In which I wax patriotic

We spend a lot of time talking trash here, like the Dikembes of blogging. But today I'm going to take a minute to say how freaking great this country is.

As I'm sure you know by now, the Supreme Court ruled against the Administration and said that military tribunals for Gitmo detainees were a violation of the Universal Code of Military Justice, the Geneva Conventions, the Constitution and probably the Code of Hammurabi as well. (Summary of some articles here.)

This morning on the radio there was a woman from The Center for Constitutional Rights who was elated at the ruling. She mentioned that Salid Hamdan, the original defendant in the Supreme Court case, had heard of the ruling from his lawyer and that he was completely dazed and amazed that such a thing could happen. That this is still a country of enough law that the Court could stand up and say The President Is Wrong. Which reminded me of how Zaccharias Moussaoui (again, spelling?) was also amazed and impressed that he was not given the death penalty. He had not believed that it was possible to receive anything resembling justice here. Which reminds me of something sexy sexy Joe Wilson (Mr. Valerie Plame) said (while we were chatting a couple of weeks ago, ahem). He said that is another country he would have already been killed for what he has said and done.

These things constitute real freedom. These are the things that are worth fighting for. The right of everyone to be treated equally before the law. The right to dissent. These are the things that we can show the world - the world who now hates us - with pride. It is precisely this - the independence of the courts, the belief in justice and law over vendetta and fear, that might win us back some hearts and minds. Dude - if people in Gitmo can be impressed with our justice system, anyone can.

So go celebrate the 4th of July and wave your flags and be proud. These have been dark days, but someday the rain will stop.

That Vegas thing

So the big news was Yearly Kos. This would have been 100x better if I had managed to post in anything resembling a timely manner, but it wasn't possible. I even thought about buying some kind of wifi pda thing to surf and post from Vegas and then returning it, but nothing seemed to fit the bill. So 3 weeks later (which in internet time equals an ice age, I think) some impressions of blogger Woodstock.

Azulita and I decided to go mostly because we thought it would be a. fun and b. interesting. If those priorities seem fucked up, well then you don't know us very well. Key was the fact that it was in Vegas, so even if YKos sucked, we'd still be in Vegas (baby). As it turned out, absolutely nothing sucked at all except leaving. It was totally fucking awesome. It was so awesome that a lot of what we did the entire time was have conversations with random people that went along the lines of this:

Us: "How fucking awesome is this?"
Other person: "So fucking awesome!"

Slightly more difficult would be quantifying exactly why it was so great. So I'm probably going to have to go a little free-form here to get some of my thoughts down, and I'm sure I'll forget a lot. (Oh and speaking of free-form, I've been looking over some old posts and I am so sorry there are so many typos. My only defense is that almost all of this happens at work, and I have to hide the window behind a spreadsheet or something every two minutes, and spellchecking can be hard. I'm going to try and go back and make some edits in the coming weeks.)

Az and I were in a minority in that we are mostly lurkers in the world of Kos-dom. I comment occasionally and she never does. We have this little rag here, but it's not exactly the HuffPo. Neither of us considers ourselves "bloggers" and in fact we are made slightly uncomfortable by the idea that anyone at all actually reads this. So we were a little surprised to find that almost everyone there was either a big time blogger, Kos or on their own, a policy/thinktank/activist type, or a journalist. Once we got over the feeling a little weird about that it was all good. I think the username or knowing someone online thing was really only an icebreaker, and since the gender breakdown was about 75% male/25% female, we didn't have so much trouble with the ice...

The great thing about YKos was the feeling of community. Now that was probably the lamest and most touchy feely sentence I've ever written, but there it is. There was a real feeling of community. You just felt like you were with your people. All weekend long, everyone (including me, not known for my outgoing nature) would just walk up and introduce themselves to absolutely anyone at all. And more likely than not, after that you'd talk for a while. And 99% of the people you met were interesting (except teacherken, who was an asshole). And then when you got bored you could kind of get up and walk away and meet someone else. It was like a four day long liberal cocktail party.

The very first night Wes Clark (the adorable general, as he will be known henceforth - shoutout to Baratunde!) gave a party at the Hard Rock, and we (oh, btw Az and I were basically joined at the hip the whole time, so I really do mean "we" in each of these cases) ended up chatting with Chris Mooney, who wrote The Republican War on Science and is an all-around smart dude. We had no idea he was a big author dude, he was just a cool guy that we talked to for a couple of hours. Then we hooked up with Az's friend Katie Halper, who is a stand-up comedienne with Laughing Liberally, which is exactly what it sounds like. Katie is great and was a sort of YK celeb, so we got to meet a lot of people through her. We ended up at the coffee shop at the Hard Rock, chilling with some (at that point) random folks until quite late. However, in the college orientation manner, the people we met at the very beginning ended up being the ones we hung out with most of the time.

