Leaks 101

To dispose of all the hot air lately about leaks – partisans on both sides declaring treason by leakers they don’t like, while giving a pass to leakers on their own teams – I will now help you understand whether a leak is good, bad, or just normal.

There are 3 kinds of leaks: whistleblower leaks (good), partisan leaks (business as usual), and abusive leaks (extraordinary and bad).

Whistleblower leaks are leaks of any government information, classified or not, that reveals improper or illegal conduct by the government that is being hidden from the public. The leaker may have to break a law in revealing their evidence of lawbreaking activity by others. Such whistleblower activity is fully justified and proportionate, and should be celebrated as a patriotic effort to defend the integrity of our government. It serves to enhance government transparency and accountability, two key requirements of good governance in the 21st century that we should absolutely demand of our government.

Partisan leaks are disclosures of unclassified government information for the purpose of tactical political advantage. While such leaks may not be admirable, they are utterly routine under any administration, and those who expend their breath deploring them are wasting their time and are most likely hypocrites who look the other way when their own guys do it. Everybody’s always done it, and everybody will continue to do it. It’s human nature, and it’s part of the mechanics of power. It’s just the way the game is played.

Abusive leaks are leaks intended to cover up or protect questionable or illegal activities by inflicting damage on political opponents. The key example is the attempt to damage the reputation of a whistleblower. Such leaks show a wretched disregard for both the law and the responsible limits of the political game. Worst of all are (highly unusual) leaks of classified government information for such purposes. This is the very definition of the abuse of power. If someone in your local government, or your workplace, or your posse, is exposed acting in like manner, you’ll say that person is a scumbag. Those who undertake such leaks have no place in the national leadership. They hurt our nation’s reputation and they damage the trust between the governed and their government.

Whistleblower leak: Joseph Wilson exposing Niger yellowcake uranium lies told by President Bush while he made the case for making war upon Iraq.

Partisan leak: too numerous to count. The cost of doing government business.

Abusive leak: Cheney, Rove, Libby, et al illegally exposing the classified identity of Joseph Wilson’s CIA operative wife in an effort at payback, undermining his story, and silencing similar voices.

So just remember: when you hear somebody spouting about a leak, refer to this handy guide and decide for yourself whether the speaker is correct, or just a windbag, or defending the indefensible.

This government is an abomination.

I woke up on fire and started writing. Looking at my words again, I still haven't thought better of them. So here is my letter to the editor, of what publication I know not.

I think you would be surprised at how many millions of Americans share the perspective I would like to share with you now.

I love my country and our constitution passionately. But...

I would not be going far enough in describing our present evolution if I were merely to say that the present administration is a nasty blot on our history.

This government is an abomination.

Both parties are parasites.

The greed and corruption of the people who hold the large measure of wealth and the political keys in our country are a disgrace upon their heads.

The military-industrial-"intelligence" complex has grown into the ruin of us all.

Washington DC is a howling vortex of bad karma. Responsibility has vacated.

With every passing day, we look more like a resurrected Babylon, or the declining Roman Empire.

For expedience, I am willing for a while longer to throw my support to the hollowed-out husk of the Democratic Party. But...

Before our national treasure, our climate, our hydrocarbons, our middle class, our civility, the last ounce of our prestige, and our ability to dream and deliver are gone...

We need to drop our illusions and distractions, and we need to start imagining, together. Then we need to act.

We need a vision of a nation 300 million strong that Thomas Jefferson, Chief Joseph, Walt Whitman, and Rosa Parks would anoint with their blessings.

We must melt the structures of power that are hardened and strangling us, and we must replace them. Renewing ourselves, it comes down to this:

Collectively, we must ensure that all are given the capability to flourish, and then left to their freedom. We must now dream, then build, a new United States government that helps us do that, and does nothing more. That is all.

