Seems Mother Nature's pissed at Canada:

From salmon suffocating in warm British Columbia streams to a Newfoundland town entombed in ice, this year's bizarre weather leaves little doubt that climate change has the country in its grip, Environment Canada says....

The first item on Monday's list ...: the variety of abnormal weather that plagued British Columbia all year. It included 2,500 wildfires that forced 50,000 people to flee their homes over the summer, floods in autumn, freezing in November, and another flood in Vancouver a month ago....

The second item on the list was the spate of hurricanes that hit Canada, including hurricane Juan, which struck Halifax directly on Sept. 29. It was the first time the eye of a hurricane had hit the city since 1893.

It tore up 100 million trees, left 300,000 homes without power and destroyed marinas and harbours along the Atlantic Coast....

The other items on the list include:

• severe winter in Eastern Canada from January to March;
  
• forest fires across the country that left an annual fire-fighting tab of almost $1-billion;
  
• entrenched drought on the Prairies and its attendant clouds of grasshoppers;
  
• the March downpour that flooded the four Atlantic provinces and became the most expensive weather disaster in the history of the Maritimes;
  
• a massive ice storm in New Brunswick in February that covered half the province with between 40 and 60 millimetres of frozen rain, closed schools for a week and left 63,000 without power or phones;
  
• deadly avalanches in the Rockies that killed 28 people, making it the second deadliest year for avalanches in nearly a century;
  
• heavy snow on Alberta in April and May, making it the snowiest spring on record for Edmonton and one of the worst in a century for Calgary; and
  
• the sheet of ice that entombed the town of Badger, Nfld., for a week in February, covering cars, trucks and homes with ice more than a metre thick.

Jeebus. Good thing we don't live in Canada, eh? Just tighten up our borders and all will be well.

Besides, Bush's Healthy Forests Initiative surely addresses the matter.

And if all else fails, there's always tax cuts. In fact, let's just skip to tax cuts.
*Homage to that great Canadian, Dan Aykroyd, Ghostbusters.

The latest news from Homeland Security, brought to us by Lambert below, reinforces my conviction that I've unwittingly slipped into a parallel universe ruled by Monty Python:

"The practice of researching potential targets is consistent with known methods of al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations that seek to maximize the likelihood of operational success through careful planning."

Research! Careful planning! Is there no end to their evil? Next thing you know, they'll be using dramatic irony, metaphor, bathos, puns, parody, litotes and... satire.

But I think I get it now: by invading Iraq without a clue what to do once we got there, we were demonstrating to the Middle East the difference between us and the Bad Guys. This is apparently what David Brooks was getting at.

If that's right, can I teleport back to my old Cartesian dimensions now? Please?

Hillary most admired woman in America!

Go on. You know you want to.

Ted Bridis of AP reports:

The FBI is warning police nationwide to be alert for people carrying almanacs, cautioning that the popular reference books covering everything from abbreviations to weather trends could be used for terrorist planning.

Your tax dollars at work!

From a collection of squibs in my local paper:

• 56% in military poll support Bush on Iraq. "[R]etired officer Ralph Peters called the numbers 'a pleasant surprise.'
  
  "'These are tough conditions,' Peters said. 'It speaks well of the men and women in uniform that they're maintaining such high morale.'"
  
  Coming up: nearly 60% of White House staff still think their boss is smarter than the pointy-haired guy in Dilbert.
  
  
• "U.S. troops yesterday uncovered about 580 57-mm rockets buried under dirt near Abayachi, a village northwest of Baghdad. 'We ruined some arms dealer's day,' said Maj. Josslyn Aberle, a spokeswoman for the Army's 4th Infantry Division."
  
  Yeah, and the other 999 are probably thowing in the towel as I type this. That leaves only about half a million undiscovered rockets left to find.

Plus the WMDs, of course.

W's "recovery"; a Bush recovery; a "weak recovery"; a recovery that is a miserable failure.

A condition where business reporting says that "the economy" is improving or even booming, but in your personal economy (CEOs excepted) the job you have is worse, or worse than the one you had, or you still don't have a job.

UPDATE: Still true today—only more so. See above.

David Streitfield of the LA Times has a long insightful article on contrasting the official unemployment rate to the reality of uenemployment, underemployment, and dropping out of the work force entirely.

The nation's official jobless rate is 5.9%, a relatively benign level by historical standards. But economists say that figure paints only a partial — and artificially rosy — picture of the labor market.

To begin with, there are the 8.7 million unemployed, defined as those without a job who are actively looking for work. But lurking behind that group are 4.9 million part-time workers such as Gluskin who say they would rather be working full time — the highest number in a decade.

There are also the 1.5 million people who want a job but didn't look for one in the last month. Nearly a third of this group say they stopped the search because they were too depressed about the prospect of finding anything. Officially termed "discouraged," their number has surged 20% in a year.

Add these three groups together andthe jobless total for the U.S. hits 9.7%, up from 9.4% a year ago.

Yikes! So the numbers aren't exactly cooked; but they certainly don't reflect the very precarious and painful situation of millions of Americans who played by the rules and used to go to work every day.

And under the most optimistic scenarios, the numbers won't improve.

By any normal standard, things should have been improving on the employment front long before this point. More than 2 million jobs have been lost in the last three years, a period that encompassed a brief, nasty recession and a recovery that was anemic until recently. Even in the best-case scenario, Bush will end this term with a net job loss. That hasn't happened to a president since Herbert Hoover at the beginning of the Depression.

This despite what should be massive Keynesian stimulus—the havetax cuts for the super-rich did nothing, but the war and Homeland Security largesse should have helped. (If you've been to DC lately, have you seen all the new construction? No wonder the Beltway thinks all is well with the country!) Instead, we have the Wecovery: lots of numbers but no jobs. Even the experts are puzzled:

Many economists are mystified about why a suddenly booming economy is producing so few jobs.

