News From A Parallel World

As of this morning, we’ve got cases of swine flu reported in six states. In related news, Senator Arlen Specter (R-Pa) announced that he would run for re-election as a Democrat.

Specter is a favorite of mine. In a business famous for self-serving duplicity, mammoth fakery, and bloated egos, he is a giant. Beginning with his stunning debut as a young lawyer on the staff of the Warren Commission, where he invented the infamous ‘single-bullet’ theory to explain the inexplicable, Specter has made it plain that no crime is beneath him. Indeed, his chairmanship of the Senate Ethics Committee, whose main task has been to cover-up the misdeeds of those in power, has been marked by the sort of convenient blindness which paves the road to success in American politics.

He’s a piece of work, Specter is.

His conversion to the party of Barack Obama, contrary to whatever horseshit masquerading as principle he will no doubt dump on an incurious media, is the rankest evil we’ve witnessed since Joltin’ Joe Lieberman began dancing back to the Democrats in the wake of John McCain’s ugly pasting last November. It is duplicity which would make even Spiro Agnew blush.

Needless to say, Arlen Specter is no Democrat. His timely leap from the sinking G.O.P. ship originated from a single ineluctable fact, which is that as the Republican nominee he would be beaten like a gong in 2010. This has been an emerging reality in statewide polls for more than a year now. Pennsylvania Democrats from Ed Rendell on down (or up, depending on your view of Rendell) have been soiling themselves in glorious anticipation.

Much of what passes for political commentary these days, at least what the corporate sponsors are willing to pay for, has been about the G.O.P., its increasing irrelevancy, its dearth of leadership, and the jokesters named Palin and Limbaugh hanging from its newly-imaciated frame.

The Specter switcheroo is being played that way, the ‘moderate’ who has no home left in his own party due to how crazy the rest of them are. But the bigger story is what it portends for the Democrats. While President Obama welcomes Specter, is “thrilled”, according to early accounts, and offers to campaign for him, the news is not necessarily good for the country.

For one thing, as David Sirota and one or two other sentient bloggers are writing on the Huffington Post, his conversion did not reflect any change in Specter’s politics. He’s finessed himself a nomination and a re-election each of which until now had been up for grabs. He’ll nominally vote with the Democrats in organizing the Senate. But in terms of philosophy or ideology, and presumably in ethics, he’s the same old useless bastard.

Forty-five years ago, as a young lawyer on the staff of the Warren Commission pretending to investigate the murder of John F. Kennedy, it fell to Specter to craft an explanation for the impossible forensic material. The Commission knew from the film of the killing and its own tests on the weapon said to have fired all the shots, not to mention the physical problems inherent in firing any weapon at the motorcade through a large, leafy tree which blocked the view from the “sniper’s nest” in the Depository, that there was more than one shooter and that none had been named Lee Oswald. There was quite literally no doubt about it.

But the Commission’s job was not to investigate but to allay fears and suspicions, to put to rest the rumors swirling around the country. The staff understood this quite well, as statements over the years by other staffers have made clear. And Specter was the fellow who came up with the solution.

Briefly, this was his problem: the shooting in Dealey Plaza had caused nine wounds in three people. One shot had missed, striking a spectator named James Tague as he stood near the overpass. One shot killed Kennedy, striking him in the right temple. Because it was physically impossible to deliver more than three shots from the bolt-action rifle in the 5.6 seconds eastablished by the film as being the largest possible window of time available, it meant that the remaining wounds had to be accounted for by a single bullet.

It had to have caused these wounds:

1. a wound of entry in Kennedy’s back, several inches below the collar and slightly to the right; 2. a wound in Kennedy’s throat, identified by every doctor at Parkland Hospital who saw it before it was enlarged for a breathing tube as a wound of entry; 3. a wound in the back of Governor John Connally, who had been seated directly in front of Kennedy; 4. a wound of exit in Connally’s chest; 5. a wound in the radius of Connally’s right wrist; 6. a wound of exit at the radius; 7. a superficial wound in Connally’s left thigh.

It was also a bullet with magical properties, since it emerged from this journey, having traversed Kennedy’s back and neck, and broken Connally’s ribs and the radius in his wrist, in pristine condition. Commission Exhibit 399 had lost less in grains of lead than were recovered from Connally’s wrist alone. When compared with bullets which had been fired into gelatin blocks –– and which had been thereby blunted –– or those fired into animal cadavers –– and which had been thereby flattened –– Exhibit 399 had quite obviously never wounded anybody.

