Clash Fridays Part 1

Someone mentioned this on an earlier thread

No kidding

The Carpetbagger Report has this up

Top Bush administration officials seem to revel in historical analogies, particularly when it comes to the war in Iraq. At different times, the Bush gang has referenced Korea, the Revolutionary War, WWI, and the Civil War. By mid-2005, the president had settled on World War II as a personal favorite.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is especially fond of pointing to history to justify White House decisions. When pressed a few months ago about the failures of the administration�s policies in the Middle East, Rice told reporters, �I�m a student of history, so perhaps I have a little more patience with enormous change in the international system. It�s a big shifting of tectonic plates, and I don�t expect it to happen in a few days or even in a year.� Apparently, Rice�s detractors just don�t know enough about history to make sound judgments. We should leave it all to Dr. Rice.

With this in mind, the Wall Street Journal noted today that when Rice compares today�s challenges in the Middle East to the Cold War and post-World War II Europe, as she does quite frequently, she has no idea what she�s talking about.

Her contention is while things may look bad now in Iraq and elsewhere in the region, history is on the administration�s side. She pushed a similar argument to reporters last month. The Middle East is �moving toward something that I am quite certain will not have a full resolution and that you will not be able to fully judge for decades,� she said.

Critics dismiss Ms. Rice�s references to the Cold War as both convenient and a sign of her limited frame of reference. The challenges facing Europe in 1946, they say, bear little similarity to those of the Middle East in the 21st century.

�The administration�s reservoir of historical analogies seems limited to the 1914-1991 period. And it�s all about Europe,� said Adam Garfinkle, a former Rice speechwriter who edits the foreign-policy journal The American Interest. �No one in a senior position in this administration seems to have even the vaguest notion of modern Middle Eastern history.�

When a Rice speechwriter says the administration�s top officials are clueless, you know it�s bad.

Of course, Rice�s misguided perspective, in which she seems to force modern situations into the historical models she�s familiar with, have real consequences. As the WSJ noted, Rice �tends to portray events, particularly the clash between what she calls �moderation� and �extremism� in the Middle East, as driven by huge, almost inevitable forces that make diplomacy impractical, or even irrelevant.� Rice personally fed that notion this week by insisting diplomatic negations had nothing to do with �deal making.�

�There�s a tendency to think about diplomacy as something that is done untethered to the conditions underlying it or the balance underlying it,� she said. �In fact, that�s not the way that it works. You aren�t going to be successful as a diplomat if you don�t understand the strategic context in which you are actually negotiating. It is not deal-making.�

Aaron David Miller, a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center and former advisor to Secretaries of State from George Schulz to Colin Powell, said Rice�s comments were so misguided, he �nearly fell off [his] chair� when he read them.

Remember, back in 2000, when candidate George W. Bush said it didn�t matter if he knew anything; what mattered was he�d have top-notch advisors?

She wanted unemployment?

Diary of a goof-off: No work, no pay
A Des Moines woman details her idling on the job on her employer's computer.

By CLARK KAUFFMAN
REGISTER STAFF WRITER


January 19, 2007

A Des Moines hotel worker has been fired for using her employer's computer to keep a massive, detailed journal cataloging her efforts to avoid work.

State records indicate that Emmalee Bauer, 25, of Elkhart was hired by the Sheraton hotel company in February 2005. During most of 2006, she worked at the company's Army Post Road location as a sales coordinator.

At one point during her employment, Bauer was allegedly instructed to refrain from using company time to work on her personal, handwritten journal. Rather than stop writing at all, Bauer allegedly began using her work computer to keep the journal up to date.

"I am going to be typing all my thoughts instead of writing all day," wrote Bauer, according to portions of the journal that were entered into evidence at a recent state hearing dealing with Bauer's request for unemployment benefits. "That way, there isn't any way to tell for sure if I am working really hard or I am just goofing off."

Over the next several months, Bauer composed a book-length journal of 300 single-spaced pages, describing in excruciating detail her dogged efforts to avoid any sort of work.

"This typing thing seems to be doing the trick," she wrote. "It just looks like I am hard at work on something very important."

A supervisor discovered the journal late last year and fired Bauer for misuse of company time.

Other journal entries, according to evidence presented at the hearing:

- "I am going to sit right here and play Elf Bowling or some other nonsense. Once lunch is over, I will come right back to writing to piddle away the rest of the afternoon. ... I have almost 100 pages here! I wonder how long that's going to take to print?"

