No Cocktail Weenies For You!

Thanks to both Think Progress & ultimately, the Washington Post, we now know The New (thanks, Cindy, “At least I don’t plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you ****") Straight Talk Express Boeing 737-400 version now has a section featuring a couch and two captain's chairs and an area for cameras, a section in which, McCain senior aide Mark Salter quipped this morning, "only the good reporters" would get to sit in the specially-configured section for interviews. "You'll have to earn it."

So what's the price of access to those precious cocktail weenies these days, those petite porcine protuberances which permit the possessor to pass as persons possessing the pulchritude of privilege in protest of us plebeians? Aye, the paucity of perspicacity!

The Lex Gabinia

Paul Krugman is an excellent commentator as his facts are accurate and whether one agrees with his points (as I usually do) or not, he speaks truth and his words are worthy of consideration. This blog entry of his on a certain aspect of Roman law resonated with me as it seems to fit these days & times and so, I wish to share.

People on the right are constantly comparing the United States to ancient Rome, saying we are on the face of a moral decline and so, will be subject to the same sort of fall. While I have and do agree, it is for entirely different, albeit non-moral reasons - The United States is going to fall as we have given supreme power to a wannabe dictator, hence the parallel. Especially if we keep going in the same direction as we have these last 8 years.

From a linked NY Times Article:

In the autumn of 68 B.C. the world’s only military superpower was dealt a profound psychological blow by a daring terrorist attack on its very heart. Rome’s port at Ostia was set on fire, the consular war fleet destroyed, and two prominent senators, together with their bodyguards and staff, kidnapped.
But such was the panic that ensued after Ostia that the people were willing to compromise these rights. The greatest soldier in Rome, the 38-year-old Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (better known to posterity as Pompey the Great) arranged for a lieutenant of his, the tribune Aulus Gabinius, to rise in the Roman Forum and propose an astonishing new law.

The Lex Gabinia

Pompey was to be given not only the supreme naval command but what amounted in fact to an absolute authority and uncontrolled power over everyone,” the Greek historian Plutarch wrote. “There were not many places in the Roman world that were not included within these limits.

From the Wikipedia article:

The powers Pompey was granted were proconsular powers in any province within 50 miles of the Mediterranean Sea with a fleet of 500 warships, 120,000 and around 5,000 cavalry to fight the growing problems of pirates disrupting trade in the Mediterranean Sea.

From the linked NY Times Article:

Pompey eventually received almost the entire contents of the Roman Treasury — 144 million sesterces — to pay for his “war on terror,” which included building a fleet of 500 ships and raising an army of 120,000 infantry and 5,000 cavalry. Such an accumulation of power was unprecedented, and there was literally a riot in the Senate when the bill was debated.
But it was too late to raise such questions. By the oldest trick in the political book — the whipping up of a panic, in which any dissenting voice could be dismissed as “soft” or even “traitorous” — powers had been ceded by the people that would never be returned. Pompey stayed in the Middle East for six years, establishing puppet regimes throughout the region, and turning himself into the richest man in the empire.

& ten years later Julius Caesar received similar powers and was followed by a long line of Roman dictators, each more greedy, foolish & bloodthirsty than the last. And thus ended the power of the Roman Senate & years later, the Roman Empire itself.

In 2002, did the United States do a similar thing to itself when GW was granted his now all-encompassing authorization to use military force in Iraq?

"Someone Else’s Sacrifice"

(photo: Barry Gutierrez of The Rocky Mountain News.)

Sgt. Ryan John Baum finally got to hold his daughter Leia, born 11 days after his death last May in Iraq.

I could try to write more on this, but jurassicpork at Welcome To Pottersville (oops, this link is now dead, Jurassicpork, please repost this to your new blog if possible) writes something far more eloquent than I ever could including the title of this post which I 'borrowed'. Please read his words instead...

Update 7 August 2008

jurassicpork pulled the plug on Welcome To Pottersville last month (new digs at Welcome Back To Pottersville) which of course hosed the link. But he graciously sent me the original text of his post which I am quoting below in its entirety. Thanks, JP!

Originally, I was going to upload today pictures and videos of my grandson’s birthday party from yesterday. Then I was going to kick back and work on my novel. But this, for the moment, is more important and takes precedence.

