Open Thread and Diary Rescue

Rangering for this evening's Rescue are Yashua, watercarrier4diogenes,ezdidit and noddem, with claude in the corral getting all those lost dogies the Rangers have brought in lined up...

• iampunha offers a great story of a pioneering African-American in June 15, 1877: On society and service. (ezdidit)
• Some family history and some social history as xxdr zombiexx wishes you a Happy Father's Day from a sharecropper's grandson. (claude)
• mitchmanprophesy has some very good advice, OBAMA: SPEAK THE LANGUAGE. Let's all hope that his campaign staff hear it. (watercarrier4diogenes)
• prestochango reminds us of the continued hardships facing those affected by Katrina and Rita in The Plight of Laborers in the Middle Gulf Coast Region. (noddem)
• Poor Treatment of Female Veterans: My Match for Rick Noriega is a challenge by alpolitics, but more importantly, it's a call to awareness of a deeply troubling aspect of our veterans' plight. (watercarrier4diogenes)
• azindy brings us a thought provoking story of one person’s experience in our healthcare system in My Uninsured Experience with Health Care w/ Advice (Yashua)
• Having noticed how much less time the 'traditional media' (tm kos) has given to the Iowa flood story compared to the Russert story, play jurist updates us in How high is the water papa? A report from Iowa City. (watercarrier4diogenes)

jotter brings us High Impact Diaries - Jun 14, 2008, while va dare has today's Top Comments 6.15.08 - On Being Rec-Rolled.

Please use this as an Open Thread for the evening, promote what you think we may have overlooked, and remember to play nice.

Fw: Deconstructing the Digital Era

I must confess that I've never trusted the Web. I've always seen it as a coward's tool. Where does it live? How do you hold it personally responsible? Can you put a distributed network of fiber-optic cable "on notice"? And is it male or female? In other words, can I challenge it to a fight?
-- Stephen Colbert

Senator Ted Stevens thinks the internet is a "series of tubes."  George W. Bush believes there are internets galore out there.  And John McCain...well, the Senator has admitted that he doesn't even know how to use a computer.

Politics in the digital era is tricky, not so much because of the wealth of information on the web, but because of the millions of ordinary Americans using that information on a daily basis.  Armed with new media tools, muckrackers today number in the millions.  No longer is a candidate able to present a poll-tested package to the press and have that persona spoon-fed to the American people.  No, today's voters have available to them a universe of information consisting of detailed voting records, primary sources, debunking sites, blogs, and more.  As John McCain recently said, "[w]hat you can find out now on the Internet -- it's remarkable."

What's remarkable is that now more than ever, Americans are turning to the internet to become familiar with the candidates and otherwise engage in the political process.  A just-released survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project reveals these astonishing figures:

A record-breaking 46% of Americans have used the internet, email or cell phone text messaging to get news about the campaign, share their views and mobilize others.

What's fascinating about this survey is how the internet is being used in this, the first presidential campaign of the 21st century:

35% of Americans say they have watched online political videos a figure that nearly triples the reading the Pew Internet Project got in the 2004 race.

11% of Americans have contributed to the political conversation by forwarding or posting someone else's commentary about the race.

As most of us who have been on the receiving end of those right-wing rags known as "forwards" know, bullshit spreads far and wide on the internet.  You know the ones, the ones with a "letter" written by some stay-at-home mom in Oklahoma who was just compelled to write about how scandalous it is that her children can't say the Pledge of Allegiance in school because it contains the words "under God."  Or the ones chock-full of animated graphics of waving flags and fireworks noting some lie about terrorists endorsing Democrats, and demanding that we "take America back."  Or the ones about Barack Obama's secret pact with Muslim leaders to take over the White House and then make all of us wear head scarves and replace our guns with slingshots.  

The phenomenon of the right-wing forward has never ceased to amaze me.  It seems like no matter how outrageous the lie or how repulsive the smear, these emails are crafted in such a way as to make otherwise sane people--our right-wing family members or co-workers--momentarily insane--just long enough to click "forward" and pass on the filth to you, and every other name in their address book.

