Lagniappe: The Bush/Rush/Addiction Trifecta - George Bush is apparently giving new life to his "faith-based" initiatives. In an AP Newswire report, we read the following:

"The best way to help the addict ... is to change their heart," Bush said in a reference to how he stopped drinking at age 40. "See, if you change their heart, then they change their behavior.

I wonder if we'll see a soft-n-fuzzy Rush return to the airwaves after his treatment. Will his heart be changed? Bush is not talking simply about kicking a habit, but changing one's life outlook. Will Rush be a changed man? I doubt it. But we'll see.

Lagniappe: Parsing Rush - Not to pick on a man when he's down, but let me give Rush a taste of his own medicine. Below is Rush's statement (directly from his website) on his drug addiction with my comments interspersed:

Rush Limbaugh Statement on Prescription Pain Medication Stories

October 10, 2003

You know I have always tried to be honest with you and open about my life. So I need to tell you today that part of what you have heard and read is correct. I am addicted to prescription pain medication. I first started taking prescription painkillers some years ago when my doctor prescribed them to treat post surgical pain following spinal surgery. Unfortunately the surgery was unsuccessful, and I continued to have severe pain in my lower back and also in my neck due to herniated discs.

I am still experiencing that pain. Rather than opt for additional surgery for these conditions, I chose to treat the pain with prescribed medication. This medication turned out to be highly addictive.

So, even before he assumes personal responsibility, he cleverly primes his audience to think of the drug as the powerful subject of his addiction. It's not Rush that has the problem, see. Rather it's the medication that has the problem. All of a sudden, and quite unexpectedly, his painkillers "turned out to be highly addictive." Gasp! One never would have known this about painkiller medication.

Over the past several years I have tried to break my dependence on pain pills and, in fact, twice checked myself into medical facilities in an attempt to do so. I have recently agreed with my physician about the next steps.

So, in the past, did he not agree with his physician? Makes one wonder if his physician counseled him extensively before the public exposure of his problem about proper action to beat his addiction, but that he consciously and purposefully resisted or rejected this advice until recently. Sounds like a man in denial, not someone who has been trying on successive occasions to kick the habit.

Immediately following this broadcast, I am checking myself into a treatment center for the next 30 days to once and for all break the hold this highly addictive medication has on me.

Here, again, even before he assumes responsibility, he points the finger stealthily at the medication. Twice, now, Rush has hinted that he has a problem, but that the origin of the problem is the medication, not himself.

The show will continue during this time, of course, with an array of guest hosts you have come to know and respect. I am not making any excuses. You know, over the years athletes and celebrities have emerged from treatment centers to great fanfare and praise for conquering great demons. They are said to be great role models and examples for others. Well, I am no role model. I refuse to let anyone think I am doing something great here, when there are people you never hear about, who face long odds and never resort to such escapes.

They are the role models. I am no victim and do not portray myself as such. I take full responsibility for my problem. At the present time the authorities are conducting an investigation, and I have been asked to limit my public comments until this investigation is complete. So, I will only say that the stories you have read and heard contain inaccuracies and distortions, which I will clear up when I am free to speak about them.

But you are free to speak about them, Rush. You just choose not to, in order to cover your rear.

I deeply appreciate all of your support over this last tumultuous week. It has sustained me. I ask now for your prayers. I look forward to resuming our excursion into broadcast excellence together.

Good luck, Rush. It's been a nice ride. I won't miss you.

School Board - The Washington Post's Paul Hill takes a balanced approach to the idea of school choice and the federally-mandated DC voucher program. I am a supporter of school choice, but I still think a federally-mandated voucher program is not the best solution to a clear problem for the crisis in our public school system. As Hill rightly points out, voucher supporters should recognize that there is nothing inherently magical about the voucher program, and that, in fact, there are major crippling obstacles to implementing a voucher program that could only worsen an already critical situation. I would also like to point out that any voucher program would STILL be a federally-mandated government program; and so it is a mistake to think that politics and government bureaucracy would not be involved in the implementation of such a program. Unless a voucher program is for all, and not a select few, the task of deciding who gets to buy in and who gets to watch on the sidelines does not seem like such a good school choice program to me. Also, ALL schools hoping to receive voucher money should be accountable to fair admissions policies and standards - making the "choice" of education that voucher recipients would hope to get a real choice. This means eliminating any racial, religious, gender, testing, etc., preconditions for admission. But, in the end, I'm willing to let voucher supporters have their shot at it. I think it's the wrong solution; and so I can't, in good conscience, support it. But out of respect for those who do support it, and who really have the good intention of improving on a problem recognized by all, I can't, also in good conscience, deny the voucher movement's right to have the chance to prove me wrong.