We rise from and return to the dust

See the origin of plants in the dust
The ground was fertile, fecund, ample
bearing within it many potentials,
readinesses waiting,
tools-which-now-that-you-have-
you-can-no-longer-do-without,
gift opportunities,
receptors waiting for your arrival,
welcoming you in.
Our protein-molecule hormone receptors
evolved as the fertile ground,
the gardens upon gardens within
over time that welcomed in
the wandering hormones that fit them,
keys for locks, and
have been the dust, fecund,
in which the plants of our nature have grown,
embedding the forest of a cell,
an evolving practice,
and the bed of higher things.

The following was written in celebration of my father's 87th birthday, by his brother Peter.

9/21/05

FOR ENGLISH MOROCCO
AKA BILL, BILLY, WILLY
AT FOUR SCORE AND SEVEN YEARS

I’ll not waste time, I’ll be quite quick
Explaining what makes Billy tick

Our nation’s reeling, it’s heading for a fall
Yet my bro’s focus is on major-league ball

Critics suspect the President’s in a coma
But Bill stays glued on Terry Francona

Although Bush hunts vainly for baddies under rocks
Bill’s obsession is them Boston Sox

Bush says no to partial birth abortions
And Bill says yes to Fenway’s fortunes

He knows our homeland is going to pot
But his own greatest fear is that Jeter may get hot

But now’s the time for laughter and mirth
Marking the day of Big Brother’s birth

Let good times roll, I wish you well
And may those Yankees go to hell

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What the hell is this babble? I had voice recognition running while I was on a business phone call, and this is what came out. No idea what I was really talking about, but it was none of this!

Kerry Teaches a Lesson

Bush’s election victory came as a bit of a surprise to me; I had expected him to tank with the American public by now, brought down by his accumulated falsehoods, failures, felonies, and fakery. That reckoning will come.

But for those of us who are not enthusiastic about Bush, equanimity is in order: some things are beyond one’s control, and now is a time to prayerfully build inner strength, to connect with the light in others, to live artfully, and to be grateful for the good things we have. Even if Kerry had squeaked out a win, given all the Americans out there who identify so strongly with Action-Man Bush’s “toughness” and “moral values,” it is clear that there are historical processes that our nation needs to work through. We are now on one particular path through those changes. Frankly, I think that, one way or another, the adherents of Bush’s brand of “conservatism” will need to wise up to a clearer realization of humanity’s inexorable interdependencies (some of which are beneficial to us, others hard to accept). I think that that growth process is going to be painful for both of the two Americas, red and blue. And I do not think that a Kerry victory would have done much to assuage those challenging, inevitable dynamics.

I hope the reader will remember my call for equanimity now while I indulge in recounting my thoughts as I crawled into bed late last night. The tone was anger, and it will not help if we only hold onto that anger; we must draw its lessons, and move on.

Anger at Kerry. Anger that he failed to understand his enemy. If I could have advised him, I would have told him to take every page out of Karl Rove’s playbook, and attack Bush relentlessly, viciously, dirtily, below the belt (pick your flavor of the week: dynastic heir masquerading as good old boy, daddy’s silver-spoon-protected draft dodger, moron student, brain-compromised booze-soaked cokehead, AWOL guardsman, bin Laden family business beneficiary, selected not elected, asleep at the switch on 9/11, master of justice-department-buried Administration felonies, war-manipulating demagogue, unfeeling death-dealing coward, etc, etc, etc).

Why this unseemly strategy? Because, when historians look back on this campaign, they’ll see that there was only one chess move that mattered: the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads, brought to you, with the slightest veneer of deniability, by Karl Rove. Bearing his mark of Zorro: attack the opponent at his point of greatest strength. Kerry the war hero became Kerry the unpatriotic wimp, and there, debates be damned, he remained in the minds of enough voters to bear him off into the land of pathetic political footnotes.

