Month: May 2009

On Wednesday the House passed an important piece of legislation tightening regulations on credit cards, legislation that we can safely assume would not have come within 1000 miles of passage under Republican leadership. The bill raised less of a fuss than I expected – although maybe I should withhold judgment until Talk Radio and the wingnut blogosphere has had a few days to settle on a talking point and go into pant-shitting rage about the encroaching socialism of it all. What objections have been raised are as predictable as they are confusing.

The primary criticism issuing from the lenders is that the new regulations will make it very difficult to extend consumer credit to "risky borrowers" and that it will dampen consumer spending, further wounding the already battered retail sector of the economy. Both of these complaints are patently silly.
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Regarding the first, that is precisely the intent of the legislation. The fact that lenders are complaining about this is indicative of just how much of their profitability relies on lending money to people who stand absolutely no chance of repaying it. The second claim is spurious, implying that debt is a prerequisite to consumption. If only we could think of some way to have people buy things without borrowing the money to do it.

Encouraging less borrowing and less debt-fueled consumption will force people, for better or worse, to live within their means.
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Because of this fact Congress and the lending industry have been like two men pressing guns to one another's foreheads regarding loose credit and government regulation.
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Representatives of both parties know this is the right thing to do (witness the 90-5 vote in the Senate on this bill) but have always been afraid to do it explicitly because it will force people to realize just how little wealth they possess.
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Since real wages stopped growing thirty years ago the political system has relied on the complete abandonment of sound lending practices to placate the unwashed masses with easy credit; as I've said many times on these pages, "Sure, you can have a raise" was gradually phased out in favor of "We're cutting your salary, but here's another MasterCard!" So throughout the last few decades the lending industry has refused to blink, knowing full well how harsh the political retribution would be, primarily for the Republicans, if the working poor and middle class suddenly realized exactly how much of the American Dream they can really afford.

I'm not painting the Democrats as heroes here; current events have more to do with the increased regulations than any show of political will. But it is going to be interesting to see how the lower income and overextended middle class voters so crucial to the 1994-2004 Republican majorities react. It can't be easy to realize just how financially unstable one is when ability to go balls-deep in debt is taken away, an ability that has been the key to maintaining the illusion that our generation is not the first to be less financially successful than our parents.

The downside of this legislation for the lenders is that they lose a very profitable component of their business – banging honest borrowers with fee hikes and charging non-payers substantial penalties. I'll try not to lose sleep over that while reminding them, amidst their whining, that there is no Constitutional right to maintain the profit margins they enjoyed before this crisis. To claim that regulating dishonest, gray area practices by lenders will (further) bankrupt the banks and bring lending to a halt is approximately as logical, and as true, as claiming that laws against stalking and rape mean there will be no more sex.

If we try to wring positives out of a terrible situation, I'm glad to see that two recent high-profile cases – one in Washington and the other in Florida – are bringing public attention to the problems of visitation for gay and lesbian partners during medical emergencies. I'm tempted to describe the rules governing these situations as barbaric, but I'll go with a nice, emotionless adjective instead: pointless. The practice advances no legitimate medical, social, or legal interest whatsoever.

I'd like to think that no matter how much one hates The Fags that, in a simple nod toward human decency, he or she could accept the rationale that if persons A and B spend 20 years in a relationship we might allow A to visit a hospital room for the last few hours of B's life. Far be it from me or anyone else to expect extreme social conservatives to have any class, but it would be great to think that they can treat their "enemies" with a modicum of respect. It does not seem hard, in my opinion, to disagree with someone vehemently about an issue, perhaps even hating one another, and still act like humans. If I'm in a room with Michelle Malkin and she collapses from a heart attack, I'm going to call an ambulance. If James Dobson's wife is dying, I'm not going to seek out a bureaucratic way to keep him out of her hospital room. These actions don't indicate friendship or kindness. It's merely the bare minimum recognition of what separates humans from hyenas.