But young Arlen Specter was stuck with Exhibit 399 because it was the only link he had between the President’s murder and the rifle said to have belonged to Oswald. This bullet had at one time been fired from that weapon. And it had been ‘found’ on a bloody stretcher at Parkland Hospital said to have been used to transport the wounded Governor.

As it later turned out, the stretcher on which the magic bullet was ‘found’ had been used not for Connally but for a kid named Ronnie Fuller, admitted at the same time for a badly cut chin. Admittedly, Specter didn’t know about Ronnie Fuller. And he did not have access to the mountain of materials since excavated around the assassination.

But Specter cannot claim ignorance as a defense, even if he’d like to, because he had to know at the time that, whatever the truth, he was inventing a lie. He knew this for many reasons, but the most compelling was the existence of the Zapruder film of the murder because it provided investigators with a clock. Running at 18.3 frames per second, Zapruder’s Bell & Howell established not only a time limit for all of the shots but an accurate sequencing. Within the window of the film, you can see Kennedy reacting to being hit, his hands rising to his throat. In the seat in front of him, Connally is turned to his right and begins to turn back the other way; he later said that he’d heard the shot and was trying to see what it was. Clearly visible is his right hand, which is gripping his Stetson. It should not be necessary to point this out, but if your radius has been shattered by a bullet you cannot grip anything. Then comes the frame where Connally reacts to being struck. This happens more than 1.6 seconds after Kennedy is hit but less than 2.3 second. And 2.3 seconds is the fastest time possible to operate the bolt on the Manlicher Carcano, using Olympic sharpshooters, which the Commission did.

In other words: it not only didn’t happen that way, it couldn’t have happened that way, and Specter had to know it.

He must’ve been under great pressure, I concede that. As one key New Orleans witness said to Jim Garrison, “Kennedy’s in a pine box; the government’s still breathing. You’re lining up with a dead man.”

Today, as reporters crowded around, Specter quipped that he had a larger entourage than Lee Harvey Oswald. Now, isn’t that a very curious thing to say.

Tree-huggers running wild, that’s what it is. Hey, don’t get me wrong, I love ‘em, every blinking one of ‘em, and a few I really admire, such as Julia Butterfly and Frank Egger, but it’s like anything else: along with the wizards you get the ideologues, and wherever you get ideologues you get trouble.

I am a golfer. I have other problems, too, clearly, but that’s one of them. I am dedicated to the pursuit, which offers along other things occasional revelations concerning planet earth and what in the world we are doing here; and regardless of what any of you left-wingers out there think, you can run across a lot of really cool people on the links, even the ones with money.

I am a golfer but I stick pretty close to home, which is San Geronimo Golf Course just over White’s Hill and five minutes away if the traffic’s wide open, which it often is. I do not travel well, another of my problems. But you are not reading this because you find my problems fascinating –– you have plenty of your own, especially these days of economic calamity and criminal euphemism.

There’s this golf course, Sharp Park, in San Francisco. Never played there. Couldn’t find it even with a google map, see aforementioned note on travel, and probably never will.

There is pressure being applied to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors right now by a tree-hugging outfit which wants the city to close the course, which it owns, so that the land may revert to its ‘natural’ condition. This idea is enthusiastically backed by Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, who evidently does not understand shit about golf but isn’t going to let that detail derail his larger purpose.

The tree-hugger faction is fronted by The Center for Biological Diversity, which has threatened to sue the city unless the course is closed, in order to “protect two threatened species,” according to the blurb in the Mercury News. These are the garter snake and the red-legged frog.

I am a big fan of the garter snake, although I appreciate it even better when it’s not underfoot. I go back to childhood with the garter snake. I believe I also have an affinity for the red-legged frogs. Frogs and I go back a long way, too, and in jaw-dropping ways I’m not going into here.

But Sharp Park is not hurting the garter snakes, and it is not hurting the frogs. Golfers have been slogging around this links-style track for seventy years. The snakes and frogs are still there. In fact, the course already closes portions of the 14th fairway due to flooding, rather than pump the water, because that would disturb the frogs laying their eggs in the springtime.

These are people who know something about caring for their surroundings and the creatures which inhabit them.

On its wed site devoted to Sharp Park, the Center speaks of turning the “exclusive, underused and budget-breaking golf course” into a series of wetlands with trails, a visitor center and camping and picnic zones. They don’t mention what that might cost, and the ‘budget-breaking’ line is horseshit, but the point is clear. One Jeff Miller, described as an “advocate with the center” thinks such a project would attract a lot of federal money.