While Stephen Colbert may wonder aloud whether you can challenge the internet to a fight, it's clear that Barack Obama has indeed chosen to do so.  Obama has been on the receiving end of some of the most outlandish right-wing emails in recent memory.  His response has been swift, first by dedicating a portion of his website to debunking the smears, and most recently, by launching yet another site, fightthesmears.com.*  In other words, the Obama camp is fighting fire with fire--using the same medium that started the lies to fight the lies, targeting the same people.

John McCain doesn't have an email problem, and not just because the left has yet to master the art of the political forward.  As we've discussed repeatedly (here and here), John McCain has a YouTube problem.

For McCain, the dangers of the digital age lay not in a single lie spread wide by email, but in his own multiple lies and panders, presented in his own words, on video.  There are countless of mash-ups on YouTube and other video sites of McCain vs. McCain, offering up in delicious clips the devastating sound-bites of McCain taking one position (when it was political convenient to do so) and then taking another.

In light of the unique problems (and solutions) the internet presents to both candidates, the figures in the Pew survey are that much more relevant.  More Americans are looking to online video than email forwards this campaign season, a clear disadvantage to McCain.  And while Obama can fight email smears with debunking pages and emails, McCain does not have such a clean-cut response with respect to his YouTube problem.  He cannot disclaim his own words, or present a mash-up of his own (indeed, as we've noted before, the McCain camp has concertedly avoided pushing out video of the candidate).  The negative, then, remains unchallenged.      

This isn't 2000, and McCain isn't in Kansas anymore.  Gone is the ability to control voter perception through an elite group of press reporters who can be wooed and wowed with fancy buses and family barbecues. Empowered Americans are taking to the web to filter through the noise and obtain much-needed context.  And yeah, there's a lot of disinformation on the web as well.  But at the very least, the opportunity to critically evaluate every source and piece of information is there, as McCain would say, just "a Google" away.

In this digital era, the candidate who can most appreciate the interplay between technology and politics will have an upper hand, in both mobilizing voters, raising money, and fighting back against negative attacks.  At this juncture, clearly, Obama has the upper hand.  And as for McCain? Simply put, his "Straight Talk Express" isn't ready to ride the information superhighway.

*Update:  Apparently, the website, isbarackobamamuslim.com, which I originally listed as being created by the Obama campaign, is not a campaign project.  Still, that individual supporters are harnessing the power of the web to fight smears against their candidate is testament to how, as the survey cited above notes, Obama's supporters are more engaged online than the supporters of any other candidate.  

The collapse of SOFA

The dirty secret about the Bush administration negotiations with Nouri al Maliki's government for a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) is that they hinge upon secrecy. Begun in earnest in March, all the details have been kept secret from the US Congress, the Iraqi Parliament, and the public in both countries. In fact Bush announced last year that he would not permit Congress to ratify what would be a (major) defense treaty. The American public has no enthusiasm and Iraqis across the board are deeply hostile to almost everything about SOFA. Virtually every Iraqi politician of note is suspicious if not dismissive.

Even dead-enders in the WH have been defensive in the extreme. Vague and negative details were all they'd give out, none of them being very credible: That SOFA would be "nonbinding", would not be a treaty, would not establish permanent bases, would not limit what the next president can do, etc. It was clear already last year that they realized there'd be no agreement, and hence no opportunity to lock in the next president to Bush's Iraq policies, without resort to the utmost secrecy.

The US media was happy to lend a hand. In Iraq and Iran, SOFA has been the hottest of issues all year. But until May 30th, it barely registered in American news. Take for example the leak of a draft of SOFA in early April to The Guardian.

A confidential draft agreement covering the future of US forces in Iraq, passed to the Guardian, shows that provision is being made for an open-ended military presence in the country...

Iraqi critics point out that the agreement contains no limits on numbers of US forces, the weapons they are able to deploy, their legal status or powers over Iraqi citizens, going far beyond long-term US security agreements with other countries.

