a religion, members must have “simply a belief in God, or gods, or a higher power,” he said.
. . .
Those who oppose the comptroller’s “God, gods or supreme being” test say that it can discriminate against legitimate faiths. For example, applying that standard could disqualify Buddhism because it does not mandate belief in a supreme being, critics say.
. . .
But the lack of a single creed is a hallmark of Unitarianism, Althoff said. Instead, Unitarian Universalists have seven guiding principles, including “respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part,” according to the Unitarian Universalist Web site.

The group also draws from various religious and philosophical traditions, including Jewish, Christian, humanist and Earth-centered teachings, but promotes individual freedom of belief, according to the Web site. It notes that Unitarians and Universalists have operated in the United States for at least 200 years, although the two groups did not merge until 1961.
. . .
Despite its lack of a specific creed, Unitarian Universalism is as much a religion as any other, Althoff said. From his perspective, religion is not just about the answers to life’s big questions, but also calls on people to evaluate the questions themselves.

“It seems to me that any [group] that is specifically organized to address and explore the issues of what constitutes the good life, both here and perhaps in the afterworld, would qualify” as a religion, Althoff said.

The Rev. Anthony David, lead pastor of Pathways Church in Southlake, said he is disturbed by the comptroller’s decisions because it ignores Unitarian Universalists’ belief that spiritual fulfillment can emerge in “different ways at different levels.”

“It reflects an incredible misunderstanding of what a church needs to look like,” David said.

Pathways teaches that God is a term that describes the source of ultimate meaning and purpose, but the church does not advocate a one-size-fits-all theology, David said.

“Creedlessness doesn’t mean no belief or anything goes,” he said.

Having been raised in the Unitarian Universalist (and Southern Baptist) churches, this story really hits a nerve with me. People are so married to the idea that church is the place where you go to have your beliefs handed to you, that many religious folks have a hard time comprehending what Unitarian Universalism is or why it’s considered a religion. Since I’ve answered this question a lot over the years, lemme see if I can quickly sum it up :

Like the article mentioned above, the Unitarian and Universalist churches were separate until the 60’s. Their roots faiths are basically liberal offshoots of Christianity. The Unitarians believed that there was one god (as opposed to the trinity) who didn’t necessarily need to be worshiped and the Universalists who believed that everyone would end up in Heaven (unlike the Catholic Church who, at the time, was selling tickets into the afterlife). Here’s a relevant quote from a pamphlet about the origins of Unitarian Universalism :

Unitarians and Universalists have always been heretics. We are heretics because we want to choose our faith, not because we desire to be rebellious. ?Heresy? in Greek means ?choice.? During the first three centuries of the Christian church, believers could choose from a variety of tenets about Jesus. Among these was a belief that Jesus was an entity sent by God on a divine mission. Thus the word ?Unitarian? developed, meaning the oneness of God. Another religious choice in the first three centuries of the Common Era (CE) was universal salvation. This was the belief that no person would be condemned by God to eternal damnation in a fiery pit. Thus a Universalist believed that all people will be saved. Christianity lost its element of choice in 325 CE when the Nicene Creed established the Trinity as dogma. For centuries thereafter, people who professed Unitarian or Universalist beliefs were persecuted.
. . .
Two thousand years ago liberals were persecuted for seeking the freedom to make religious choices, but such freedom has become central to both Unitarianism and Universalism. As early as the 1830s, both groups were studying and promulgating texts from world religions other than Christianity. By the beginning of the twentieth century, humanists within both traditions advocated that people could be religious without believing in God. No one person, no one religion, can embrace all religious truths.

So while most churches have a “one size fits all” approach to religion, UU is more about presenting religious ideas that are consistent with the church’s principles and purposes and letting the congregation figure it out for themselves. For this reason, UU churches often have very different personalities.

When I was in high school, I was pretty active in the UU church and I’ve been to quite a few churches throughout Texas. Having sat through UU services in Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, and Houston, I can say with authority that they all have a lot more in common with Christian Churches than bigots like Texas Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn would have you believe. All of the services I’ve attended have had ministers, sermons, pews, hymns, and prayers/meditations. They’ve also had plenty of references to the Bible and Jesus too, but apparently the sticking point is that Unitarian Universalism doesn’t beat you over the head with a system of beliefs that you must accept in order to be a member of the congregation. Well, if that’s the most important aspect of religion, then consider me proud to be a non-religious atheist.