The next morning we made it to Wes Clark's (and Chris Mooney's!) 8am panel on Science. Clark is really into science and made a pretty passionate presentation about the importance of supporting scientific research and education. So adorable! We fell into a pattern of going to morning panels (all at 8am ugh), doing the lunch keynote thing with our boy Alejandro (one of the first night Hard Rockers and another person of extreme awesomeness) and then taking it easy by the pool for some of the afternoon. (It was a vacation, after all.) Then we'd head back and do some late afternoon events and then in the evenings there were mad parties. Here's what you need to know: liberal bloggers like to drink.

Jesus, this is the longest post ever. OK, I'm going to stop now and go to dinner, but in the next post I'll try to discuss actual politics, and not just socializing.

Here we go

So it's really weird to be home. 
Azulita and I went off on our magical mystery tour and now we're back, right in the thick of things.  It's amazing to me sometimes that the world goes on even if I am not paying fanatic attention.  I see the appeal of just sort of chilling out.  It was a real vacation for me to not read the paper, not listen to the news first thing in the morning and last thing at night, not check google news ever hour.  Ironic that we went to a convention of bloggers and blogs and didn't bring a computer, but there you are. 
But now we're back in the soup.  Shit looks all crazy.  Looks like it went all crazy more or less the second we left Vegas.  We haven't covered any of Turdblossom Rove's escape from indictment, the Zarquawi (sp?) thing, the Heat and their championship, the World Cup, flag burning, or the crazy Kos-gate Newsweek/New Republic/David Brooks situation, and that's just for starters.  In the interest of time, I offer the following on those topics:

- Rove/Fitz/Plame: I don't know.  I was totally out of touch when it went down and have to read a whole bunch more to figure out what I think.  For a more informed opinion, I recommend (as with all things Plame) firedoglake. But my gut tells me that if Fitz didn't seek an indictment, it's because he didn't think he could get one.  Which means he was not able to find convincing evidence, either because there was none or because it was hidden.  You can guess which one I believe.

- The killing of the dude that we built up as the biggest terrorist mastermind in the history of ever-ness: whatever.  It was clear some time after they realized that they were never going to catch bin Laden that they needed some other, possibly more attainable, Big Bad.  So suddenly Zarquawi was everywhere.  He was behind like 5 bombings a day for a while there.  I don't doubt that he was mean enough for that, but I doubt he had enough time.  So now we've killed him, which proves nothing other than that some Iraqis got pissed off that he kept blowing their shit up and turned him in.  The tragedy is that what he started, or helped to start, or wanted to effect, was this horrible internecine war of competing brutality.  His goal was not just to get us out but to start a civil war. 
And yeah, I think the timing was weird and he looked like he had been killed months earlier and put on ice, but honestly I don't know if I care or if it matters.

- I hate Pat Riley, and I'm no fan of Shaq, but I want to lick Dwayne Wade all over, so I guess I can live with it.  How appropriate that the year the Knicks finished 6-283 or something the Heat should win.  But we're not even in a class to be considered rivals at this point.  God it hurts to say that.  Is that what it felt like to be a Red Sox fan all that time?

- While we're on the subject, I am also neutral on the Larry Brown thing.  Get rid of the freaking Dolans, then maybe things will change.

- The World Cup:  All my favorites are out, so you know, that sucks.  It would be trippy if England won, but I don't dare to even root as I seem to be a bad luck charm.  As usual, sports-wise.

- Flag burning: Don't care.  Although I am glad to say that Hillary, my senator, reversed herself and voted against an ammendment.  Some might find this too expedient, but I think it was the right thing to do, and so I give her a tip of the hat.

- All this Kos-bashing: this might take a longer post.  It's already past midnight and I have Colbert ready on the DVR.  Another day.

Back to the lab

We are home. So much to discuss, so it's gonna come in trickles. All trips were fantastic, now must earn some $$. Tons to come. Stay tuned.

We're Going to Vegas!

That's right, Azulita and I, your faithful correspondants, are going to Yearly Kos in Las Vegas. What's Yearly Kos? Why it is the first-ever Daily Kos convention! Speakers will include Howard Dean, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Sexy Wes Clark, Joe Wilson, and of course Kos himself. As well as a thousand bloggers emerging mole-like from their basements and blinking in the Nevada sun.

Although we are setting out with the intention of posting from Vegas, I don't want to promise anything. We may have some tech issues (i.e. neither of us wants to schlep a computer). But if you need to know more, Air America will be providing live streaming video of all the major panels from their site for a small fee. Also there is a rumor that CSPAN will be televising some of the bigger panels.

After that it will be time for our annual week at camp, so posting will be scarce. We'll be back and in effect June 26th.

Analysis!