You'd have thought the leak of a "secret" and "sensitive" document would be newsworthy. Most Americans heard nothing about it. At best, they got a potted version of Bush administration officials' vague comments made – characteristically – behind closed doors.

And so it went in the US media: silence, indifference, with a dash of perverse misinterpretation. Consider Michael Hirsh's laughably naive commentary that imagined Bush had already succeeded in nailing down SOFA, to the chagrin of Democrats.

The upshot is that the next president, Democrat or Republican, is likely to be handed a fait accompli that could well render moot his or her own elaborate withdrawal plans, especially the ones being considered by the two leading Democratic contenders, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton...

But Bush may have the upper hand now. The president touted the surge's success on Saturday, and he reiterated that "long-term success will require active U.S. engagement that outlasts my presidency." The "enduring relationship" he is building with Iraq, Bush added, "will have diplomatic, economic and security components—similar to relationships we have with Kuwait and other nations in this region and around the world."... Far away in the Persian Gulf, Bush is creating facts on the ground that the next president may not be able to ignore.

The blinkers came off only when Moqtada al Sadr called for nationwide marches against SOFA on May 30th. Suddenly the US news media was rushing to catch up with a foreign policy fiasco that had nearly reached fruition. Turned out, upon examination, that the Bush administration was not in fact "close to reaching an agreement with the Iraqi government over its long term military role in the country", as it claimed, because the Iraqi people had never agreed to be pushed around in that fashion.

The US news media, always the last to smell out dirty secrets in Iraq.

"The reasons for the peaceful demonstration were not made obvious," the U.S. military said in a statement. "Their ability to hold peaceful gatherings such as this demonstrates the improvements in security _ where people now feel safe enough to gather and let their voices be heard."

Funny, these were the only observers in the Middle East who found themselves unable to figure out what Sadr meant by these marches.

Two days ago Sadr called on supporters to rally against an agreement currently under discussion that could allow the U.S. to build permanent bases in Iraq and grant American citizens in Iraq immunity from prosecution...The protestors carried signs that called the long-term agreement "worse than the occupation itself" and a "war declaration against the Iraqi people."

It couldn't be clearer that the US was desperate to deny that opposition to SOFA exists. To admit it would have shattered the carefully cultivated illusion of near consensus. Apart from some Sunnis who see a continued American troop presence as a bulwark against their Shiite foes, however, there was never any political support in Iraq for SOFA. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani came out firmly against the treaty.

A source close to the [Shi'i] religious figure Ayatollah Sayyid Ali al-Sistani has said that Al-Sistani told Prime Minister Al-Maliki, during their meeting in the holy city of Al-Najaf, that he totally rejects the agreement.

He [Al-Sistani] said he would not allow the signing of the agreement as long as he is alive.

By late May, even Maliki's closest allies were speaking out bluntly

Some senior Iraqi political leaders said they had serious concerns over the central issues under negotiation, including what sort of military operations and arrests of Iraqis the American troops could carry out without Iraq’s permission, legal immunities sought for American troops and security contractors and what the Iraqi officials characterized as demands for a long-term American military presence...

Officials from the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, an important Maliki ally, said several parts of the proposal violated Iraq’s sovereignty.

Other lawmakers said negotiations should not resume until after the expiration of the United Nations resolution on United States troops. Otherwise, they said, Iraq would be in too weak a position to negotiate effectively.

“The negotiations now are not equal, and the results will be more for the benefit of America,” said Mahmoud Othman, an independent Kurdish lawmaker. “To have a long-term agreement with the Bush administration, which has five months to go, is wrong,” he added. “The Iraqi government should wait for the new American administration and then have an agreement with it.”

By late May if not earlier, SOFA was effectively dead, at least in the guise presented by Bush (though the administration claimed it was "full steam ahead"). Iraqis view Bush as a lame duck; they understand as well as Americans that he is attempting to tie the hands of the next administration, and the Iraqi Parliament probably will slow walk any proposal until after he's gone. In other words, they'll put their foot down where Congress so far has only blustered.