- "I don't feel like doing a single worthwhile thing today. It's 11:00 and so far I have stuck to that. ... I have managed to waste half of the day doing nothing constructive. That isn't exactly an easy task, either."

- "It's noon already and I don't feel like I have accomplished a damn thing. Accomplishment is overrated, anyway."

Arrgh.

She hated her job. Did she think her bosses weren't going to keep track of her work?

You don't do this. She should have just quit, not hand her bosses 300 pages of evidence that she basically didn't perform her work.

God, it makes my head hurt thinking about this level of stupidity.

Jesus

A Runaway Situation in Seattle
9-Year-Old Gets Past Airport Security and Flies to Texas

By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 19, 2007; Page A03

SEATTLE, Jan. 18 -- Weighing in at 80 pounds and standing 4 feet 9 inches tall, Semaj Booker has established himself as a regional heavyweight in the pre-adolescent sport of sneaking out of the house.

He could be the most persistent, most creative and most publicized 9-year-old runaway in the history of the Pacific Northwest. As his mother says, he really hates it here.

Semaj can drive a stolen car 90 mph while leading a police chase, as he demonstrated Sunday. The chase ended only after he blew the engine on a 1986 Acura swiped from a neighbor who had left the car unlocked and running. The boy then refused to get out of the car, which he had crashed into a tree.

Police had to break a car window, grab him and take him back to his mother's apartment in Lakewood, a gritty working-class suburb near Tacoma. This was his third stolen car in the past month, according to his mother, who said he learned how to drive playing video games.

The morning after the car crash, Semaj came up with a new, improved runaway scheme -- one that would transport him to Texas free of charge, get him on all-news cable television and prompt a local congressman to ask angry questions about how a kid could outfox a major airline and slip through federal airport security.

Early Monday, the boy managed to sneak out of his house and travel about 50 miles to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Police speculate he hitched a ride or stole another car.

His mother, Sakinah Booker, who is single and has three other boys, reported him missing at 7:30 a.m., but had no idea where he had gone. She later told reporters that Semaj loathes his life in Washington state, has tried to run away nine times since moving to the region less than a year ago and is "seeking a strong male figure" back in his former home state of Texas. His grandfather lives in Dallas.

At the Sea-Tac airport, Semaj did not have a reservation, nor did he have a means of buying a ticket. But he single-handedly conned Southwest Airlines and the federal Transportation Security Administration into allowing him to board a flight to San Antonio via Phoenix.

And that has annoyed Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.), in whose district Semaj reluctantly lives.

"We have spent millions of dollars and inconvenienced the American public mightily trying to make air travel safe," Dicks said. "If a 9-year-old can exploit this security system, we are going to have to look into the procedure

Needs a male authority figure? Seems mom fucked that up.

How the hell can a 9 year old drive to the airport? How can he leave the house without mom knowing?

He's a very bright kid, but he's gonna kill himself and others because his mom is unable to step in and do her job.

Only in Washington

Doug Mills/The New York Times

Taking Power, Sharing Cereal

SOME of the most powerful Democrats in America are split over a most incendiary household issue: rodents.

�I once had to pick up a mouse by the tail that Durbin refused to pick up,� complained Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, referring to his roommate Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois.

This characterization is not fair to Mr. Durbin, interjected another tenant in the Capitol Hill row house, Representative Bill Delahunt of Massachusetts. For starters, it overlooks Mr. Durbin�s gift for killing rats. �He will kill them with his bare hands,� Mr. Delahunt marveled.

�Oh, will you stop with the rats,� said the annoyed fourth roommate, Representative George Miller of California. He owns the house and is sensitive to any suggestion that he harbors pestilence. It�s dicey enough that he harbors politicians.

Think MTV�s �Real World� with a slovenly cast of Democratic power brokers. While Washington may have more than its share of crash pads for policy-debating workaholics, few, if any, have sheltered a quorum as powerful as this one. About a quarter-mile southeast of the Capitol, the inelegantly decorated two-bedroom house has become an unlikely center of influence in Washington�s changing power grid. It is home to the second- and third-ranking senators in the new Democratic majority (Mr. Durbin, the majority whip, and Mr. Schumer, the vice chairman of the Democratic caucus) and the chairman of the House Democratic Policy Committee (Mr. Miller).

Mr. Delahunt, a six-term congressman, is the least prominent of the four but perhaps the funniest. More to the point, he is the only one willing to sleep in the living room with a close-up view of Mr. Schumer slumbering a few feet away in his boxers.