I've been thinking about the whole DHS funding thing and I have a theory (other than 'the Administration sucks' etc. etc..).
The criticism that they had about the NY anti-terrorism plans was that they are stopgap measures and there is nothing sustainable. DHS wants to fund more one-time infrastructure and training type expenses, like communications equipment, preparedness drills and whatnot. The main criticism of the NYPD and our plans were that the marquee programs like Operation Atlas (wherein heavily armed cops show up randomly at likely targets and look tough) were more ongoing and therefore inefficient and unsustainable. DHS would like to move us in the direction of long-term planning.
You can see where they're coming from on this. You can see the logic behind it, and you can almost see the think-tank and policy group papers behind that. It makes perfect sense - in order to be successful in the long run, we have to change our behaviors, we have to retrain and re-structure ourselves and the way we think about disaster preparedness.
But they're a bunch of fucking assholes - don't forget. Those theories only work for the locales that have the luxury of time. The cities that actually can "prepare." We can't prepare anymore - shit done already happened to us. What we are doing is trying every day to stop shit from happening again. Not the things that may happen in the future. The things that might happen today. That is what it means to be a target.
Now don't get me wrong - I don't buy into the whole "Ooh! The Terrorists are always out to get us! Be Scared!" thing. But I can't deny that it's happened twice already. And those fuckers in Washington are making sure more and more people want to do it every day. So those assclowns need to understand that we are in a totally different category. They can take their little plans and drills and fancy equipment bought with the money Wall Street makes, but we have needs today and every day.
I think America needs to recognize that on 9/11 we took the damn bullet for them and we are still out here, throwing ourselves in the line of fire and they better have our backs.

Fuck you, you fucking fucks

SO in case you didn't know, BBD HQ is right here in the belly of the beast, New York Fucking City. I suppose there are all kinds of things to be said for other places in the country, but I'm going to come down right now and say: this is the greatest goddamned city ever. New York City. God I love New York. I know that the rest of the country doesn't always love us, and we're totally fine with that because we don't really love you so much all the time either.
Over a decade ago we had this thing - some crazy guys tried to blow up the World Trade Center. They wanted to destabilize the base and were hoping the towers would then topple over, which is actually sort of funny. But that plan failed and they only blew up the garage and killed a few people. Then about five years ago, some more crazy assholes decided they would try to knock over those same buildings. It must have been the terrorist final exam or something. Those guys, in case you haven't heard, succeeded.
The federal government decided that this was the most important thing that had ever happened in the history of mankind, and everything began to change. We entered the bizarro nightmare world we now all know and love. From time to time, some representatives of this federal government will swing by to look at where those buildings used to be, or hold a convention nearby in order to remind people of something they are not likely to forget, or even just mention the date that the buildings crashed down over and over and over like a weird brainwashing mantra.

Apparently, however, they really don't care about us or actually protecting us, only the fear our tragedy can inspire in others. It's sort of weird, really. Republicans don't seem to be very interested in doing anything about real, live people. But if you haven't been born yet, are in a permanent vegetative state, or died on the right day, they are fucking obsessed with you. Basically if you can't speak for yourself, they're really happy to speak for you.

This is all leading me to the thing that has got me so fucking steamed it's taken two days to write about it. The goddamn Department of Homeland Security, the incompetent, overreaching, disorganized and yet still quasi-fascist assholes that they are, have decided that New York, my pride and joy, our gateway to the world, the jewel in the crown of the most powerful country in the history of the world, the (by every estimate, ever) number one target for every terrorist and crazy asshole in the world, should have its Federal counter-terrorism funding slashed by 40%. So that other places, like Memphis and Louisville and who-the-fuck-cares-ville can get bigger grants. Presumably to fight back the terrorists that are freaking dying to put an end to that symbol of all things American, Graceland. The levels of outrage on this are so many that I need to get some work done instead of dwell. But consider that in addition to saying that we had NO NATIONAL MONUMENTS OR ICONS (um, off the top of my head places that every single person in the entire world has heard of: Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, Wall Street & the NYSE, Times Square, the Brooklyn Bridge. And that's not getting into 2nd tier but still big-time like Yankee Stadium, Ellis Island, Madison Square Garden, Macy's, the Chrysler Building, GROUND FUCKING ZERO, Central Park, Rockerfeller Center, Coney Island, Grand Central Station, do I need to keep going?) they also said that our anti-terrorism plans suck.

Now I'm not the biggest fan of the NYPD, but know that they are actually one of the most professional, best run and best trained police forces in the country. Counter-terrorism experts and representatives from cities worldwide come to NY to learn about what we're doing. We are on the cutting fucking edge of this shit. DHS, on the other hand, are the ones who did such a bang-up job in New Orleans. And now they say we don't know what we're doing and they know better. Not only that, but because they've decided that we spent our money unwisely we now have to get permission to spend money we already have. Which will most likely have the effect of making us less safe and more broke.

Assholes.

PS - Washington DC also got its money cut by 40%. Assholes.