"We're all sitting there and saying, 'When are they going to return?' " says Richard B. Freeman, director of the labor studies program at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Maybe I can help the NBER out, since I have some experience being unemployed, underemployed, discouraged, and self-employed...

One reason the jobs aren't returning is that they've gone off-shore, particularly those once well-paying IT jobs. (A friend of mine from Pennsylvania says that IT today reminds him of the steel industry in Pittsburgh in the '50s: everything's being shut down and all the plants are shuttered.) Doubtless this trend will level off at some point—in fact, after a year of experience with off-shore, some companies are discovering that it isn't as cheap, when all the factors are considered, than they thought it would be. But I think the main factor is something that Bush causes in whatever he does:

Fear

One number that has gone way up is Productivity. This has to hold the unemployment figures higher, since when companies can get more done with the same number of employees, they don't higher new ones.

Why would productivity numbers jump? Why would people do a lot more work for the same amount of money?

Fear. Fear of losing their jobs again without recourse (since the Bush economy looks bad as far as the eye can see). Fear of losing their health insurance (since the Republicans prevent universal health insurance). Fear of not running out of unemployment benefits (since the Republicans slash them). Fear of falling behind on the house, or on debt. Fear of another 9/11 causing the whole economy to tank once more.

Why do we never hear FDR's words from Bush: "The only thing you have to fear is fear itself"? Because to Bush, fear is a management tool. The Republicans manage with the lash, as befits the southern Partisan.

FInally, here's the Worst Case Scenario:

In some eyes, a nation of burger flippers, temps and Wal-Mart clerks isn't the worst scenario for the economy. The worst is that companies continue to eliminate jobs faster than they create them, setting up a game of musical chairs for the labor force.

That prospect alarms Erica Groshen, an economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. "If you plot job losses versus gains on a chart, it's shocking," she says.

Losses are running at about the same rate they were in 1997 and 1998, two good years for the economy. But job creation in the first quarter of 2003 — the most recent period available — was only 7.4 million, the lowest since 1993.

"If this goes on too long, you'd have to worry there's something fundamentally wrong," Groshen says. Although the economy has picked up since March, "so far I haven't seen anything that suggests job creation is picking up."

And now that the Bush deregulators have managed to poison the meat supply... Well, tofu flipping, anyone?

OK, so I tried to avoid the outside world while we were vacationing last week in the Canadian wilderness. Still, I managed to learn the following:

• It's possible to present a political issue without resorting to an instant poll.
  
• Conservatives can present their case without spraying the airwaves with spittle.
  
• Liberals can present their case without having to apologize for it.
  
• The poor don't have to be cast either as objects of condescension or contempt, but can be recognized simply as human beings entitled to community support.
  
• Universal health care can be a bipartisan issue.
  
• There are more important things to discuss than tax cuts.

I'm sure our thousands of Canadian readers will rush to correct this pollyannish judgment. For example, I realize that our northern neighbor has its share of problems, such as mad cow disease, which has apparently spread to parts of the human population. Still, it's worth being reminded that there is an entire world outside of the asylum we call home.

Yeah, literally too. But let's not even talk about kevlar. Lee Hockstader of WaPo reports:

[T]housands of soldiers [have been] forbidden to leave military service under the Army's "stop-loss" orders, intended to stanch the seepage of troops, through retirement and discharge, from a military stretched thin by its burgeoning overseas missions.

But there's no problem with morale, no no.

Through a series of stop-loss orders, the Army alone has blocked the possible retirements and departures of more than 40,000 soldiers, about 16,000 of them National Guard and reserve members who were eligible to leave the service this year. Hundreds more in the Air Force, Navy and Marines were briefly blocked from retiring or departing the military at some point this year.

Of course, if Bush had done any planning... And hadn't said Iraqwould be a cakewalk ...

Meanwhile, to hang onto the troops, Bush is breaking the law.

By prohibiting soldiers and officers from leaving the service at retirement or the expiration of their contracts, military leaders have breached the Army's manpower limit of 480,000 troops, a ceiling set by Congress. In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee last month, Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, disclosed that the number of active-duty soldiers has crept over the congressionally authorized maximum by 20,000 and now registered 500,000 as a result of stop-loss orders. Several lawmakers questioned the legality of exceeding the limit by so much.

To many of the soldiers whose retirements and departures are on ice, however, stop-loss is an inconvenience, a hardship and, in some cases, a personal disaster. Some are resigned to fulfilling what they consider their patriotic duty. Others are livid, insisting they have fallen victim to a policy that amounts to an unannounced, unheralded draft.

But a two-and-half -hour visit to Baghdad for a photo-op with a fake turkey makes up for all this!

"An enlistment contract has two parties, yet only the government is allowed to violate the contract; I am not," said Costas, 42, who signed an e-mail from Iraq this month "Chained in Iraq," an allusion to the fact that he and his fellow reservists remained in Baghdad after the active-duty unit into which they were transferred last spring went home. He has now been told that he will be home late next June, more than a year after his contractual departure date. "Unfair. I would not say it's a draft per se, but it's clearly a breach of contract. I will not reenlist."

Contracts? Contracts are for Halliburton, not the little guy! Get real, soldiers!

Troll prophylactic: The above paragraph is ironic.

Jim Rutenberg of the Times reports:

While the Bush campaign maintains a low profile on the national campaign stage — content for now to watch the Democrats beat on one another — it is aggressively working the expansive hustings of Republican-friendly talk radio, priming the grass roots faithful for battle next year.