Liberal Lighthouse - Zowie!!! Robert Scheer expresses what I think is a growing cynicism and awareness on the part of the Bush Administration to lie first and backtrack later. He's got a point. The fact that this happens much too often among supposedly smart people makes it seem less coincidental than calculated. Bush is destined to be known in history as much for patronizing deception as any prior President.

School Board - I have been participating in a very interesting exchange with Bryan Preston on his conservative blog's comment board with regard to the whole school voucher debate. This debate has firmed up in my mind what I think is the hypocrisy of conservative support for the whole school voucher program. In essense, it seems that conservatives supporters of school vouchers lament the sad state of affairs of the public education system and want individuals to be able to use tax dollars via vouchers to put into the bank accounts of private schools. But these very same conservatives, who generally have a problem with government handouts to the poor, don't seem to mind it so much if these handouts really don't go to the poor, but to the endowments of their preferred private schools. Check out my exchanges with this conservative blogger to glimpse the typical conservative arguments in support of school vouchers and the inconsistencies that this argument entails. The most delicious and gratifying way to challenge conservatives is to use their own arguments against them. It's hilarious to see Bryan Preston protesting the tax exploitation of the poor and having to defend himself by arguing against the very conservative line of reasoning he so often employs against liberals.

Liberal Lighthouse - Michael Kinsley of Slate tells it like it is with regard to GW's hubris and the $87 billion, 1-dead-U.S.-soldier-per-day Iraqi nation-building plan.

Lagniappe - It's been a while since posting, but August is madness month in the academic world. Just a quick comment: The Conservative punditocracy and blogosphere has been deathly silent on the Ten Commandments Judge and the damage he is doing to his party in Alabama and to the hapless Attorney General of Alabama, Bill Pryor. I DARE the conservative punditocracy and blogosphere to go on record (one way or the other) regarding this fringe Chief Justice in Alabama. And I do feel bad for Pryor. Senate Republicans made him the "Catholic" judge - and now he has to decide between enforcing his "religious" convictions and defend Judge Moore, or obey the law and offend the very conservative theocratic support network that branded him the "Catholic" judge in the first place.

Lagniappe - I've been away for the past week in El Salvador and so haven't had the opportunity to post. Not to say because I didn't have internet access in El Salvador; but just that I didn't have the time. I have been busy now trying to catch up on all my favorite blogs and news sources and will hopefully be rejoining the fray. But, in my profession, August is a busy month and so I'm not sure how regularly I can post.

Lagniappe - I wonder if that $30 million fee for "services rendered" given by the Bush Government on behalf of the U.S. taxpayers to one Iraqi snitch (presumably a Baathist opportunist) that led to the killing of Udai and Qusai will be subject to appropriate income taxation and returned to the U.S. treasury. Thoughts on this? One also wonders if this $30 million could be turned to no good and be used to nip at the heels of the U.S. in other unsavory ways.

Liberal Lighthouse - My favorite Christian anti-war slogan, which I've seen on bumper stickers, goes something like this: "When Jesus told us to love our enemies, I'm pretty sure he meant that we shouldn't kill them." Remember this the next time your pro-War Christian friends drool over the deaths of America's enemies.

Lagniappe - Talk about a disaster in the making! Apparently, GWB is thinking of turning over post-War Iraq reconstruction to James Baker, one of his daddy's cronies, and part of the very crew that let Saddam off the hook in Gulf War I. Now why in the world - I repeat, why in the world - would GWB turn over an increasingly poor policy of post-War reconstruction to someone whose record is even worse!?!?!

I can think of three possible reasons: (1) When in trouble, turn to daddy. Daddy knows best. (2) The man who helped spearhead the Bush 2000 election coup d'etat ought to be able to turn a coup in post-war Iraq, no? (3) Well, Baker's in tight with the Saudis, and maybe he can get them to be a bit more helpful in stopping anti-American protests and attacks against US Soldiers in post-war Iraq?

It is all the sign of desperation and a lack of credible ideas. Get the man on the defensive and he runs to Papa.

Lagniappe - No wonder why there are so many intelligence screw-ups in the Bush Administration. Apparently, even the safety and security of covert intelligence officers are not immune to the Bush "loyalty" test. Check out this incredible story in which two senior administration officials blow the cover of a covert operator working on the WMD beat to a Conservative news columnist:

"If what the two senior administration officials said is true," Wilson said, "they will have compromised an entire career of networks, relationships and operations." What's more, it would mean that "this White House has taken an asset out of the" weapons of mass destruction fight, "not to mention putting at risk any contacts she might have had where the services are hostile."