Since I was away from the computer on Monday, I didn’t get chance to comment on the first gay marriages being performed (as pointed out in this comment) :

I was hoping to chime in about how this decision by the state judicial branch is going to cause that state’s electorate to actually lean to the right and give Bush Massachusetts in a couple months. But I never saw a post on The Talent Show about it. I’m kinda surprised, especially since you had been pushing for civil unions as a good middle-of-the-road policy, and therefore assumed you’d be worried about how the gay marriage fight is going to affect the election.

As mentioned above, while I’m a strong supporter of gay marriage, I still support those who are more comfortable with civil unions. Gay marriage is as decisive as any issue out there right now and a middle ground is probably necessary if we’re going to make progress in some of the less tolerant areas of the country.

To put it in terms of the Brown vs. Board of Education decision, the competing sides aren’t between whether gays should be allowed to marry or should have a “separate but equal” solution, but rather between marriage advocates and people who think homosexuality is a sinful abomination on par with incest. If the Brown case had been tried during reconstruction between people who wanted to fully integrate schools and former slave-owners who still saw African-Americans as being 3/5 of a person, our schools would still be segregated today. (Okay, so they are still mostly segregated, but that’s another issue entirely)

The fact is, integration wouldn’t have happened in the first place if it weren’t for segregation. While it means the march toward equality is moving slower than we’d like, it also means that the public’s unfounded and xenophobic fears are smoothed over. Yeah, I don’t think we should have to tip-toe around prejudices either, but that’s one of those things that comes along with living in a democracy. Being right often takes a back seat to being popular when it comes to getting anything done.

To bring it back to politics, I don’t think this will have a huge impact on the Presidential race. I think Kerry has a better chance of winning Texas than Bush does of winning Massachusetts. Even if this does cause the state to move to the right, it’s still Kerry’s home state. He’ll do fine. Plus, Bush’s pleas for an anti-gay constitutional amendment have generated about as much support as his plans to go to Mars or remove steroids from professional sports.

By the time the election rolls around, there will be six months of legal gay marriage and the Chicken Little’s out there will be able to see that the sky isn’t falling. I know the moralists are freaking out right now, but they’ll get used to it. If anything, I think the media attention will do a lot for the gay rights movement.

Did you guys notice anything missing from the news reports about gay marriages being performed? Unlike every other gay-themed event that the media covers, this was devoid of drag queens, leather men, and half-naked loudmouths (and I’m sure the cameramen were looking for them). Monday’s gay marriages weren’t about trying to grab the spotlight, but legally solidify existing relationships, and I think media coverage made this point fairly clear. Sure, there’s gonna be plenty of grumbling about “traditional values” for a while, but they’ll surely be contradicted by the lack of marital disasters in the wake of this landmark decision.

Slate has a new regular feature called Kerryisms which will take John Kerry to task for his “caveats and pointless embellishments” (I guess they’re just feeling a little guilty for the last four years of Bushisms or something). Here’s their first installment :

“Let me just say very quickly that the horrifying abuse of Iraqi prisoners, which the world has now seen, is absolutely unacceptable and inexcusable. And the response of the administration, certainly the Pentagon, has been slow and inappropriate. I believe the president needs to guarantee that the world is going to have an explanation. What happened there has done a disservice to all of our troops who serve with great valor and greater courage and, I think, with distinction. And it also undermines America’s own efforts in the region. It has the potential of putting our troops, the rest of them, in further jeopardy. It can increase acts of terror against America and Americans. And it undermines the overall effort of the United States in the region. So I think it is important to have an understanding of this as rapidly as possible and to make that explanation and any other appropriate comments to the world.”?Los Angeles, May 5, 2004

Pretty funny, huh? Yeah, I don’t think it’s that funny either. To help explain why we should be laughing, there’s an “English version” which has been obsessively picked apart. Of course, if you have to explain why something is funny, it probably isn’t that funny to begin with.

By contrast, here’s the most recent Bushism :

“This has been tough weeks in that country.”?Washington, D.C., April 13, 2004

It’s telling that there isn’t an “English version” included with the Bushisms. I guess the editors at Slate think it’s safe to assume that anyone reading the column is more intelligent than the man they’re quoting.

Personally I think having a President that doesn’t understand the most basic aspects of English grammar is much funnier (and scarier) than one that talks too much. That’s the choice we’ve got this November : The egghead or the fool. Or, to put this in “Must See TV” terms, we’ve got a choice between making Frasier or Joey our next president.