Any of the strategic deep thinkers in the Democratic party thinking how to make this medium play for us? Perhaps the local talk shows aren't as rigid as the national ones—that is, a Democratic voice might actually get through the caller screening, even if the host and he oher callers were virulent. Alternatively, what? SMS messaging into the station's email? Democratic pirate radio stations? Mr. Trippi?

Who knew?

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is a doctor, and a Republican. Former Vermont Governor Howard Dean is a doctor, and a Democrat.

Here's WaPo's capsule bio of Frist:

Sen. Frist (R-Tenn.), a physician, is Senate majority leader.

And here, Dean:

The writer, a former governor of Vermont, seeks the Democratic nomination for president.

Both Frist and Dean have equivalent professional qualifications; both are physicians.

What conceivable (legitimate) reason could WaPo have for including Frist's qualifications, and not including Dean's?

Here is the address of the Post's (extremely overworked) Michael Getler: ombudsman@washpost.com. Perhaps he can address the issue with the WaPo's management.

It's an especially insidious "mistake," since one of the main planks of the Dean platform is universal health insurance. Since WaPo leaves out Dean's qualifications as a physician, they undercut his credibility on this matter. So often, the little things reveal so much ...

AP:

The current jobless rate of 5.9 percent - down from a high this summer of 6.4 percent - is expected to still be around 5.7 percent when America votes next November.

Right. Not counting the people who aren't even looking for work anymore, of course.

Heck, I don't know anything about football. But I'm pleased for Philly. And I like to see the digital route signs on the buses flash "Go Eagles!" It's festive.

Remind you of anyone? Say, the media whores, Holier-than-thou Pharisees, and hypocrites of today's Republican party?

"Beware of practising your piety before others in order to be seen by them."

Remind you of anyone? Maybe someone who'd carry a bible along with his flight suit if it would finally get him elected President?

Radical words, for a Sunday morning, eh?

Who said them? Jesus.

Meaning that there's no reason whatever for Democrats Republicans an inch on religion. Arguably, the Bennets (gambling), Limbaughs (drugs), Falwells (whores, and not just media ones), and Bushes (lies) have set back religion far more than legions of '60s diehards could. POTL, all of them; Jesus would have understood instantly.

Which is why it's good that Dean is speaking out on this issue:

"Let's get into a little religion here," Dean said at a morning meeting with voters in response to a question about his beliefs. "Don't you think Jerry Falwell reminds you a lot more of the Pharisees than he does of the teachings of Jesus? And don't you think this campaign ought to be about evicting the money changers from the temple?"

Bingo! (That one's for you, Bill Bennett.) And where are all the other candidates on this one? Still doing Bush Lite?

FUX is right on top of this, of course ("Analysts Question Dean's New Discussion of God") and we can expect the rest of the state-run media to follow. If only Dean could be like Whiney Joe—openly discussing faith, and a loser too! How ideal...

Here's the headline in WaPo:

Questions swirl around Dean

Let's watch MW Dan Balz as he goes to work!

Rarely has a front-runner begun an election year with as many questions swirling around him as [Dean,] the man who rewrote the rules in presidential politics the past 12 months.

Right, Dan. Because the MW's never asked Bush any questions in 2000. Nothing about his desertion from the National Guard, nothing about torturing small animals, nothing about Harken, nothing about the Ranger land deal, nothing about his policies... Too busy clowning about Gore, I guess.

It's a nice lede, though—if you don't recognize it for the crock it is.

Up to now, Dean has benefited from a divided field. As he has surged, his rivals have struggled for attention and money. The compressed primary-caucus calendar, designed by Democratic Party leaders to deliver an early nominee to leave plenty of time for the Democrats to prepare for the November general election, gives Dean an advantage, considering his superior financial esources.

Right. And where and why did Dean find those resources, Dan? Under a cabbage leaf? The knock on Dean is that he appeals to Democratic activists only, but the numbers show he's also bringing in people who have never been involved in politics before (and if he can do that with Latinos, the Dems can write off the old Confederacy.)

Although doubts about Dean have been loudest here [DC], there is general agreement that the party establishment is not capable of mounting a stop-Dean movement. "What establishment?" one Democrat said sarcastically. "The only thing that could have an impact is if Bill Clinton came out and said, I don't appreciate a repudiation of my administration.

Right. Who's repudiating the Big Dog? Not Dean. He'd ask Clinton to be his ambassador to the middle East; and he may have a chance to put across the universal health care that Hillary couldn't. So what's the problem here?

The real issue is that the party establishment blew it. Worse, they know it, but they won't admit it. Gutless, feckless Beltway Dems, they blew it. They blew it on homeland security; had the solution, and let Bush steal their clothes on the DHS. They blew it on education, as "No Child Left Behind" sets the public schools up for failure to bring in vouchers. They blew it in on the war, where even Kerry admits that though he was lied to, he trusted Bush at the time (after a stolen election, they trusted Bush?) They blew it on the mid-term, where the country rightly concluded that a party that couldn't defend itself against Bush couldn't be trusted to defend the country. Then they blew it on Medicare, by somehow managing to lose the AARP. They blew it on the energy bill. And they're going to blow it on overtime when Congress reconvenes. So in time-honored DC fashion, they're shooting the messenger.

Dean isn't repudiating Clinton's policies. He's saying new tactics are needed. Triangulation doesn't work anymore (see above) because the Republicans, having achieved a level of discipline appropriate to a parliamentary democracy, have no incentive to give Democrats anything (see above). Unfortunately, playing these tactics is what funds the Beltway Dems—making Dean's new model of Internet funding all the more threatening to them. Dean's record as a pragmatic centrist in Vermont ought to be music to these guy's ears; it's really Dean's funding and organization that threatens them, since it renders (what little) power they have even less relevant.