The baffling thing about the case in Florida is that the people in question did everything "right." They had living wills, they had written Power of Attorney, and they had explicit advance directives. The hospital's half-assed justifications refer to "the amount of visitation allowed in a trauma emergency room should be decided by the surgeons and nurses treating the patients.” Would having one more person in the room have made any difference, medically or practically, in treating this patient? (note: she was alone in the room and barely conscious for about 12 hours) And if allowing a family member to see the soon-to-be departed conflicts with legitimate medical concerns, how do we explain the curious lack of news stories about people who are Opposite Married (my new favorite euphemism) having the same experience? Well, OK, it can happen if you're a black male but overall there is hardly an epidemic of "traditional" families suffering the same treatment.

In summary, this is a rule selectively applied which serves absolutely no purpose. Leave Teh Gayness out of it for a minute. If doctors are not actively treating the patient, what harm can come from having a visitor, be it a spouse, sibling, child, paperboy, or stranger? There are inherent pitfalls in policies that seek to limit something to "immediate" or "real" family. What if a child is raised by his aunt and uncle? Are they "real" enough to get the rights afforded biological parents? What if an adult has no immediate family and instead relies on a close network of friends for support throughout a long, terminal illness? Do we tell her "Sorry, you don't have a family, so no visitors"? The law appears ill-equipped to answer such questions. But it does know that it don't like the gays.

In wars, people spend all day trying to kill each another but still feed captured prisoners, provide medical treatment for enemy wounded, and bury one another's dead. It shouldn't be much to ask Americans, even Americans who despise one another and think that Fags are Goin' ta Hell, to recognize some very basic, very minimal rules. Very little about the homophobic segment of the population shocks me, but you would have to color me legitimately shocked, maybe even appalled, to discover that they derive any benefit or pleasure from the idea that people who love one another and spend their lives together – even in a manner of which one does not approve – are kept apart in the last hours of someone's life.

Admit it, you haven't thought about George W.
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Bush in a while. Don't worry, no one will judge you.
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We've all fought long and hard to win the right to not have to think about him anymore. Who could blame you for taking advantage of his glorious departure from the national stage?
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As is usually the case when nations emerge from the rule of the corrupt, the evil, or the incompetent, it is going to take quite a few years for America to come to grips with exactly what we were dealing with between 2001 and 2009. The left are tired of thinking about it. The right are trying to pretend like it never happened. And the great apathetic masses are in denial, lest they feel responsibility. But Frank Rich's Sunday op-ed in the NYT is the kind of must-read that forces us to recall 2003 and admit, "Holy shit…things got really bad there for a while."

Rob Draper, the author of the Bush biography Dead Certain (in which many top administration officials agreed to participate), has blown the lid off of just how creepy Donald Rumsfeld is and how easily the child-President was manipulated by those around him. During the first days of the Iraq War, Rumsfeld sent his daily Worldwide Intelligence Update to the Oval Office with covers adorned with "inspirational" pictures…and Bible quotes. Really, you have to see this slideshow to believe it. What were supposed to be the most elite, secret, high-level intelligence briefings available to anyone in Washington were adorned with covers that look like the photoshop work of a 12 year-old at Bible Camp. For instance, on April 3, two days after the Jessica Lynch story was revealed to be fiction and the former commander of CENTCOM took to the NYT editorial page to criticize Rumsfeld's prosecution of the war, the President received his intelligence briefing featuring Joshua 1:9: “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.”

The scary part, of course, is that Donald Rumsfeld doesn't give a flying shit about the Bible. He was cynically manipulating someone who he believed, or knew, to be an empty vessel easily led around by the nose. Even some people within the Pentagon were alarmed by this tactic, which played directly into terrorist propaganda about the American messianic complex and holy war against Islam. Rich notes, "As one alarmed Pentagon hand told Draper, the fallout 'would be as bad as Abu Ghraib.'"

Look at that slideshow and remind yourself – audibly, if necessary – that these people were in control of the most powerful nation in the history of mankind. For eight years. The effect is chilling, not unlike the realization of how close one came to death in the aftermath of a bad car accident.

Americans almost universally love praising, extolling, and vociferously defending Our Rights, which is amusing because Americans almost universally understand them about as well as theoretical calculus. As sure as you can be that lazy people will use "the right to bear arms" or "freedom of religion" or "the right to privacy" as rhetorical devices, you can be equally sure that the speaker hasn't the slightest goddamn idea what any of those things mean.