“Exclusive” meaning what, exactly? “Underused” in what manner? The CBD folks, who are worried about the species they cite, want to bring in more people? Increase “utilization”? Camping zones? Picnic zones? How’s that helping out the garter snake? Does the red-legged frog want visitors?

Let’s face it, the CBD people want to build a theme park for themselves and their friends; they want to attract federal money and build things; they want, in fact, to turn this golf course into an open-air zoo.

As I said, I’ve never played Sharp Park. There are other courses around, and even if this place, at $12.00 for seniors and $20.00 for S.F. residents, is a great place for people who love the game but don’t have the money for fancy equipment, or new Priuses, why should I care?

It happens that Sharp Park, whatever its faults, was originally designed by one Alister MacKenzie, who is in the course architects hall of fame, if there is such a thing and even if there isn’t. He was a genius, a mad creator, a visionary. Not every course he designed was as likely as Augusta National, where the Masters is played, but they are his creations.

One does not consign a Picasso sketch to the slag heap, even if it’s not one of his best.

Mirkarimi’s legislation asks city staff to look into “transferring the land to the National Park Service or jointly managing the property with the agency, which raises the possibility of shrinking the golf course” –– shrinking the golf course? like, we could make it a 12-holer? –– “or transforming it into a 400-acre park with managed wetlands.”

By all means, let’s turn 400 acres over the National Park Service, those progenitors of concession stands at National landmarks, that’s what the red-legged frogs need: federal management.

Hey, I realize that Mirkarimi’s just another ambitious pol, albeit on the left, and he’s a whiz at the equations: save the snake, talk about wetlands, plenty of votes; save the golf course for those who can’t afford to play without it? Not so many votes.

No, I blame the brainless culture which has sprung up alongside the environmental movement, for it gives birth to things like the CBD. I blame the culture of left-wing self-righteousness which at its worst lends credence to the sneering ‘political correctness’ jibes of the moronic right-wing.

I have over the years been an active participant in a number of political crusades, and on reflection I think they were each worthy (if occasionally self-destructive), but crusades attract not only the morally-engaged but the morally-compromised as well. Fanaticism is always dangerous because it rides on certainty, and if there’s anything certain on the planet it’s that human beings, you and me included, don’t know much and are astoundingly slow at this learning business.

If anyone out there knows any San Francisco politicos, I invite you to please tell them to leave the garter snake, the red-legged frog, and the low-income golfer alone.

I saw another photo of the man in the Chron yesterday, accompanying Matthew Stannard’s story of a Justice Department memorandum written by John Yoo, the Boalt Hall law professor who once claimed that it would be morally justifiable to “crush a child’s testicles” in front of his mother to extract “information” from her.

In the photo, Yoo is wearing a striped tie, wire-rimmed glasses, and a thin smile. It would not be necessary for anyone to obtain legal authority for the crushing of the child’s testicles, nothing beyond the opinion of the President who could legally order or authorize it as “necessary” in the “war on terror.”

I kept staring at the photo, trying to convince myself that I was seeing a human being, a man who had cares and concerns and interests, who probably selected his tie with the thought that it made him look pretty good.

John Yoo’s job at the Justice Department was to craft legal memoranda which would provide cover for George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld in the use of torture and brutality.

Hitler had lawyers like John Yoo. He had a cowardly, complaisant legislature which enacted ‘Patriot Acts’, thus legalizing everything he wanted to do.

Right now in America the surveillance and secrecy policies of the Bush regime are being defended by President Obama’s Justice Department. In federal court, Obama’s lawyers have told a judge that he has no power to enforce his own orders to disclose a secret wiretap document, and they have threatened to destroy it rather than produce it. Meanwhile, prisoners held for years without charges or open trial are condemned in secret by military courts.

On April 27, 1961, another American President forcefully argued a different point of view. Speaking to the American Association of Newspaper Publishers, John Kennedy said this:

“The very word ‘secrecy’ is repugnant in a free and open society. And we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment far outweigh the dangers which are cited to justify it. There is little value in ensuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it –– and there is very great danger that an announced need for greater security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment...”

Sound familiar?

(Associated Press dispatch, Washington, D.C., April 18, 2009):

AP Newswire. The Obama administration announced today that it is “turning the page” on drug dealers, armed robbers, and those found to have perpetrated drive-by shootings.