"Democratic Party activists, whatever their ideological perspective, have a view that their leaders have been completely ineffective in combating President Bush," one Democratic strategist said. "The leaders have a view that either they're doing the best they can or that more clever centrism is better or they need someone with a military background at the head of the party."

RIght. And the view of the activists would be wrong, why? C'mon, Dan, I thought this was an analysis piece, not a not-for-attribution grab-bag of quotes!

Al From, who heads the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, credited Dean with running a successful campaign but questioned whether he can effectively lead the party as nominee. "We need to lay out a reason to replace Bush," From said. "We can't just depend on the fact that the activists in our party are angry at him and like Dean. There aren't enough of them."

Dan, any Presidential candidate who isn't angry isn't paying attention and doesn't have the temperament to be President. As for tired and toothless Al "Dog in the Manger" From, one hardly knows where to begin. How about universal health care as a policy? Sweet Jeebus, Al, this "anger" thing is a Republican meme, not a Democratic one!

As with so many of the anti-Dean screeds, you have to get to the last graf to see signs of rationality (the TNR's "Beyond Belief" piece is an example of this). Here it is:

But another centrist leader, Simon B. Rosenberg of the New Democratic Network, said party leaders here should recognize what Dean has done. "The Washington party is a failed party, and Dean's criticism of the Washington party is incredibly accurate," he said. "We're completely out of power and heading for permanent minority status if we don't start modernizing the party. Dean has been a modernizer and innovator, and should be embraced for it. Instead he's being attacked for doing it differently."

Damn right!

Dan, where's the analysis? DId you just phone this one in? Anyone can string together some random quotes! Is Dean a modernizer and an innovator? Why finish just when you should start? Too much like work?

UPDATE: Meanwhile, the editorial page keeps the anti-Dean drumbeat pounding:

Yet we are troubled by aspects of Mr. Dean's character and personality. ...

Yawn. I bet. Like Dean tortured small animals as a child, or lied his way into a war as an adult? What kind of character is the Post looking for, anyhow? Puh-leeze ...

The deadline is July 1, 2004, writes says WaPo:

"There's no question that many of the big-picture items have been pushed down the list or erased completely," said a senior U.S. official involved in Iraq's reconstruction, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "Right now, everyone's attention is focused [on] doing what we need to do to hand over sovereignty by next summer."

e to
Just in time for the election! Yes, you've got to hand it to these guys—they can turn on a dime. Wonder how they'll be able to get the scripted coverage they've been getting if they no longer control the Iraqi media ....

Here's the original. But you don't need to read it; I've shortened it:

Bush has always been a corporate shill, and he treated the social and small government conservatives as "useful idiots" to get elected. Once in office, he started throwing cash to the corporations that bought him his office like tomorrow will never come. He's not throwing cash to anyone else, though.

What a surprise! Who knew?

You know, we're still waiting on the apology from the Times "public editor" on the Whitewater reporting that did so much to transmit winger memes into mainstream discourse and hasten the VWRC coup that culminated in Florida 2000. Jason Blair? A piker! Are you going to handle this, Mr. Okrent, or keep putting Band-Aids on the cancer.

Here's the review David "I'm Writing as Bad as I Can" Brooks did of The Bell Curve (thanks to alert reader ari).

I like the part about "terrible vision." I guess it must not seem so terrible to Mr. Brooks now, eh?

Bush and Rove via the USDA AP:

Investigators tentatively traced the first U.S. cow with mad cow disease to Canada, which could help determine the scope of the outbreak and might even limit the economic damage to the American beef industry.

Reuters via Forbes:

"It would be premature to draw such a conclusion at this time ... As yet, there is no definitive evidence that confirms that the BSE-infected cow originated in Canada," chief Canadian veterinarian Dr Brian Evans told a news conference.

I'd like to believe the USDA. But since they are POTL , that's hard to do.
More:

American officials originally said the infected animal was 41/2 years old. But the ear tag identification linking the cow to an Alberta herd is for an animal born in April 1997 -- making it 61/2 years old.

“No ear tag is tamper-proof, ear tags can be removed and reapplied, but again, we’re not intimating that that in fact is the circumstance here,” said Evans.

“What we’re suggesting is that we need to verify, using scientific methods such as DNA, that the animal that left Canada with that ear tag is in fact the animal that the U.S. is pursuing at this point.”

Of course, the real villain is not the farmer, but our corporatized food supply. Buy locally!

UPDATE: Read up on the Slow food movement.

CNN:

President Bush's most-feared political opponents for now may not be Democratic presidential candidates, but a billionaire financier and anti-Bush advocacy groups with big-spending plans.

Funny thing! I don't recall seeing any reportage that read like this:

President Clinton's most-feared political opponents for now may not be Republican Senators and representatives, but a billionaire financier [Scaife] and right wing advocacy groups with big-spending plans.

Gosh, I wonder why?

Notice the negative spin of "anti-Bush," too. As if these groups weren't for, oh, civil liberties, the Constitution, a sane foreign policy, universal health care ... Of course, getting rid of Bush is the first step to achieving any of these goals,. but "anti-Bush" is a real and typical mischaracterization.

Surprise! Nobody really knows.

Jackie Spinner and Arianna Cha of WaPo give the details.

The board is appointed by Bremer and has only one Iraqi member, who hardly ever shows up:

The 11-member Program Review Board, a mini-Congress of sorts for the occupation government in its power to allocate money. The board -- comprising mostly Americans, Britons and Australians -- was appointed by L. Paul Bremer, the top administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority. ... There is only one Iraqi member, Finance Minister Kamil Mubdir Gailani. According to minutes from 20 meetings from Aug. 12 to Nov. 8, he attended just one session. The CPA said it is working "to better accommodate everyone's schedule."

