Heat of the Moment, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise | @MDWorld

June 23, 2012 Martha Thomases 23 Comments

As I write this, it’s extremely hot on the East Coast. Too hot to form coherent thoughts. What does one do when one has a deadline on a day such as this?

If you’re me, you punt. Or, in this case, toss off a few random observations and hope they form a collective story, or at least an opportunity for outrage. Or something. For example:

As my colleague, Mike Gold, observed here, the Republican men of Michigan are a little hinky about the word, “vagina.” According to this account, they are even more hinky about people who have them. I realize that vaginas can be distracting to some people, but having one does not diminish a person’s abilities or maturity level. In fact, in Michigan at least, it seems to improve them.
Even within the party, it’s not just Republican men who have a problem with vaginas and related female organs. South Carolina Nikki Haley doesn’t know what to do about them, either.
Republican lawmakers aren’t the only people with a problem seeing women as complete human beings. Men in Hollywood, too, sometimes get distracted by the reproductive parts. If you don’t want to read the whole link (which contains all kinds of spoilers for the movie, Prometheus), here is the key quote: “Rather than merely succumbing to the trappings of the Mystical Pregnancy Trope, which reduces women to their reproductive organs, we instead see a metaphor for patriarchal constraints trying to strip women of their reproductive rights and bodily autonomy.” Good times.
I have no idea what’s going on in the showdown between Representative Issa and Attorney General Holder. I know I’m no fan of executive privilege, and I’m no fan of Issa, who had previously vowed to find (or create) a scandal with which to tar the Obama administration. However, I think we can all agree that guns and drug dealers are a bad combination, and guns in general are a bad idea.

And yet, as something to be upset about and investigate, Holder pales in comparison to Dick Cheney and friends. The man deliberately lied about something so we could go to war in Iraq and therefor caused the deaths of thousands upon thousands of people. Why isn’t he on trial for war crimes?

That was more serious than I want to be. Therefore …

Before we start reducing our fellow humans to slabs of meat (either in part or in full), let’s consider whether that’s the way we really want to live. And if we agree that we don’t, let’s all stay away from Florida. If there is going to be a zombie apocalypse, it’s obviously starting there.

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Media Goddess Martha Thomases would be a terrible zombie because she doesn’t like to eat brains, or even much meat.

Comments

David Oakes
June 23, 2012 - 11:36 am

Maine is prepared for Zombies:

http://www.wlbz2.com/news/article/204587/315/Emergency-responders-train-for-the-worst
Howard Cruse
June 23, 2012 - 2:01 pm

Remember when they forbade the use of “pregnant” on I Love Lucy? She could only be “expectant” while carry’s Little Ricky. Then in the ’80s the news programs tied themselves into knots trying to figure out how to talk about AIDS transmission without speaking the words “anal intercourse.” Too bad people were dying while we waited for the news guys to work through their anxieties.

So this year it’s “vagina” that’s stirring up the Michigan Republicans while they’re busy running roughshod over women’s rights. All of this calls to mind the timeless words of Rudolph Nureyev when he was busted for pot-smoking while in the U.S. during the mid-Sixties: “You Americans are such children!”
Pennie
June 23, 2012 - 2:59 pm

Zombies have been spotted in downtown Lansing, MI.
Mike Gold
June 23, 2012 - 5:17 pm

Oh, I dunno Martha. I think Republican women have it all sewn up.

Not sure Holder is right here. You get out ahead of a scandal, not wait nine months and then stonewall. Sure the contempt thing is almost as big a joke as Clinton’s now-forgotten impeachment, but — like Clinton — there were some bad moves that led to all this. Score one for Issa. And this one has nothing to do with Cheney; that’s apples and robots.
Martha Thomases
June 23, 2012 - 5:23 pm

@Mike: I think the first thing I said about the Holder/Issa contretemps was that I don’t like executive privilege. And I don’t think Fast and Furious is a good idea. How can it be, when it apparently originated under the Bush Administration?
Mike Gold
June 23, 2012 - 6:04 pm

True ’nuff; F&F is another Cheney yank. I put the executive privilege issue aside as I have contradictory opinions — I’m mostly opposed, but that’s because of my lack of trust in politicians. However I can see where some things need to be kept secret, such as international negotiations and matters that would violate common sense privacy concerns if made public. Merely classifying it as such limits its availability to something just under one million people. So I haven’t settled on one side or the other here.