“This agreement is between Iraq and the United States president, and the American policy is not clear,” said Ali Adeeb, a senior member of the Shiite Dawa Party and a close ally of Mr. Maliki’s. “We can wait until the American elections to deal with a Democratic or Republican president.”

Maliki's Iranian allies had of course been outraged all along by the negotiations (h/t Yoshie). He was finally caught in a bind between his Iranian and American allies that would be nearly impossible to finesse (as so often before). It was pretty likely he'd have to choose one or the other. It also seemed likely he'd side against Bush, who is on his way out the door.

And Iran stepped up its pressure on Maliki too.

"Iran is accusing America, and America is accusing Iran," said Mahmoud Othman, a veteran Kurdish politician in Iraq. "Nobody would want to be in Maliki's shoes right now."

By this stage, things had gotten so dire that Bush administration figures began to admit publicly that SOFA might not be a fully done deal, quite.

The Bush administration is conceding for the first time that the United States may not finish a complex security agreement with Iraq before President Bush leaves office.

Faced with stiff Iraqi opposition, it is "very possible" the U.S. may have to extend an existing U.N. mandate, said a senior administration official close to the talks.

By June 10, the mood in Iraq was increasingly acrimonious, the likelihood of reaching an agreement before the UN mandate expires was seen as increasingly doubtful.

Maliki finally realized that he was obliged to join the nearly unanimous opposition to SOFA, and last Friday he did so while talking to reporters in Jordan.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on Friday that negotiations with the United States on a long-term security pact were deadlocked because of concern the deal infringes Iraqi sovereignty.

"We have reached an impasse, because when we opened these negotiations we did not realise that the US demands would so deeply affect Iraqi sovereignty and this is something we can never accept," he told Jordanian newspaper editors, according to a journalist present at the meeting.

As the last paragraph indicates, opposition in Iraq had reached such a peak that Maliki wanted to distance himself from the very process of negotiation. He had entered talks in good faith, he implied, whereas the Bush administration had overreached in totally unpredictable ways.

True, though Maliki described the talks as deadlocked he added, "These negotiations will continue until we find common ground that is acceptable for the Iraqi side and the other party." But talks are just talks. Where will they lead? Nowhere, because Maliki has vowed that the Iraqi parliament will decide whether to ratify any agreement that should be reached. Parliamentary elections are looming later this year, in which nearly every party is trying to portray itself as more opposed to the American presence than any of its rivals. There's no chance then that the Iraqi parliament will ratify anything remotely like the agreement that Bush has been seeking. Much more likely, it will kick the can down the road until a new president is inaugurated.

On the supposition that finetuning the provisions that Iraqis find obnoxious to their sovereignty will bring them or their government around, Bush remains optimistic about the outcome.

President Bush said Saturday he is confident the United States can reach a long-term security agreement with Iraq, one that will not establish permanent U.S. bases there.

"If I were a betting man, we'll reach an agreement with the Iraqis," Bush told a news conference in Paris.

Bush has been wrong about virtually everything having to do with Iraq. He overplayed his hand one too many times, and SOFA is done for.

McCain's Straight Talk & Support For the Military

While the traditional media is slowly starting to take John McCain’s straight talking image with increasingly large grains of salt, his base isn’t quite ready to give up on their favorite son. Jonathan Alter’s bizarre defense of McCain after he was caught telling an outright lie, perfectly captures that reluctance:

...it’s a learning curve for him to get up to speed, to recognize he’s living with new rules.

We live in a society where the media salivates over "gotcha" moments, where we are subjected to 24/7 coverage of media-created outrage, yet John McCain, in his quest to carry out George Bush’s third term, contradicts himself on issues big and small and somehow manages to escape the level of scrutiny given to expensive haircuts and botched jokes. Throughout the course of this presidential campaign season, we’ve watched McCain pander for the evangelical vote, contradict himself on issues ranging from tax cuts to immigration, call himself the anti-lobbyist candidate while surrounding himself with lobbyists, vilify special interests despite his history of brokering deals for big-money contributors, denouncing 527 groups as he parrots their message, all while running as fast as he can from George Bush even as he embraces a stay the course X 100 Iraq policy.