Right. "Scheduling conflicts." How odd, since the board controls a lot of money, including Iraqi money.

It uses Iraqi money that includes oil revenue and seized assets from the Hussein era to pay for projects not anticipated by the country's budget. So far the board has approved more than $4 billion in such spending.

Meanwhile, the legal status of the PRB is so unclear that no agencies have agreed to review it.

The occupation authority's legal standing has led to some confusion. For example, the General Accounting Office, which reviews federal contract disputes, said that because the CPA isn't a federal agency it wasn't sure it had the authority to review a protest lodged by a company that lost a bid for a reconstruction contract. The Pentagon inspector general, looking at the same issue, dropped it for the same reason.

No announcements are made of when contracts are awarded, and no minutes are available.

Meetings of the review board aren't public and there are no transcripts. Abbreviated minutes of meetings since August have been posted on the Internet, but they do not include information on more than 200 projects approved from May to mid-August. There's no description of the discussions leading to a decision.

FInally, the process is politically wired.

Getting an audience before the Program Review Board often requires a confluence of good luck and good connections. There are thousands of proposals floating around, but only a few of them are seen by the board.

Let's review: an appointed board, spending Iraqi money (but without Iraqis present), no audits, no minutes, and you have to know someone to get a seat at the table!

A typical example of Bush crony capitalism!

The PRB looks like a real candidate for a full-up Where is the money analysis. In our system, whenever there's no accountability, you get slush funds, money laundering, Iran-Contra...

NOTE: Kudos to WaPo for allowing some real reporting to be done on this explosive subject.

Just asking.

More proof we're succeeding:

Rebels unleashed a coordinated assault on military bases and the governor's office in the southern city of Karbala on Saturday, killing 13 people - including six soldiers from the U.S.-led occupation force and six Iraqi police officers - and wounding at least 172, officials said.

Atrios already identified "pessimism" as a bullet point on the RNC's anti-Dean blast faxes.

That bullet comes from the Republican dark (or should I say darker) force of Ingraham, Matalin, and North.

Here's a subtler, more seemingly innocuous anti-Dean meme: Dean is a Teflon candidate. From Mark Barabak of the LA Times writes:

When Howard Dean appeared on NBC's "Meet The Press," the reviews were scathing, with most pundits calling the interview earlier this year a disaster. But others saw it differently. Traffic on Dean's Web site soared, and he collected more than $100,000 in the next 24 hours.

When Dean suggested America was no safer with Saddam Hussein in custody, rivals in the Democratic presidential contest seized on his comments as a major gaffe. But days later, more than 30 New Jersey lawmakers — joined by Gov. James E. McGreevey — elbowed onto a packed stage to endorse him.

The former Vermont governor has millions in the bank, more than any Democrat running, and a legion of followers, linked by the Internet, who crowd campaign events from Manchester, N.H., to Yuma, Ariz.

But there is one advantage that has proved even more valuable for the impulsive and irrepressible Dean: a Teflon coating.

Sweet Jeebus! Does it never occur to any of these pundits that voters:

• Like what Dean says


• Like the way that he says it


• and are backing their opinions with bucks?

It's the DGB factor... The SCLM just can't account for it...

David "I'm writing as bad as I can" Brooks opines in the Times:

[Philosopher Michael Oakeshott] believed we should cope with the complex reality around us by adventuring out into the world, by playfully confronting the surprises and the unpredictability of it all. But we should always guard against the sin of intellectual pride, which leads to ideological thinking. Oakeshott's doctrine was that no doctrine could properly describe the world.

So, what is Brooks's example of playfully confronting surprise with non-ideological thinking? You'll never guess—the Iraqi war:

I tell Oakeshott that the Americans and Iraqis are now involved in an Oakeshottian enterprise. They are muddling through, devising shambolic, ad hoc solutions to fit the concrete realities, and that we'll learn through bumbling experience. In the building of free societies, every day feels like a mess, but every year is a step forward.

Right.

Tell that to the troops who died because Bush couldn't get them kevlar.

Classy column though. Hijacking a Brit philosopher to turn bad planning into a virtue—now that's something.

NOTE: The long-gone, much lamented Spy magazine often critiqued Abe "I'm writing as bad as I can" Rosenthal. We should be so lucky as to have Rosenthal back today; say what one would of him, he wasn't a whore.

From The Times:

In Crawford, Tex., the White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, said it was "kind of early to determine the economic impact." Seeking to assuage the public's fear, he said President Bush "has eaten beef in the last couple of days."

And deeply, deeply assuaged.

Dana Milbank does his best with a story buried on the Friday after Christmas:

According to administration officials and people familiar with some of the interviews, FBI agents apparently started their White House questioning with top figures -- including President Bush's senior adviser, Karl Rove -- and then worked down to more junior officials. The agents appear to have a great deal of information and have constructed detailed chronologies of various officials' possible tie to the leak, people familiar with the questioning said.

Weird. I thought the usual tactic was to get the little guys first, and have them turn on the bog guys. When they start at the top, with Rove, gee, it's almost like they're getting instructions or something...

Meanwhile, WH law-breaking continues:

But sources said the CIA believes that people in the administration continue to release classified information to damage the figures at the center of the controversy, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV and his wife, Valerie Plame, who was exposed as a CIA officer by unidentified senior administration officials for a July 14 column by Robert D. Novak.

The unidentified officials whom the FBI started the investigation with...

White House officials profess to be unconcerned about the outcome of the investigation. Some administration officials said they believe charges will eventually result, although it could be as long from now as 2005. A Republican legal source who has had detailed conversations about the matter with White House officials said he "doesn't get any sense at all that they're worried or concerned, or that they're covering up."