I do stand behind my observation: Holder handled this very badly for the better part of the past year. The executive privilege proclamation only came down from Obama last week.
Pennie
June 24, 2012 - 4:00 am

Is it just me? When an integral part of the female reproductive system–crucial to the survival of the species–becomes a taboo subject, we are all in trouble.
But then, this has been the case since matriarchal societies were coopted so many eons ago.
Our bodies, yourselves.
Jeff Tamarkin
June 24, 2012 - 8:20 am

The current administration kept F&F a “secret” from all Mexicans. So, we “publicly” coordinate intel from Mexico City against the nastiest Sinaloans and other murderers—transponders and a large number of US personnel reporting to the Calderon government which uses the info to kill and capture scum. Then, we gun walk with the worst Mexicans, without informing any Mexican officials…lose track of most of the guns…that are used to gun down a US agent and good Mexicans. Put another one on the list of scatterbrained US foreign policy…we should all want to see the confidential BS, including the executive privilege crap. Something like… Holder to Obama: “We’ll just tell everyone we had good intentions. It’s our hemisphere. Eff the Mexicans. Boo hoo, a few lost guns.”
As for vaginas…whew, it’s hot again in Austin. And we’re still waiting for real evidence that numbnuts Governor Perry prefers penises over vaginas. Maybe some of Michigan’s stiff Republican dickheads are playing with dildos in the closet? (Makes ya wonder/wander…how could these ultra anti-woman morons enjoy pussy more than shlong…and how could any woman vote for them?)
Bill Mulligan
June 24, 2012 - 8:44 pm

“And I don’t think Fast and Furious is a good idea. How can it be, when it apparently originated under the Bush Administration?”

That’s the danger of speaking about things that, by your own words, you have no idea about. Operation Fast and Furious was a 2009-2011 operation–Bush, as we know, had left office by then. Some folks have attempted to claim that either F&F was a Bush administration operation–obviously wrong, given reality–or that it’s ok because an earlier gun walking operation Wide Receiver, was essentially the same, so any criticism of F&F must be due to the president now being black or something. Which also has problems with the whole reality thing since Wide receiver had the co-operation of the Mexican government and did not leave the trail of dead that F&F has boasted. (indeed, one would really have to have a low opinion of Holder and co to think that Wide receiver was the disaster F&F was and they responded to it by making an even BIGGER operation with even WORSE results.)

Some of this confusion is understandable. While anyone watching NBC can be forgiven for not knowing much about the story they may have heard or read something about Eric Holder saying that Bush’s attorney general had been briefed on gunrunning and had done nothing about it (and had not gotten the criticism Holder has because, I don’t know, racism or something). Well, Holder withdrew that statement, the second time the Justice department has had to withdraw statements due to them being, you know, untrue.

Not everyone has gotten the memo, so the “Bush started it and Holder ended it and why won’t they leave Britney alone, boo hoo” stuff is still all over twitter. Personally, I have never thought this was more than a typical government screw up, nothing more, but the invoking of executive privilege has left me scratching my head and wondering what exactly it is they are trying to hide. I don’t have enough fondness for the administration to buy the “We’re just doing it for the principle of the thing!” line and even if I did have that fondness I would hope to have enough integrity not to buy it anyway.
Martha Thomases
June 25, 2012 - 5:14 am

I don’t watch NBC. For my network news, I watch CBS. I also watch BBC. I do watch an hour of MSNBC, because I think Chris Matthews represents the “Inside the Beltway” conventional wisdom, but I hardly accept anything I hear there as fact. If anything, quite the opposite.

I read two newspapers a day on paper (The New York Times and the New York Daily News), as well as numerous articles from all over the country online.

In this case, I suspect I formed my belief from The Colbert Report. Which is why I used the word “apparently” in my statement.

However, I’m not alone in this belief. For an example, I’ll cite this story (http://www.nationalmemo.com/watch-darrell-issa-accidentally-brings-up-his-shady-past/) from The National Memo.
Bill Mulligan
June 25, 2012 - 6:30 am

Martha, if I gave the impression I thought you were uninformed or not well read in general, I apologize. You are clearly too intelligent and write too well for anyone to seriously make that accusation.

If people don;t know about Fast & Furious it is because it has not gotten the attention it should and some of the claims made are out and and falsehoods. Deliberately or not, I can;t say.

I have no doubt that there is a widespread “belief” that F&F is a Bush operation but, like the belief that Obama is a Muslim, it is a belief not grounded in reality. Any operation that began in 2009 simply can’t have been a Bush operation.

Now yeah, there were similar operations but bringing that up doesn’t really help, since those operations didn’t end so badly. Cops sometimes allow real drugs to be used in sting operations but if one such operation results in 100,000 lbs of uncut cocaine to be released to the streets it’s not going to impress anyone to point out, “Hey, this is just like all those other ones we did, except for the pure mindboggling incompetence of the execution.”

I am genuinely confused as to the value of the article linked. Let’s assume the worst–Issa has a shady past. Might be a bad guy. Does this in any way shape or form change a single fact about F&F? Make Holder and co any more or less guilty? It seems almost Nixonian; attack the messenger, ignore the message, and it sure does not fill me with confidence that there is nothing to the idea that F&F is likely worse than we think.

If the Bush administration actually HAD begun F&F, watched it go as badly as it did, stonewalled investigations into it, lied to congress twice (at least, and admitted it) and finally invoked executive privilege to deny releasing info on an operation that up to then they had claimed the executive had no knowledge of…I don’t know if the reaction from progressives would be exactly as it is now. I can’t look into their hearts. Seems like the sort of thing they might have raised some hell over but we’ll never know.
Mike Gold
June 25, 2012 - 8:32 am

Bill, I gleefully realize math and reality have little to do with argument but F&F was indeed initiated under the Bush administration. In order for the Obama administration to have stopped it — which they never did — they would have had to freeze ALL Bush programs on January 20 2008 and review each and every one. I don’t have a clue as to how many that might have been, but it’s easily six figures. Can’t run a nation that way.