Mr. Miller began taking in weary lawmakers in 1982, but this is the first time in 12 years that four members of a Democratic majority have lived here simultaneously. The four men were once host to a fund-raiser for Senator Barbara Boxer of California at their divey dwelling, raising $80,000. Given the prevailing attire in the place on many nights, guests were given pairs of custom-made �Barbara Boxer shorts.�

As a general rule, the abode is hardly fit for entertaining, or even for a health inspector. It is used for convenience: sleeping, ditching stuff, and fast-food consumption � the kinds of functions prized by vagabond politicians whose families are back in their home states and who generally spend only their working weekdays here.

�Everybody in the world says they�re going to do a television series based on us,� said Mr. Durbin, who was collapsed on the couch on a recent Monday night. Still in a tie, he sipped ice water from a massive Chicago Cubs cup while waiting for the Chinese food to arrive.

Despite total ignorance, I support this idea

Giuliani and Kerik

Giuliani and Broken Windows
by HarveyMilk [Subscribe]
Thu Jan 18, 2007 at 06:50:01 PM PST

In an ongoing series, I want to post diaries that piss off those who cling to the "conventional wisdom" of this site. Not just for the sake of pissing people off (that's an added bonus), but to get us to think.

I support the "Broken Windows" theory of law enforcement, and I support how Giuliani carried it out. It was necessary. It was effective.

I don't care if a Republican did it. New York is the better for it, and the whole country would be, too. So there.

On a national level, we Democrats were in the opposition forever. But, opposition is one thing. All you have to do is cry foul and profess a love of America. We're good at that. But now, we have power. And all signs point to us having even more power in 2008.

So, the time for righteous rants is over. Let's get to policy. That's were you can get into some trouble!

I live in an inner-ring suburb of Detroit, and I work in the City of Detroit (all in Wayne County, Michigan - the third bluest county in the country). John Conyers is my rep. I am (in my heart of hearts) a Democratic Socialist, and not simply a "Democrat," just like Martin Luther King, Jr.

At the same time, I support law enforcement taking the "Broken Windows" approach. Is being a "Democratic Socialist" and being an advocate of "Broken Windows" policing a dichotomy? No. I'll attempt to explain why.

A couple of days ago, I emerged from my concrete bunker of an office building to take my lunch (I'm a legal assistant). I encountered a man shitting on a public sidewalk. I gave him a look of disdain. He looked at me like I'd done something wrong!

In his defense, he appeared to be homeless and desperate. The good leftist in me knows that that isn't all his fault. And, every business in the CBD has signs posted saying "Restrooms are for Customers ONLY."

But, I couldn't help but think, if it were me, I'd find an alley, a place behind the dumpster to relieve myself. I wouldn't shit in front of everyone, and I wouldn't dare act like someone else had a problem if I were moving my bowels on public sidewalk.

Detroit struggles anyway with its national reputation. And we currently have the NAIAS in town. You would think law enforcement would stop things like public defocation. But no. I walked for six blocks to my destination, hoping that, along the way, I could hip a cop to the fact that someone was dropping the kids off in a public square. Get the guy some help. But, no member of law enforcement was to be found.

I think it will take a good, strong-minded Democrat to fix problems like this. A Republican looks cruel enforcing public decency - a Democrat wouldn't. Maybe a "Nixon Goes to China" thing, on the domestic tip.

To be clear, I'm not looking for a "blame the victim" solution, but I AM looking for a "quality of life" solution.

I care very much about the downtrodden in our society. I want to invest in mental health. But I don't want to watch someone take a shit in public on my way to get my lunch. And I damn sure won't put up with the shitter getting aggressive toward me. Fuck that, with no equivocation.

And where I am, we have only Democrats to blame.

Do you know anything other than Giuliani propeganda about Broken Windows or are you a racist who doesn't respect the constitution? You can be either. But Broken Windows failed.

This is the theory famously expounded by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling in an article entitled Broken Windows: The Police and Neighborhood Safety, which appeared in Atlantic Monthly in March 1982. They make the consequences of small-scale neglect very clear and very direct:

A piece of property is abandoned, weeds grow up, a window is smashed. Adults stop scolding rowdy children; the children, emboldened, become more rowdy. Families move out, unattached adults move in. Teenagers gather in front of the corner store. The merchant asks them to move; they refuse. Fights occur. Litter accumulates. People start drinking in front of the grocery; in time, an inebriate slumps to the sidewalk and is allowed to sleep it off. Pedestrians are approached by panhandlers.

The theory was that if you arrested people for small crimes, they wouldn't commit big ones.