Well, they would say that, wouldn't they?

Say, how's the 9/11 commission report coming?

Atrios nails it (I hope not, actually), tracing the origin of the "Dean is pessimistic" meme back to WW's Ingraham and Matalin, and predicting the future course ot the infection through the mainstream media.

Better pessimistic than delusional, or a liar, a deserter, a careless executioner, or a torturer of small animals.

A trial balloon for the SOTU. (Kuttner explains in the LA Times.)

See, in an "ownership society" there are people that are owned—winger pundits, media whores, oh, anyone with an employment contract... And things that do the owning: Large corporations.

The role of government is to help as few things own as many people as possible.

Right?

The WH is starting to leak its campaign plans. Being POTL, the leaks are all lies, but which lie is most like the truth? Who knows.

Anyhow, Bush wants to show he's a usurper, not a ... No, a uniter! That's it, a uniter!

So the White House is trying to think of a stunt to make people believe this, and introduce it in the SOTU:

But Mr. Bush, some of his own strategists and advisers said, has a long way to go if he wants to avoid being portrayed as a divisive figure who motivates Democrats to vote against him. As a result, the White House is considering using the State of the Union address to propose a big new national goal that would not be partisan or ideological and would help rally the country behind Mr. Bush's leadership, an outside adviser to the administration said. The possibilities floated by the White House include a major initiative for the space program or an ambitious health care goal like increasing life expectancies.

"They want to have the president talk about an important national goal that is big and a unifying theme," the adviser said.

Yawn.

And keep the specifics out of the SOTU! We don't want another 16 words fiasco!

Bob Hebert of the Times opines:

"Offshoring" and "outsourcing" are two of the favored euphemisms for shipping work overseas. I.B.M. prefers the term "global sourcing." Whatever you call it, the expansion of this practice from manufacturing to the higher-paying technical and white-collar levels is the latest big threat to employment in the U.S.

Years ago, when concern was being expressed about the shipment of factory jobs to places with slave wages, hideous working conditions and even prison labor, proponents said there was nothing to worry about. Exporting labor-intensive jobs would make U.S. companies more competitive, leading to increased growth and employment, and higher living standards. They advised U.S. workers to adjust, to become better educated and skillful enough to thrive in a new world of employment, where technology and the ability to process information were crucial components.

Well, the workers whose jobs are now threatened at I.B.M. and similar companies across the U.S. are well educated and absolute whizzes at processing information. But they are nevertheless in danger of following the well-trodden path of their factory brethren to lower-wage work, or the unemployment line.

So if this is a recovery, where are the jobs?

Overseas.

Seems like the only growth area these days is being a winger pundit or a media whore. I wonder why that is?

They give you a tax credit on a freezer, see ...

It's all part of being an ownership society (another rial balloon for the SOTU. As if after last year's fiasco, we'd believe anything in it.)

Why would that be, I wonder?
Latest casualties:

As Iraqis and occupation soldiers began their Christmas celebrations on Wednesday and early Thursday, guerrilla fighters unleashed a string of intense rocket and bomb attacks across the country, killing at least four American soldiers and six Iraqi civilians and wounding dozens of people, military and government officials said.

Honestly, I'm not making this up. Peter Bergen of WaPo writes:

President Bush reportedly keeps photos of the 20 or so top terrorists in his desk, and when one of them is apprehended or killed writes an X through his picture.

Golly. Can you imagine FDR, Truman, Lincoln—any great wartime President—doing this?¹ Combine this with Bush torturing small animals (I'm not making this up either) and you've got a portrait of a deeply disturbed individual.

Worse, Bush's tactics won't work.

That might work for a Mafia crime family: Arrest all the key members and the organization will disappear. But al Qaeda is now a movement based on an ideology. Arresting a movement is quite a different proposition from arresting people.

¹And why do I get the uneasy feeling that Bush's critics and political opponents are in the same book?

I wish the Newspaper of Record (not!) could come up with some other word for Dean's DGB factor—one that didn't denigrate Dean, marginalize his supporters, and trivialize his achievements.a

How about "truthful"?

Anyhow, Dean remarks:

"It certainly isn't helping me in the long run, because Bush will eventually use their criticisms in his ads. But in the short run, I think it makes them look smaller."

Right, and right.

Quick work!

Of course there wasn't anything to the security concerns that led Bush to cancel Air France flights to LA—but he had to be seen to do something, and it's always easy to slam the French.

Of Howard Dean: "Dean is a courageous individual who stands up and tells the truth as he sees it."

The acronym sums up the secret of Dean's appeal. Usage example: "The SCLM is incapable of accounting for the DGB factor, and so they marginalize and personalize the phenomenon under headings like 'feisty' or 'combative' or even 'angry.'"

In Philly, the acronym expands to "Dean's got a basket," which translates to "Dean's got balls,"
"Dean's got a pair," or "Dean's got stones." As, in fact, Dean does.

[Revised from previous posting and added to the Lexicon of Liberal Invective.]

I can still remember how beautifully my mother's voice would soar, singing "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear."

Can't we just get back to singing carols round the piano?

The current "X"mas Saturnalia encourages greed and lust—not to mention stress—in a way that Jesus would not approve. Christmas wasn't meant to the "engine" of our retail economy.

Let's abolish it, and start fresh—without the corporations and the marketing.

Merry Christmas, America!

Secretary of Agriculture Ann M. Veneman said yesterday that her department tested 20,526 cattle for mad cow disease last year. But that is only a small percentage of the 35 million commercially slaughtered each year.