Apparently, Bush will destroy his own intelligence capabilities and will endanger his own covert agents if they dare to be associated (by marriage, nonetheless!) with a harmless bit of mild criticism - if you can even call it criticism. Makes me wonder if Bush really does care about the security of America. Seems he'd rather sacrifice the security of America on the altar of petty partisan payback. What a desperate, petty, vindictive, little man.

Lagniappe - A couple of posts ago, I expressed my relief that the deaths of Udai and Qusai should mean hopefully more safety for our soldiers. Then I followed this post with a comment on the resurgence of the Shining Path terrorists in Peru. Now, today, I read in the Washington Post that three American soldiers involved in the attack that claimed the lives of Udai and Qusai have since been killed by Iraqi retaliators. Click here for the WaPo article. Where am I going with this? Well, I am moving towards the vague anxiety of a sense of hopelessness that no matter how thorough and complete our rout of evil in Iraq and elsewhere is, there will always be more evil ready and waiting in the wings to emerge and attack. It is a war, ultimately, that I am not sure we can win - at least in the traditional uproot and attack way. If the Shining Path can come back to haunt the streets of Lima after being so completely decimated, and if American soldiers will still be killed in combat long after Saddam, Qusai, and Udai are out of the picture, how do we "win the peace" to use a phrase that still has only vague meaning for me. I don't know. It doesn't seem like a militarized solution works. Nor does ignoring the emergence of tyrranical dictatorships. Something bigger, something like changing environmental conditions and cultural orientations that breed violence and tolerate repression must take place. But how? And is it our place to be doing this the world over?

Liberal Lighthouse - Nicholas Thompson's article in Salon gets at an interesting irony in the latest rounds of attack-and-defense regarding Bush's SOTU "Uranium in Africa" statement. YatPundit suggests (and thanks to YatPundit for pointing me to the Thompson article in Salon) that we hold Republicans to the same "liar" standard that they held to Clinton. His strategy to Democratcs that we should drum this point over and over again is a good one.

As for me, I am enjoying the pickle that this current debate on the Bush/Clinton truth-equivalence presents to Republican, Bush-defending, Clinton-despising moralists. It seems to me that if Republicans maintain the position that Clinton is a liar, why would it come as a surprise to them if he exaggerated the intelligence on Iraqi WMD programs that led him to order military action against selected Iraqi targets in 1998? Seems to me that Republicans are missing the irony here. They are basically putting Bush and Clinton on the same moral ground here - which must mean either one of two things: either Bush and Clinton were BOTH liars, or Bush and Clinton were BOTH telling the truth. If the former, then Bush should be held to account by Republican moralists as a liar (as YatPundit suggests). If the latter, then Clinton obviously wasn't such the "liar" he was made out to be.

Can it really be true that Bush supporters are now becoming Clinton apologists, too? I love this little hole the Bush-supporters have dug for themselves. They have now based their defense of Bush by saying he only did the same that the "nasty, lying, conniving" Clinton did!

Cuaderno Latinoamericano - It appears that the Shining Path terrorist group is making a comeback in Peru. Will Bush turn his sights southward to deal with this emerging threat? One question we should be asking is how is it possible for an organization that had been all but wiped off the face of the earth to resurface now? Violent repression of such groups apparently does not work over the long term. There must be other ways to take the wind out of the sails of these groups. We need to look at other ways. Violence is never the solution.

Lagniappe - I can't say that I'm shedding any tears now that Qusai and Udai are confirmed dead. This is welcome news not only because there is less evil in the world now, but also because our troops are safer now. I really have experienced a feeling of some relief for the security of our soldiers because of this latest bit of news.

Cuaderno Latinoamericano - Ginger Thompson, of the New York Times, has a wonderful little piece on Mexican ex-President Carlos Salinas de Gortari. All in all, it is a fairly positive look at a man that is considered one of the country's most corrupt politicians of the post-Revolutionary 20th Century Mexico. The article seems to gloss over the really seedy and base aspects of the Salinas sexenio (a term Mexicans use to describe their country's 6-year presidential term). Such events include widescale corruption, extortion, murder, and - some would say - gangsterism. But Salinas really was a very popular President in Mexico throughout his six years in office - and his popularity emerged very much out of his very macho and quite effective leadership style. (You would never think this by looking at a picture of the man - a small, bald fellow.)