Kerry’s Swift Boat Waterloo reminds us of the way he set up his own ambush. He invited the attack by ducking at the Democratic convention, portraying himself simply as the gung-ho war hero, dreaming that he could somehow avoid any presentation of his subsequent anti-war protest activities. Please. He brought the fatal blow upon himself. Mr. Electability should have known before the convention that his best strategy was to take – gasp – a risk. He should have come clean and succinctly told America that in his youth The Hero saw both sides of war: the duty to serve and the duty to speak your conscience. In that way, Kerry would not only have staked out a position of real, defensible moral courage, he – and he alone, and this too is his historic failure – could have gone a long way to healing the wounds of the Vietnam era. At the same time, he could have set up a mature national discussion about what our present open-ended war commitment really means. And initiated an effective critique of Bush’s war leadership.

Oh well, missed a chance.

I hate to say I told you so, but this Deaniac saw the flaws long ago. My convictions on the manner of winning a campaign haven’t changed since well before the Gore debacle. The risk-averse Democratic strategy of the polite cave-in, of acting Bush-lite, has always been and will remain a loser until the last miserable fool of the likes of McAuliffe, Lieberman, Daschle, Gephart, Gore, and Kerry – is out of politics. How many pathetic losses will it take before the Democrats just try showing the courage of their convictions, taking some risks, differentiating themselves from their conservative opponents, giving some genuine inspiration, and, at the same time, for pity’s sake, playing dirty?

Look, Kerry defined himself for all time when he voted for the war in Iraq. If you thought that was a good idea at the time, don’t tell me now that the only problem is Bush’s incompetent handling of the occupation. You broke it, you own it.

If you thought that was a bad vote, you should have known a long time ago that you were buying a lemon in John Kerry.

But what’s done is done. My bedtime blaming session is limited to those sorry souls inside the Washington vortex who should know better. For the rest of us, I hope that anger and disappointment will be replaced by a simple, clear sense of what our strategy needs to be next time around. Spell out your compelling, inspiring progressive American values like caring, protecting, cooperating and lifting up; and attack your adversary with great cunning and equal or greater force than he, inevitably, will heap upon you.

Prediction: Bush will lose, and it won't be close

I feel more sure now than ever before that Bush will tank by election day ’04 – in the end, it won’t even be close. Economic spluttering, disappearing healthcare, oil prices, deficits, overwhelming evidence that our middle east/antiterror/you-break-Iraq,-you-own-it policy has gone off a cliff, a few more mini-scandals to come (more prisoner abuse; Halliburton, etc), and the Farenheit 911 effect (enough Americans seeing the emperor with no clothes) will combine to ensure his ouster.

Here’s why: the anti-Bush voters are already totally locked in; more undecideds will break to Kerry when they add up all the bad news; and here’s the decisive part: there’s a slice of the Bush voters who are NOT rock-solid – their Reagan-Republican loyalty is being stretched to the breaking point by Shrubbie’s assininity, and once the momentum moves just far enough against W, that wobbling slice will let him down. Some will abstain; some might even vote for Kerry. Count on it.

Yes, we can expect the terror card to be played with increasing intensity up til election day, and that will pin down the great majority of Bush’s supporters, but it won’t be enough to give him the numbers he needs.

The ONLY way Bush can win is if Kerry asses up his campaign as badly as Gore did four years ago. Well, I shouldn’t put it past him – just yesterday, he out-Bushed Bush by parroting Bush’s dumb certainty: singing in harmony with the outrageous comments Bush made a few days ago, Kerry said that even knowing what he knows now, he still would have voted to authorize the pre-emptive war. This when the Washington Post and New York Times have both issued grand mea culpas, admitting that they should have taken a harder look at the war sales pitch. So, Kerry can be a worm, but still I think he has just enough moxie to use the opportunity before him.

Anyway, I’m on an effort to limit my political obsession: it’s a broken world, and I can’t fix it by dwelling on it. I’m trying to limit my news intake to only those things I don’t already know – and you’d be surprised how that shrinks the field. And I find that news intake is best counterbalanced by some daily form of peace-inducing meditation, to prevent a buildup of excessive bile. I WILL attend the RNC protests in NYC, and I WILL do some voter registration work, but I’m trying not to carry this stuff around with me. Not easy, I admit – but let’s be sure to have fun with our outrage, cuz we’re gonna win.