Because no domestic cases of mad cow disease have been found before, the United States has never put in place the kind of stringent testing done in Japan and some European countries, where every animal is supposed to be tested before humans can eat it.

If an animal becomes infected, the incubation period of the disease is three to eight years, so the detection of one animal with the disease suggests that others may have been infected by the same source but have not yet been found.

Mr. Stauber said an F.D.A. memorandum in 1997 predicted that if a single case of encephalopathy was found in the United States and a total ban on all feeding of animal protein to animals was immediately enacted, it was still possible that as many as 299,000 infected cows would be found over the next 11 years.

Well, we've found the one. Ribs anyone?

Personally, I'm still a carnivore. But I guess I'm going to have to start avoiding corporate food in favor of food grown locally, where I can know and trust the farmer. Keeps more money in my community, anyhow.

From an editorial in the Boca Raton News:

Rush, you might want to reconsider your support for the Florida law that strips voting rights from convicted felons.

Excellent shot!

Rush really does give new meaning to the phrase "big" pharma, doesn't he....

The essential Eric Alterman in the essential The Nation writes:

In its self-appointed role as semiofficial punditocracy politburo, the Washington Post editorial board issued what ABC News's The Note properly termed "a button-popping, eye-bugging anti-Dean editorial" that it undoubtedly hoped would serve as Dean's political death sentence. Expressing editorial shock and awe over Dean's unarguably accurate observation that Saddam Hussein's capture left the United States no safer than before, Post editors termed the candidate's views to be "not just unfounded but ludicrous" and complained of his "departure from the Democratic mainstream."

The punditocracy has chosen its side. Perhaps it's time the rest of us choose ours.

As alert reader pansypoo points out in comments in another thread, I thought Bush and his MWs wanted Dean to win?

I guess they just can't cope with the DGB factor

Great to see that WaPo still has actual reporter Walter Pincus in action, but why bury this story on the day before Christmas, I wonder?

The President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board has concluded that the White House made a questionable claim in January's State of the Union address about Saddam Hussein's efforts to obtain nuclear materials because of its desperation to show that Hussein had an active program to develop nuclear weapons, according to a well-placed source familiar with the board's findings.

Right. "Desperation." Got that.

The source said that at the time of the State of the Union speech, there was no organized system at the White House to vet intelligence, and the informal system that was followed did not work in the case of that speech.

Thank heavens the adults were in charge! Seriously, this is just what DiIulio said on the domestic side—there was no policy arm at all; everything was political.

The findings of the advisory board do not appear to add many new details about the uranium episode, but they make it clear that the White House should share blame with the CIA for allowing the questionable material into the speech.

Right. When hell freezes over.... Era of personal responsibility? Accountability? That's for the little people!

He's really losing it.

Howard Dean, the Huey Long of the iPod set.

I always like it when Republicans shills get all serious and try to "help" Democrats. It's cute, and if you don't pay any attention, it doesn't hurt you.

But couldn't the Times get themselves a columnist who can write? Like Abe Rosenthal?

Our own Philadelphia Inquirer trashes Dean here:

This is especially rich:

Disagree with Bush or not, there is no question that he takes seriously his oath to protect the country and its people,

Let's leave the details aside and deal with the laziness and counter-factuality so typical of the Bush defenders posing as journalists. Here is the actual oath Bush took:

I do solemnly swear [or affirm] that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

In fact, Bush is a miserable failure at taking his oath seriously, and the courts agree

Mr. Ferris can be reached at kferris@phillynews.com (be reasoned and polite, please, so Ferris can sort out the liberals from the wingers spoofing as Deaniacs).

And here is the Letters to the Editor address: inquirer.letters@philly.news.

First case of mad cow disease in US.

Slash those USDA inspections!

Want to feel better about your country, fellow citizens, the world community, and the left/center of the political spectrum? Check out this Christmas roundup of the year's nicest and naughtiest from David Sirota, Christy Harvey and Judd Legum, who bring us The Progress Report, a daily feature of Mr. Podesta & friends' shiny, new think tank, The Center For American Progress, which is surely among the nicest presents those of us on that center/left spectrum received this year.

The Center, a baby among think tanks, has gotten off to a sparkling start. It's choice of "Fellows" is snazzy and smart, and The Progress Report is nothing short of startingly good - an invaluable resource that raises to a shiny new level that unique internet instrument of argument by linked collage of primary resources.

Thank-you Mr. Podesta, and thank-you to everyone else associated with The Center, for the daily proof it offers that being nice, being tempered, being civil, being a liberal, is in every way compatible with being tough, being wry, being appropriately angry when only anger will do, and being iron-willed in one's determination not to play any of the roles assigned to the left by either the SCLM or its puppetmaster*, the American right.

*Granted, "puppetmaster" isn't exactly a temperate way of describing the relationship, but after the evidence of the last several weeks, I can think of none better, from the SCLM's response to Al Gore's endorsement of Howard Dean, to their predictably meaningless coverage of Saddam's capture, to the recent preview both events provided of their coming election coverage, which the vast majority of the SCLM still seem to think is about them, not about issues, God knows not about American citizens as actual actors in the drama of their own democracy, and certainly not about evaluating who is telling the truth about what, or about finding the narrative in the actual facts, in what actually happens, rather than imposing pre-approved narratives that assure our establishment media that they are members of the club, all dues paid up.

**I do have some questions about the niceness of those Moroccan "mine-detonating monkeys," but better than mine-detonating kids, or other human types; best of all, please can't we just get rid of these bloody death traps, once and for all, and forever?

David Zielenziger of Reuters writes:

Morgan Stanley estimates the number of U.S. jobs outsourced to India will double to about 150,000 in the next three years. Analysts predict as many as two million U.S. white-collar jobs such as programmers, software engineers and applications designers will shift to low cost centers by 2014.