The bottom line is, associating the words "straight talker" with John McCain is nothing short of laughable.  Volumes could be written on the issues that he has flip flopped on, or the positions he has embraced in an effort to pander to a particular voting bloc, but today let’s focus on the John McCain whose devotion to the men and women of the military is unquestionable.  

During McCain’s first run for political office in 1982, after declaring that:

One of the things I've never tried to do is exploit my Vietnam service to my country because it would be totally inappropriate to do.

...he proceeded to do just that, responding to charges of being a carpetbagger with, ""Listen, pal. My father was in the Navy and we moved around a lot. So now that I think about it, place I've lived the longest is Hanoi," and in the ensuing 26 years he has continued exploit that experience, culminating with his first ad for the general election.  You might shake your head over the notion that McCain doesn’t use his personal experience for political gain, but he honorably served and suffered for his country in ways that most of us cannot even fathom, so even if he once thought that doing so was inappropriate exploitation, it’s his story to tell as he sees fit. But when he uses that service as a talisman against criticism, it is a problem. Time and again we are told that his support for the men and women serving in our military is unwavering and unquestionable, and that as someone who has sacrificed for his country, to question him somehow dishonors his own service.  But as the saying goes, "facts are pesky things," so instead of relying on McCain's rhetoric, let's look at some of those facts:

• McCain has repeatedly voted against amendments in the Senate that would have...covered such important services as improving care at veterans’ hospitals, providing mental health services to soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder and substance abuse problems. [2006 Senate Vote #7, 2/2/2006]
• In 2006, McCain voted against the Kerry amendment that would eliminate increased fees and co-payments for veterans in the TRICARE health care program by raising the discretionary spending limit by approximately $10 billion. The provisions would have been fully offset by eliminating creating corporate tax breaks. [2006 Senate Vote #67, 3/16/2006]
• McCain was one of only 13 Republicans to vote against an amendment that added over $400 million for inpatient and outpatient care for veterans. [2006 Senate Vote #98, 4/26/2006]
• McCain voted against increasing funding for veterans health care by $2.8 billion in 2006. [2005 Senate Vote #55, 3/16/2005]
• McCain joined his Republican Senate cohorts in opposing exempting all military personnel and veterans from means testing in bankruptcy cases. [2005 Senate Vote #13, 3/1/2005]
• McCain opposed an amendment that would reduce from 60 to 55 the age at which certain members of the National Guard and Army reserves could receive retirement benefits. [2004 Senate Vote #136, 6/23/2004]
• Senator McCain opposed $322 million in funding for "battlefield clearance and safety equipment for U.S. troops in Iraq." A reduction in Iraqi reconstruction funds would have funded the additional protection for troops in the battlefield. [2003 Senate Vote #376, 10/2/2003]
• McCain voted against an amendment that would increase spending on the veterans health care program TRICARE by $20.3 billion over 10 years to members of the National Guard and Reserves. The increase would be offset by a reduction in tax cuts. [2003 Senate Vote #81, 3/25/2003]
• McCain opposed an amendment that would have increased veterans spending by $13 billion from 1997-2002 to be offset by closing corporate tax preferences and reinstating expired taxes. [1996 Senate Vote #115, 5/16/1996]

Despite a six-year history of being wrong on Iraq, wrong about current troop levels, wrong about the difference between Sunnis and Shiites, and his continual claims that things are going well, McCain is accepted as the foreign policy candidate.  And when McCain, ignoring the reality of our overextended military, blithely said that staying in Iraq for 100 years was "fine" with him, and more recently, when he said it was "not too important" to bring the troops home, he defended the remarks by saying he meant only if the troops weren't being attacked or killed. And the media reacted.  They dutifully reported the remarks, the Democratic denouncements, and of course McCain's clarifications of what he really meant, but they never asked the all-important question:

Exactly how many years is John McCain willing to let U.S. troops be attacked and killed in Iraq?

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