Buh-bye

Honesty means more than simply not lying, but Richard Blumenthal (D-buh-bye) failed even the easy test of not lying:

“We have learned something important since the days that I served in Vietnam,” Mr. Blumenthal said to the group gathered in Norwalk in March 2008. [emphasis added]

During Vietnam would have parsed as true, but even that phrasing would have left room for deceit. During the Vietnam era would have been still better, with the word era flagging the statement for a bit more interpretive analysis.

Blumenthal could claim - and he has - that he simply misspoke. But there are too many instances of self-interested silence in the face of falsehood to credit this as the slip of his tongue.

The root problem, which should be fatal to his candidacy for Senate, is that Blumenthal has shown a life-long pattern of failure to correct the record clearly and forthrightly. He continues his deceit with this bullshit:

“I don’t know if we tried to do so or not,” he said. He added that he “can’t possibly know what is reported in all” the articles that are written about him.

Bullshit. Politicians care deeply and obsessively how they're covered in the press. They may not see every single article, but they or their staff see all the big stories, especially those in major publications. Nowadays, they all have Google alerts to keep them on top of media all the way down to the smallest blog.

The emotional impact of his reserve service and of seeing the postwar treatment of veterans from in-country could still be true. He could still tell it honestly from the perspective of a reservist. Instead, his claimed experience sounds more like echoing of urban legends than first-hand witnessing to the travails of returning vets.

Here's the principle: If you have to choose your words very carefully to permit listeners to take away a wrong impression, an impression that you want them to retain, you're lying. Never mind that advertisers do this all the time. They're lying too. It's just that your lie while seeking a Senate seat is more corrosive and damaging.

This is especially true of living a lie about being at risk of dying in the service of your country. That's just something that no one should ever fake - or acquiesce in faking.

Even Duhbya didn't try to get away with morphing his defense of Texas and Alabama against the world-wide threat of the Viet Cong Air Force into service in country in Vietnam. Like Blumenthal, he did try to get away with claiming he received no special treatment, also false but on a much smaller scale.

It was John Kerry who put aside offers of special treatment and actually served in Vietnam. That didn't win the Presidency for him, but he at least still has his honesty intact about that very important touchstone of recent American history, no matter how hard Karl Rove and the Swift Boat Liars tried to steal it from him by their own campaign of lies.

Blumenthal should go. But he's obviously too vain to give in to that inconvenient truth.

(h/t to this great post on No More Mister Nice Blog)

Update (5/19): More feet of clay on the Republican side. Lindsay Graham (R-wingy but not wingy enough for teabaggers) repeatedly and persistently claimed to be a veteran of Iraq I, despite never serving in country. (h/t Atrios)

Coming distractions

The VA was handing out piles of bonuses to technical employees in 2007 and 2008. A grandstanding Republican Congressman (yes, all sorts of redundancies in those three words) wants, nay, demands an investigation:

"I am extremely troubled by the Inspector General's findings," said Richard Burr, R-NC, the ranking Republican on the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee. "I believe Congress should use its oversight authority to further investigate these matters," he said in an e-mail to CNN.

The point that will likely be forgotten about this: It happened during the reign of the Bushists, when Burr and the rest of the Republicans opposed anything resembling oversight of the executive branch.

The next step in the laundering of bullshit into conventional wisdom will be some wingnut blogger blaming this on President Obama.

Note: The VA, which is socialized medicine, delivers better care more cheaply than the dominant semi-private part of American health care, even with these bonuses.

Hypersensitivity

Step back from this:

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano apologized Friday for a department assessment that suggested returning combat veterans could be recruited by right-wing extremist groups.

I read it this way:

(Blameless) Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano apologized Friday for a department assessment that suggested (the undeniable fact that) returning combat veterans could be recruited by right-wing extremist groups.

When our discourse is debased by the political requirement to pretend that true facts are false - even to mollycoddle an otherwise deserving group - it's difficult to have the sort of honest, no-bullshit discussion that is required for good government.

It's political correctness run amok.

Al Sharpton for veterans

John McCain demands an apology for a report, started under Duhbya, from Homeland Security. The report itself is a scant eight pages, and anyone could read it for themselves, yet many commenters clearly haven't. Here's one:

if the report had said americans are prone to this kind of thing it would be correct. don't just say veterans. ... --just truth (April 21st, 2009 1:16 pm ET)

In fact, the report says that there are many extremist groups already in America (duh!), that these groups want the combat skills of veterans (duh!), and that they're recruiting (duh!). It doesn't "just say veterans" by any stretch of the fevered imagination.

McCain is playing uproar, appealing to ignorant emotions. He knows it, and it's despicable, although it's Republican politics par excellence.

You know, we already know that there are wingnut extremists in the military, just as there are in the general public. If the veterans' equivalent of Al Sharpton thinks their service entitles them to squelch true statements, they ought to review the Constitution that they swore to defend.

Note to Obama: Don't apologize. Don't explain. Parry and thrust: "I'm saddened that John McCain obviously hasn't read the report or hasn't understood it. I invite all Americans to read it for themselves in order to see that it specifically states that right-wing extremists are targeting veterans for recruitment, not the other way around. If John McCain actually objects to that clear statement of fact, it could only be because he's defending the extremists, and I know McCain well enough to know that's not the case. What he's doing here is pretending outrage for political reasons, and we're only sorry to see him stoop so low as to inflame our cherished vets about an insult that isn't there at all."

Wingnut pundits and their audiences

Wingnut pundits - Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, Michelle Malkin, and many others - think that the people who listen them are illiterate idiots. If you listen to them and believe what they say, you're often proving them right.

The Huffington Post has the full text of the Homeland Security report on rightwing extremists. Go read it; it's only eight scant pages of text, and it's mostly in English rather than law enforcement bureaucratese. Here are some selections of particular interest:

Returning veterans possess combat skills and experience that are attractive to rightwing extremists. DHS/I&A is concerned that rightwing extremists will attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order to boost their violent capabilities.

So who's DHS warning about? Veterans? No, rightwing extremists recruiting veterans.

DHS/I&A assesses that rightwing extremist will attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order to exploit their skills and knowledge derived from military training and combat. ... The willingness of a small percentage of military personnel to join extremist groups during the 1990s because they were disgruntled, disillusioned, or suffering from the psychological effects of war is being replicated today.

The only way you can possibly construe this as an attack on veterans in general is if you are insane or illiterate - or if you're pandering to an audience that you know loves appeals to its insanity and illiteracy.

As if arresting Timothy McVeigh disrespected all veterans instead of the one who executed the largest act of domestic terrorism in more than a century...

Even Michelle Malkin, despite clearly being insane, should normally not feel that this report targets her (even though it doubtless targets at least a few members of her audience). Malkin's loony on immigration, yet the report carefully and Constitutionally says:

Debates over appropriate immigration levels and enforcement policy generally fall within the realm of protected political speech under the First Amendment, but in some cases, anti-immigration or strident pro-enforcement fervor has been directed against specific groups and has the potential to turn violent.

Note: Someone needs to remind the author of the report that Barack Obama's election was historic. It will be some years yet before it can be described as historical.

It's all green

Many veterans - particularly David Gorman, executive director of the Disabled American Veterans - oppose the Obama administration's plan to bill insurance companies for the injuries veterans have suffered.

Why? Their opposition is as senseless as opposing the use of income taxes to pay these bills. The important result is that the bills get paid, not where the money comes from. Is the leadership fighting to keep insurance companies safe from democracy?

One upshot: Vets like their single-payer health care. I bet the rest of us would like it, too.