As someone who has studied very closely the Salinas regime's foreign policy, I have argued in the past that the impressive reforms carried out by Salinas in the foreign policy realm, particularly in foreign economic policy, were possible principally because of Salinas's dogged and persistent determination to push his reform agenda AND to wage a very intensive and successful public relations campaign to convince the Mexican people of the correctness of his chosen policy direction. I think Mexicans respond well to decisive and forceful leadership, even if at times this leads to the types of abuse of power that the Salinas administration carried out. And this might explain, as Thompson suggests, why Salinas is witnessing a comeback of sorts from the deepest recesses of Mexican anger and resentment over his administration's abuses.

From a moral and ethical viewpoint, I find Salinas to be an ugly fellow; but I cannot but admit that he, like Napoleon and Kutuzov as depicted by Tolstoy in his epic novel War and Peace, fits the "Great Man" theory of historical change. I do believe that Salinas, through sheer force of his own leadership, changed Mexico's relationship with the world in remarkable and impressive (and I would argue positive) ways. Before Salinas, Mexico was still quite xenophobic and insular, suspicious of the foreign. After (and because of) Salinas, Mexico is boldly open to the world and has embraced an internationalism that has served Mexico well on so many levels, but which could not have been imagined a mere 10 years ago.

I will be very curious to watch how Salinas (still a young 55 years-old) will evolve in the Mexican political dynamic over the next 10-15 years. He could very well yet show a staying power in the long term that could rival Plutarco Calles. Stay tuned and pay attention to any stories you come across that profile this man.

Lagniappe - The latest Bush Administration efforts to squelch the criticism of the case for war simply doesn't fly. It is clear that no matter how the White House tries to spin this issue, the fact is that the Administration was looking for a way to circumvent the dampening effects that intelligence uncertainty would have had on the rush to war. The Administration clearly knew what the intelligence was, but tried to find a "technically unassailable" but nonetheless misleading way to sell the war to the American public by creating fear that Iraq was inches from a nuclear capability and was looking for the "yellowcake" to realize their nuclear ambitions. Those who defend Bush by saying that his claim in the SOTU was "technically" true are no different than those who defended Clinton's claim as "technically" true that he "did not have sexual relations with that woman Ms. Lewinsky." But even aside from this bogus defense of a misleading presentation, one can only conclude that Bush and his upper level Administration officials were duped by bad intelligence (in which case the incompetency of the Administration is all the more evident) or that Bush knew that the intelligence was uncertain but didn't care (in which case the sleazy authoritarian nature of this administration is apparent). In both cases, Bush comes out smelling like a rotten egg. This thing right now reminds me of Ronald Reagan's pathetic efforts to try to clear the air about his knowledge (or lack of such) regarding the Iran/Contra scandal. It was a sad, pathetic image of the President then, as is this effort at damage control by an equally pathetic President now. Funny that Bush had to call in the foreign troops (Blair) to try to convince the American public that he's an upfront guy. What a new low in patronizing condescension ... getting a Brit to scold us Americans and to tell us how to think about an American President who essentially and purposefully misled us.

One final note: I don't think the intelligence we had was flawed. I actually think it was quite accurate in its questioning of the "uranium purchase in Africa claim." What our executive leadership did with this intelligence is what was "flawed" about the whole thing. We had good intelligence ... good enough to question the claims as dubious. Why wouldn't the President listen to this intelligence? Why did he choose to manipulate the intelligence he had in such a dishonest and misleading way? Conservative bloggers and pundits have nothing to say about this because there is no defense that can be made for it without making them look silly.

Lagniappe - I'm just back from Mexico and I'm brimming with thoughts and commentary on Mexico's political future. Let's just say for the moment that the Mexican people are in a funk and are really down on the country's democratic renovation. In part, it's because Fox is perceived as a failure at governing. He sells a good line, but is really devoid of an original and workable idea. In part, it's also because democracy is not delivering anything except gridlock and a corresponding economic malaise. Most people think more so than ever before that all politicians, regardless of party, are incompetent and prone to corruption. Hence, the high level of voter apathy and a dismal 40% voter turnout. I've always maintained that democracy works only in societies that have sufficient resources to be able to weather its slow, deliberative process. In the developing world, where the ability to deficit finance an economic recession is almost impossible, and where social welfare programs are insufficiently funded or available, there is no wiggle room for the economic inefficiency of political gridlock in tough economic times. Well, I'll have more to write at another time. I just wanted to let my few readers know that I'm back in town and that the Upchuck will liven up again.

Liberal Lighthouse - I'm not in Mexico just yet! Once again, MoDo's got the MoJo. I'll just leave you with that.