Let's pick on Carrie Prejean again. I feel a little guilty about kicking someone who is only 21 and mentally about a decade younger but she has chosen to make herself a spokesperson. In her umpteenth news conference since she became a global punchline (but she really hates all the publicity, honest!) she went on such a stupid and unconscionably shameless rant that I don't care if she can cure AIDS with her earwax, I'm still going to make fun of her. The video is available here, but the basic theme of the soliloquy is that she had a grandfather who fought in WWII (hey me too! we're so unique!) to defend her freedom of speech:

“On April 19th, on that stage, I exercised my freedom of speech and I was punished for doing so. This should not happen in America.

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It undermines the Constitutional rights for which my grandfather fought for (sic).”

Then, like the walking public relations ploy that she is, she cried. Perhaps amidst all the reminiscing about her grandfather she forgot about the millions of women who fought and sacrificed so that someday society wouldn't see women as vapid pageant automatons who cry for sympathy whenever things get too tough for their delicate constitutions and fragile minds. Oh, if only a man would come to the stage and protect her!

The above quote is but one example of the 15 times she mentioned "freedom of speech" and her "rights" in her performance. Someday if she has a few spare hours in between appearances on Focus on the Family and the conservative lecture circuit (coming soon to a Lions' Club basement near you!) I will explain everything that is wrong with her premise. Let's look at the sum total of Our Hallowed Right of Free Speech:

Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech

See that? That's it. If you want to pick Constitutional nits – and I know a Mensan like Carrie would – technically the principles of incorporation and equal protection in the 14th Amendment also prohibit state governments from enacting laws abridging the freedom of speech.

Seriously, that's it. Freedom of speech means that neither Congress nor your state legislature can pass a law prohibiting you from expressing your thoughts.
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Surveying the breadth of literature in print – white supremacist tracts, incitement to revolution, instructions for making a truck bomb, Bobby Flay slashfic – you can see that this right is close to inviolate.

I am now checking to see if Congress passed a law telling Carrie Prejean that she couldn't say the following (which, incidentally, I consider pretty tame):

Well I think it's great that Americans are able to choose one way or the other. We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage. You know what, in my country, in my family, I do believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman, no offense to anybody out there. But that’s how I was raised and I believe that it should be between a man and a woman.

As far as I can tell, no such law is on the books. When she talks about being "punished" for "exercising her right" I can only assume she means that negative publicity and losing the pageant are punishments.
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Having established that no one and nothing prevented her from speaking freely, this boils down to whining about the way other people reacted to her comments.

Inasmuch as negative publicity or intense criticism constitute a punishment, Carrie is like most wingnuts in that she is incapable of understanding the dynamics of cause and effect when they make controversial statements. She isn't being punished for exercising her right; she is being punished for exercising them in a way that makes people think she's a fucking asshole. And the last time I checked (17 minutes ago) there is no Constitutional protection from large groups of people thinking you are a prick based on how you exercise your 1st Amendment rights.

Say whatever the hell you want, Carrie, but don't start bawling when people tell you to piss off.

Our rights protect our actions; they do not protect us from suffering consequences. The fashion industry has a higher-than-average number of gay men in it. If you get on stage at a widely publicized event and say that gay marriage is wrong, they are going to be mad at you. They probably will not like you, and inasmuch as any of them can affect the outcome of the contest in which you are participating they will vote against you. This is all shocking, I know.

Sixteen year olds who read Walden for the first time often latch on to Thoreau's idea that an individual should violate laws that he or she feels are unjust. What said readers often ignore, of course, is Thoreau's warning that one should be prepared to suffer the consequences of violating the law. So violate laws if you must, but don't be shocked when you end up in jail. It would be nice if someone explained to Ms. Prejean that neither the law nor common sense protect us from the consequences of our actions. If I interview at Brigham Young University and say "Man, Mormonism is epic retarded!" I am not going to get that job. If I interview at a small Baptist school and ask "I hear that Jesus was a big fag. Is that true?" I am not going to get that job. This is all very basic common sense, almost as basic as the idea that telling a gay beauty pageant judge that you think gay marriage should remain illegal will make it hard for you to advance your career in fashion and on the pageant circuit.

The more I hear her talk the easier it is to understand why she's incapable of figuring this out.