And, thus far, independent investigators have found absolutely no evidence of an Obama administration cover-up. As always, no matter who or what is in charge, my First Rule of Life applies. As voiced by the immortal Governor William J. Lepetomane (as opposed to the hallowed French performer of the same last name), “Gentlemen, we’ve got to protect our phony-balloney jobs here.”

None of this mitigates my comment that Holder blew it.
Bill Mulligan
June 25, 2012 - 9:23 am

Mike, every timeline I have seen indicates that the fast and Furious program was begun in fall 2009 and ended early in 2011. If you have sources that dispute that I’d love to see them. I have to run off now but I’ll provide sources for the 2009 start later if needed.

Unless you have such a source I can;t imagine why you find it so difficult to imagine it started in the last 3 1/2 years. true, in many ways the Obama administration has been the third term of Bush but not everything that has happened is a simple holdover.
Mike Gold
June 25, 2012 - 10:02 am

Fall 2009 certainly comes within the operatives’ CYA slack. F&F wasn’t a holdover, it was a clandestine operation — nothing necessarily wrong with that — that took a long time to organize even without standard government bureaucracy. Whereas my source here is personal a common sense view of logistics bares this out. I’m not certain it matters: Some bureaucrat in the Obama administration made that decision once it finally got up the food chain,. Did it go to the top? I doubt it; there’d likely be evidence of that. Which is why Holder and Obama are trying to stonewall the communications, as they likely reveal details of clandestine operatives who shouldn’t be outed.

Reveal all that to quell a political witchhunt? That, to quote a former president, would be wrong. I reference the Plame game as an example. It used to be the President would gather appropriate congressional leaders in a top secret meeting, each pledged to total secrecy, and all would be revealed to those leaders. This used to happen all the time. Now, nobody trusts anybody to keep a secret even at that level.

And I’m not saying Obama doesn’t simply trust the Republicans here; I’m sure there are one or to Democratic congressional leaders in whom such trust is lacking.

Let alone that weasel Joe Lieberman.
George Haberberger
June 25, 2012 - 10:02 am

I guess I must have lucked out. My wife and I were in NYC the 15th through the 19th and the weather was beautiful. Mid 70s and sunny and almost chilly in the evening. We saw Harvey, The Columnist and Channelling Kevin Spacey. All highly recommended, especially Channelling Kevin Spacey.
Bill Mulligan
June 25, 2012 - 10:33 am

http://www.cbsnews.com/2300-31727_162-10009697.html

“Sept. 2009: In an effort to stem the rising tide of violence caused by Mexican drug cartels, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Phoenix office begins its controversial Operation “Fast and Furious.”

“The idea is to encourage gun dealers to sell to suspected traffickers for Mexican drug cartels and see where the guns end up. The goal is to try to take down a major cartel. But the so-called “gunwalking” becomes increasingly controversial among ATF agents ordered to take part.”

Of course, no amount of mere dates and facts can stand against hunches, guesses and wishes, but I think the “It started under Bush!” people will simply have to deal with being something other than good standing members of the “reality based community” as they once so proudly trumpeted.

As for whether or not the executive privilege was invoked for noble reasons or not, that may now come out–the president’s declaration is not (nor should it be) the end of the discussion. They have to defend the use of the privilege and the court does not always agree, as Nixon and Clinton found out. Seems to me it would be awfully easy to blank out names and other identifiable aspects of legit operatives, if that’s the only problem. At any rate, it has forced news sites to cover the story, so it has ensured that more people will know about us losing guns to Mexican drug lords than ever did before, so one must wonder what there is in those papers that is worth the hit they are going to take.
Martha Thomases
June 25, 2012 - 11:32 am

Please don’t misunderstand me — I think Fast & Furious is bad policy no matter who started it. If we would legalize drugs (all drugs, not just the ones I like), there would be none of this hideous profit involved, and that would bankrupt all the criminal gangs, including the Taliban.

But I feel like all the policies are the same, no matter what snappy titles they give them. Just like all the wars are the same.

(Yes, I know that all the wars are not literally the same. They just send the same class of young people to die so the same old people can keep getting richer.)
Bill Mulligan
June 25, 2012 - 11:46 am

I agree. If we want to blame past administrations lets go all the way back to what, Nixon, Johnson, whoever started the War on Drugs.
Mike Gold
June 25, 2012 - 11:47 am

Martha, I hate to say it, but I believe the drugs you like ARE legal. Of course, I’m only speaking of my knowledge of your comparatively recent indulgences.
Mike Gold
June 25, 2012 - 11:49 am

Bill, the war on drugs (as opposed to The War On Drugs, trademark) started June 30, 1906.
Martha Thomses
June 25, 2012 - 12:27 pm

Mike, I like drugs I don’t do anymore because, alas, I have shit to do.
Mike Gold
June 25, 2012 - 12:36 pm

You might have too much shit in your life.
Ellen Tebbel
October 27, 2012 - 10:39 am

Right On, Martha dear, as John used to say.

Why is it people like Cheney live so long?

Comments are closed.