Plantation House

Hillary Clinton is saying that dissenting voices in the U.S. House of Representatives are being squelched and compares the workings of that political institution to how southern plantations were run.

Personally, I find this a bit offensive. With roots in the South I feel that this comparison with the Republican-controlled Congress makes plantations look bad.

I repectfully demand a retraction of the analogy and suggest replacing it with a comparison to a Soviet gulag.

Or is that already being used in reference to the executive branch?

On a related, sensitive issue, I am aware that it has now become politically incorrect to use the names "Bush" and "Hitler" in the same sentence as in "Bush and Hitler are most likely soulmates."

This sort of statement absolutely enrages the extreme right and keeps the Secret Service up at night. As if the federal domestic spying agencies don't already have enough on their plates.

So, journalists will have to look elsewhere for historical comparisons: Stalin and Mussolini certainly haven't been overused. Ditto Satan.

Late Follow-up: I have been notified by my editor that the F.B.I. may be scanning the internet for any bloggers now using the words "Bush" and "Mussolini" in the same sentence, so I am recommending "Busholini" as a sort of shorthand.

God help us if they Google gulag.

Attack, attack!!

It looks like the attack dog team inside the White House is up to it again.

This time it is a “Swift Boat Vets for Truth”-style campaign against Congressman John Murtha.

Murtha is a conservative Democrat and a decorated Vietnam Veteran who has criticized Bush’s handling of Iraq and has called for a withdrawal of U.S. troops from that country.

The Huffington Post is reporting that “the Bush administration recently asked high ranking military leaders to denounce Congressman John Murtha.”

“The Bush Administration first attacked Rep. Murtha for his Iraq views by associating him with the filmmaker Michael Moore and Representative Jean Schmidt likened him to a coward on the floor of the House of Representatives.

“When those tactics backfired, Dick Cheney called Murtha ‘A good man, a marine, a patriot and he's taking a clear stand in an entirely legitimate discussion.’

“Though the White House has backed off publicly, administration officials have nevertheless recently made calls to military leaders to condemn the congressman.

So far they have refused.”

One additional note: since Murtha called for reductions in the troop numbers in Iraq, the Bush war team has also embraced the idea, promising that thousands of troops will come home this year.

But since Murtha spoke up first, he becomes the target. The White House attack dogs know no other mode than attack.

Myth Of Peace

"Sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace." -Bob Dylan

Republican speechwriter Mark Helprin writes in The L.A. Times about the myth that helps form the world of George W. Bush:

"The President believes and often states, as if it were a self-evident truth, that 'democracies are peaceful countries.' This claim, which has been advanced in the past in regard to Christianity, socialism, Islam and ethical culture, is the postulate on which the foreign policy of the United States now rests."

The problem is that democracies are not in fact inherently peaceful and Bush has kept our democracy at war for the better part of his administration, while continuously declaring he embraces peace.

Helprin continues:

“Balance of power, deterrence and punitive action have been abandoned in favor of a scheme to recast the political cultures of broad regions, something that would be difficult enough even with a flawless rationale because the power of even the most powerful country in the world is not adequate to transform the world at will.

"Not only does the U.S. expend a great deal of effort to usher politically impure states into a form of popular sovereignty that will not stop them from acting inimically to our interests, but in distancing itself from authoritarian states that are willing to work with us, it forgoes potentially critical advantages.

"For the pleasure of displaying our virtue, we may someday suffer innumerable casualties in a terrorist attack that a compromised state might have helped us to prevent.

"In foreign policy, carelessness and confusion often lead to tragedy. Thus, a maxim chosen to guide the course of a nation should be weighed in light of history and common sense.

"Or is that too much to ask?”