On Monday the Supreme Court refused to intervene in German efforts to extradite John Demjanjuk, an 89 year old Ohio resident alleged to be a wanted Nazi war criminal. He was deported on a 7 PM flight to await his fate in a German courtroom. Elsewhere the Pope was in Israel on Monday speaking about the Holocaust. Unfortunately for the Vatican, these stories are not entirely unrelated.

If you're wondering exactly how in the hell a high profile Nazi concentration camp guard could escape Europe and manage to live for 65 years in suburban Cleveland, answering that question involves delving into one of the more sordid chapters in the history of the Vatican and the post-War West. It is difficult to overstate the chaos that reigned across central Europe and in Germany in 1945.
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At the beginning of the year it was apparent that the thousand year Reich would not see 1946 (indeed, it collapsed in May) and vast numbers of Nazis realized that the things they had done were about to be discovered and judged by the rest of the world. Understandably, they wanted to get out. That was easier said than done in Germany during and immediately after the end of the War.

There were countries – notably Peron-era Argentina – that accepted guilty-looking and curiously wealthy German refugees without asking too many questions. The Allied armies, however, surrounded and attempted to apprehend as many Nazi party officials and German soldiers as possible, usually to detain them for imprisonment and/or trial.* Many Nazis realized that they were literally running for their lives and their attempts at escape reflect this. Some succeeded; well-known examples include Auschwitz "doctor" Josef Mengele,** who was arrested but escaped after he was not recognized, and Adolf Eichmann, who would famously be hunted down by the Mossad and executed in an Israeli prison.

Those who escaped had help. In many cases that help came from "ratlines", a community of Nazi sympathizers who functioned like the Civil War-era underground railroad. Except it was evil. And unfortunately for today's Catholic Church, the biggest and most productive ratlines ran through a Bishop named Alois Hudal and a large network of Croatian priests loyal to their nation's fascist Ustase government. These were clergy with positions of power and access to resources. Most priests devoted their powers to helping the millions of starving, homeless, maimed, and orphaned people across the continent. A handful worked feverishly to effect the escape of people like Klaus Barbie, Treblinka commander Franz Stangl, Croatian dictator Ante Pavelic, and hundreds of others who participated in Nazi war crimes.

The historical debate over the Catholic ratlines is intense.
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The Vatican relies on a "few bad apples" argument while many historians and Nazi hunters remain convinced that some, specifically Bishop Hudal, acted with the full knowledge of the Vatican which either approved of their actions or pretended not to notice. The undisputed facts are that Catholic clergy in Italy, Germany, Eastern Europe, and South America facilitated ratlines and that Alois Hudal's immediate superior was a Cardinal Giovanni Montini in the Vatican State Department (Cardinal Montini became Pope Paul VI in 1963). Pope Pius XII, who reigned throughout WWII, has been widely described as a Nazi collaborator and anti-Semite in bestselling books like Hitler's Pope and Under His Very Windows. A class action lawsuit in US Federal court allegedly includes (still sealed) testimony from American intelligence operatives who state on the record that the OSS and post-War CIA were fully aware that Pius XII knew of and condoned the ratlines. Michael Phayer postulates in his recent Pius XII, the Holocaust, and the Cold War that the Pope's motivation was not anti-Semitism but the belief that communism was a bigger threat than Nazism combined with his early conclusion (circa 1940) that Nazi victory was inevitable.

Many of the allegations about Vatican involvement in the Holocaust are speculative and irresponsible. Others, like the existence of ratlines running through the Church, are matters of fact. We may never have firm answers about the extent of the involvement of Pius XII, the future Paul VI, and other Vatican bigwigs in the Holocaust and its aftermath (let's safely assume that any damning evidence in the archives has long since been destroyed). Regardless, the coincidence of events like Demjanjuk's extradition and a new (German!
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) Pope's statements about the Holocaust will continue to dredge up unpleasant questions and memories long after the last few remaining Nazi fugitives join their former colleagues in hell.

*Operation Paperclip is a story for another day.
**When Slayer writes a song about you, you know you've done something bad. Oddly, they were widely accused of being Nazi sympathizers for that song, written by Jewish guitarist Kerry King and Latino bassist Tom Ayala.