“We need to be looking forward, not backward,” the President told an afternoon press gathering on the South Lawn at the White House. He added that many of these people “thought that what they were doing was lawful at the time.”

In related news, President Obama also promised that he would ignore any crimes committed by domestic kidnappers and torturers if they committed crimes while working for the government.

In California, the killer who raped her eight-year-old victim is reportedly considering asking the court to “turn the page” and let her go, since “God told me to do it.”

All of this warms my heart. It vindicates the hours and cash I personally spent to advance the candidacy of our new President. It’s change you can believe in.

In the new national order, forgiveness is the watchword. The principles of Nuremberg, to borrow an expression from former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, are “quaint” in the modern world. Forget the tired old nonsense about accountability. You can’t run a modern state without a strong domestic spy apparatus, and who would want to work for the secret police if they were always worried about future prosecution?

Amnesty for everyone! Except, of course, for Roman Polanski, Rod Blagojevich, and the hundreds of thousands encarcerated for smoking marijuana.

Amnesty for cops who shoot unarmed citizens. Amnesty for the CEOs who steal the life savings of millions. Hey, anybody can make an honest mistake.

I like the new Obama Nation, a place where nearly anything goes.

I’ve been avoiding writing this little column for better than a month. But now, with the news clippings piling-up on my work desk and Thursday night’s wind outside, in Dylan’s fractured simile, howling like a hammer, it’s a good time. Healthy, too; constipation is never a good idea, and mental constipation can blank-out an entire personality. I know people who’ve been jammed-up for fifty years and it’s not pretty.

I’m calling this a column now, even though the term itself is a relic of the dying industrial age. Newspapers are falling dead all over the place and the Bay Area’s remaining metropolitan rag, The Chronicle, is wondering why on its own front page. No great mystery. You can find anything on the internet, including in most cases better and leafier prose.

Personally, I shall miss The Chron, which I like to read with my breakfast cereal every morning, mostly Jon Carroll and a couple of cartoons, and the Sudoku puzzle. But the news, you can get it anywhere now. I don’t need to read The Chronicle to know which way the wind blows like a hammer.

Headlines:

“Obama Justice Dept. keeps Bush stance on rendition lawsuits.”

“Obama, Bush detention policies are very similar.”

“Obama’s Justice Dept. in court over challenge to Bush wiretap policy.”

“Feds try to block lawyers from seeing classified document.”

“Bush detainee policy supported by Obama.”

“Obama administration request denied in wiretapping case.”

You know, if I was a cynical sort of fellow, I might begin wondering just what I got when I voted for change I could believe in.

Look, I like the guy personally. He’s charming as all hell, and literate, which alone is such a relief after the Reign of George the Idiot King, that I want to ignore the signs, unmistakable though they certainly are, that America’s flirtation with fascism has not ended with Barack Obama’s security policies.

If Nixon was doing what Obama’s doing on matters of governmental and police power, not to mention sending another wave of troops to Afghanistan (can Pakistan be far behind?), we’d all be in the streets, and you know it.

Documents on America’s widespread kidnapping of people and flying them to secret prisons around the world, where ‘friendly’ governments assist us in torturing our captives, remain hidden behind a fierce Justice Department fight to suppress them.

A bipartisan Senate Armed Services committee report said that Donald Rumsfeld and his friends instituted policies or torture at Guantanamo and elsewhere, but the Justice Department says it will not pursue prosecution against those who committed these terrible crimes. Meanwhile, the U.S. has decided to release a Guantanamo prisoner on condition that he agree not to sue us.

The mis-nomered ‘Patriot Act’ remains backed in its entirety by the Executive Branch (as well as the Democratic congressional leadership), including the law which authorizes the President to round up anybody he deems a ‘threat’ to ‘national security’. No one is talking about –– or rescinding –– the contract with Halliburton to build enormous detention camps.

Widespread wiretapping of citizens continues.

Yeah, Obama’s charming as hell. But as several beautiful women I know personally can attest, charm only goes so far. I like Michelle, too, and the kids. I like it that the First Family wants to get a Portuguese water dog because it reminds me of my friend Bolo, who has gone to where the water dogs can romp around all day.

It must be said that the domestic (and foreign) police policies of the new guy are not better in any material respect than the crazy, dangerous policies of the nutcase we just sent back to the ranch. We’d better be honest about it. Otherwise, we’re likely to awaken one day to the realization that we’d replaced “compassionate conservatism” with ‘fascism with a human face.’