Stan Banos at Reciprocity Failure refuses to make any partisan political statements “for respect of the subject matter at hand.” I’ll try to do the same here although I’m not going to pretend to succeed. But, still, I have to ask:

Why didn’t this picture of Sgt. Ryan John Baum lying in his coffin make the front page of the NY Times or the Washington Post instead of the back pages of the Rocky Mountain News? Baum’s widow Dana tells us that her husband desperately wanted to get out of Iraq so he could hold his daughter Leia, born 11 days after his death last May in Iraq, on his chest. The next best thing was to put her picture on him as he lie in state. So, again, why is this prize-winning photograph restricted to a few dying blogs instead of on the august pages of the NY Times or the WaPo? Well, that still wouldn’t have been humanistic as much as subversive or controversial.

We’re not supposed to be reminded that war has consequences, that it involves dead, shattered bodies and living, shattered families. This is why the coffins are not allowed to be photographed as they stream off the transports at Dover Air Force Base, why Senator Joe Biden is not even allowed to meet with and comfort the families, why Bush and Cheney never go to a funeral for a single one of them.

Why Barbara Bush’s beautiful mind can’t be allowed to contemplate ugly images such as a body bags, why the 1000th, 2000th, 3000th and 4000th deaths were just numbers and why makeshift memorials for the troops get mowed down less than a mile from the presidential retreat in Crawford, Texas.

That's why this picture never made the front page of a major newspaper and never will. We as a nation, as Frank Rich reminds us today, desperately are trying to put Iraq behind us and we never seem capable of realizing this absurdly simple fact- We can’t put it behind us without leaving 155,000 troops behind. We can afford to put behind us a war that still silently rages on from 6000 miles away.

It’s someone else’s sacrifice, so we can afford to turn away. In a nation of 300,000,000, only about 150,000 of us are in Iraq. Lacking a draft, many of us haven’t a dog in this fight and are afforded the luxury of turning our attention to things closer to home and our wallets.

We turn our attention, instead, to $4+ a gallon gas, rising food prices, our home foreclosures, rising unemployment, all worthy and serious considerations. But we need, also, to remind ourselves that Iraq and the tremendous strain and drain this little country is imposing on us is the root cause of many of these campaign issues and national ills that are assuming much more importance than the war in Iraq.

This photograph of Sgt. Baum, a picture of the infant daughter that he never lived to see poignantly and tragically sitting atop his cold chest, makes for a poor partisan political statement for either side. It’s an image so intensely personal to the Baum family, that those of us on either side should step away and let the family grieve in peace. We should be ashamed to gawk at such intensely personal pictures. It is not even synecdochal except for those other families that had suffered other losses through our involvement in Iraq or Afghanistan.

In the vast, almost cosmic machinery of this war effort, Sgt. Baum and his simple dream of holding his infant daughter on his chest would seem insignificant and meaningless. It’s one family’s tragedy that is reflexively met with condolences and the usual bromides of selfless sacrifice and a nation’s gratitude for such sacrifice. But the human toll in even the most just and necessary of wars is often, with truth, the first casualty.

And if that’s a partisan political statement, then sue me.

JP

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Every time I try to write about something, something else intrudes that is even worse. Whether it's the wholesale looting of the American treasury & infrastructure, the revelations that the United States supports advocates torture & unlimited detention w/o charge of even American citizens, or the idea that if one does not agree with & wholeheartedly support the idea that "if the president does it, that means it's not illegal", one is by definition someone who 'hates America' and 'loves the terrorists', I am so appalled by what is going on around me I find it impossible to write about such things.

Of course, as always, something even uglier lurks around the corner. Assuming there is an election next November, one that is not stolen, and a Democrat, probably Obama, takes the White House next January, will it all change? Change in the sense that suddenly the rule of law matters once again, that the press has an obligation to confront? That we will see endless investigations in Congress & in the press of the slightest Democratic transgressions, real or imagined, after all the current Republicans are safely pardoned and ensconced in their think tanks & executive boardrooms? Remember, once upon a time, Phil Gramm was a Democrat...

I made a commitment when I started this weblog, a commitment I intend to keep, at least for now.