However, crime in New York had already been going down because of community policing, where the police worked with the locals. Giuliani, who's antipathy towards blacks was noted, turned broken windows into a policy which led to extrajudicial murder.

What Broken Windows did was increase the number of blacks and latinos in the system for minor things like drinking outside, while whites would never be stopped, much less arrested for such activity. At one point, 80 percent of New York's black and latino males had been stopped and frisked. One particular opponent of Giuliani was illegally arrested 26 times.

But the consequences of Broken Windows created a racial divide which has never been truly healed.

Abner Louima

Louima was attending a nightclub in Brooklyn when police approached him and then arrested him. He was then taken into the bathroom, raped and had his rectum destroyed by a plunger.

Amadou Diallo

Diallo was coming home at 2 AM after getting a sandwich from the local deli. Four police stopped him and fired 41 shots at him. No gun was found, no evidence of a crime found. The police officers were aquitted by an Albany County jury, forever casting a pall over relations between the NYPD and the African American community. Extrajudicial murder usually does. The city settled with the Diallo family for several million dollars.

Patrick Dorismond

Getting off of work after a couple of drinks in a bar, he's approached by an undercover police officer. After a scuffle, he is murdered on the street by the NYPD. He had no gun, there was no evidence of any crime committed. The case is not prosecuted. His family settles for several million dollars.

This was the outcome of Giuliani's broken windows policing, innocents harassed, others extrajudicially tortured and murdered, a gross violation of civil rights.

Instead of looking to police solutions, why not work with the community to provide services for the homeless and petty criminals. People shouldn't have to die for reaching their wallet

Gunpoint at Democracy

Andrea Parhamovich in an undated photograph.
Ms. Parhamovich was killed Wednesday in the
ambush of a convoy in Baghdad.

Ambush Kills an American Teaching Democracy to Iraqis

By DAMIEN CAVE
Published: January 19, 2007

BAGHDAD, Jan. 18 � An American woman killed here on Wednesday when gunmen fired on her convoy of vehicles was ambushed just minutes after leaving the headquarters of a prominent Sunni Arab political party, where she had been teaching a class on democracy, party members said Thursday

They said the woman � Andrea Parhamovich, 28, of Perry, Ohio � left the party�s fortified compound in western Baghdad around 4 p.m., heading east to her group�s offices outside the Green Zone, when she and her armed guards came under attack from all sides.

Les Campbell, Middle East and North Africa director for the National Democratic Institute, which hired Ms. Parhamovich about three months ago, said that during the fierce firefight, guards tried to escape, fought back, then called for reinforcements from other private security contractors.

The attackers � perhaps as many as 30 men, according to witness accounts passed on to Mr. Campbell � used heavy weapons, possibly rocket-propelled grenades, destroying the armored sedan that Ms. Parhamovich was in and killing three of her armed guards: a Croatian, a Hungarian and an Iraqi. Two other security contractors were wounded. The attackers then scattered back into the neighborhood.

Saleem Abdullah, a senior member of the Sunni political group, the Iraqi Islamic Party, said that Ms. Parhamovich�s group might have been chosen as a target when it arrived. �It seems that someone, when they saw her in the area, set up an ambush,� he said. �That�s what we think.�

Mr. Campbell described Ms. Parhamovich as a driven young woman, inspired by politics and a desire to help Iraqis connect with their newly elected government.

He said she joined the National Democratic Institute, a nonprofit organization based in Washington that has worked in Iraq since 2003, after working for a few months with a similar group in Baghdad.

�She was an idealistic person who saw an opportunity in Iraq to help, to work with people in Iraq who were interested in democracy and human rights, which is what she cared about,� he said.

Andi Parhamovich was a former Air America staffer and her death was taken especially hard there.

And while I am sympathetic to her friends who grieve her loss, I have to wonder what kind of democracy you can build with mercenaries.

Does anyone expect an election to take place in Iraq in the next few years? The National Democratic Institute really, really needs to rethink their field operations in Iraq. She rode into an ambush which would make a SF A team proud. 30 guys came at them guns blazing and killed a bunch of people.

Now how did that happen?

Do you think that a certain shia militia might have had issues with this? That they may have objected to helping a Sunni political party?

I think the NGO's who remain need to get a grip on reality. Hiring mercenaries, living in foritified compounds, being ambushed, if not stalked, then ambushed, is not going to help people. It will, however, get people killed.

The brutal reality is that the only voting in Iraq will be to comfirm whoever Sadr chooses as president.