But the biggest companies looking to "offshoring" to cut costs, such as Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq:MSFT - news), International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM - news) and AT&T Wireless (NYSE:AWE - news), are reluctant to attract attention for political reasons, observers said this week.

And to all our new CS grads, good luck paying off those student loans. Of course, in Bush's America, you can always get a job as a security guard ... Or a servant ...

Since we won't be getting our fix from Iraq anytime soon.

Bruce Stanley of AP writes:

American oil companies have chafed for more than 17 years at U.S. sanctions that forced them to abandon prolific oil fields in the Libyan desert.

Now, after Libya's surprise agreement to abort its programs for weapons of mass destruction, the Americans can foresee their return to a country of promising and barely explored petroleum wealth.

So, how much did we pay the Libyans?

John Heilprin of AP writes:

A federal judge refused to grant a temporary reprieve Tuesday from his order that the National Park Service must revive a plan scrapped by the Bush administration to ban snowmobiles from Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks.

Winger snowmobilers, clutching Bibles, claim Yellowstone is only 6000 years old, and that's OK to pollute it since if it isn't the End Times, God will clean up their mess anyhow.....

Ladies and gentleman—

Put your hands together for wingerdom's biggest blowhard, The Man who poisoned mainstream discourse—

The Man who pressed his double-plus-sized lips to 15 million ears and railed against lawbreakers and drug addicts when all the time his maid was bringing pills to him in a cigar box—

The Man who trashed your right to privacy until he needed it—

The Man who made the Red States Red—

The hardest working whore in show business—

R-u-u-u-u-u-u-s-h "The Oxycontin Kid" Limbaugh!

So anyhow, a judge rules that prosecutors can examine Limbaugh's patient records to see if he was doctor shopping for his prescriptions, a crime under Florida law.

And where does WaPo bury the story?

In the Entertainment section.

Can anyone say "state-run media"? Sigh...

Not bad! If Dean can turn the grass-roots internet stuff into grass roots "boots on the ground" we may have a shot in 2004.

Jim Abrams of AP writes

Iraq suffers serious energy and communications shortages and harbors an increasingly sophisticated insurgency, the White House said in a report to Congress that emphasizes the successes of the U.S.-backed coalition in restoring order and security to Iraqis.

The report, obtained by The Associated Press, states that even with a buildup in Iraqi security forces, "it is not possible to know at this time either the duration of the military operations or the scope and duration of the deployment" of U.S. troops.

Well, not knowing either the scope or duration sounds like a pretty good definition of quagmire to me. On the other hand, it could just be that Unka Karl has already decided—secretly, of course—to declare victory and get out—say, before the Republican National Convention, so he can have a big parade of the troops before Broadway.

With POTL like the Bush gang, who knows?

Names highlighted to incriminate the guilty...

From the Moonie Times !!:

In April 1990, when Saddam's resort to chemical warfare against Iraqi Kurds was already well known, a delegation of five Farm Belt senators led by Bob Dole of Kansas, then the Republican leader in the Senate, met with Saddam in Mosul. The senators' main concern was to keep open the Iraqi market for American growers of rice and other grains. Mr. Dole told Saddam President Bush had asked him to say that "he wants better relations, and the U.S. government wants better relations with Iraq." Sen. Alan Simpson, Wyoming Republican, explained to Saddam that Iraq's problem was with the "haughty and pampered" Western media, not with the U.S. government.
That very same day, back in Washington, Mr. [James] Baker instructed Ambassador Glaspie to inform Saddam that "as concerned as we are about Iraq's chemical, nuclear and missile programs, we are not in any sense preparing the way for a pre-emptive military unilateral effort to eliminate these programs.

From the other Times:

As a special envoy for the Reagan administration in 1984, Donald H. Rumsfeld, now the defense secretary, traveled to Iraq to persuade officials there that the United States was eager to improve ties with President Saddam Hussein despite his use of chemical weapons, newly declassified documents show.

Seems like the Iraq war was really just a falling out among thieves. No wonder W couldn't ever give a good reason for it!

Here:

More than 90,000 people who have been out of work for months will lose their federal benefits today, when a program to aid the long-term unemployed expires.

Kerry (good for him) calls for an investigation. On his blog, yet:

Last week, a majority of the Federal Elections Committee (FEC) determined that Attorney General Ashcroft violated campaign finance laws, possibly exceeding the federal contribution limit by as much as 200 times, and failed to disclose certain contributions during the 2000 election cycle.

Great to see the media all over the story; after all, here's an Attorney General breaking the law. Oh, wait....

Dan Balz and Richard Morin fluffery in WaPo.

Could Bush's spike after "capturing" (below) Saddam be a dead cat bounce? Not discussed. In any case, a week is a long time in politics...

Or, A Perle of great price. Krugman:

Inevitably the list includes both Henry Kissinger and Richard Perle, whom I hereby propose (stealing an idea from Slate's Tim Noah) as the subject of a parlor game about cronyism, along the lines of "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon." The former Pentagon official, who has close ties to Donald Rumsfeld, has enthusiastically embraced the advantages of being both a businessman and a policy insider. His prestigious if part-time official position on the Defense Policy Board provides him with credibility, and at least the suggestion of both inside information and policy influence. This has led to lucrative consulting deals, and has attracted investments in his venture capital fund, Trireme Partners.

Last August, in a moment of supreme synergy, Mr. Perle, wearing his defense-insider hat, co-wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed praising the Pentagon's controversial Boeing tanker deal. He didn't disclose Boeing's $2.5 million investment in Trireme.

Sure enough, Hollinger also invested $2.5 million in Trireme, which is advised by Lord Black. In addition, Mr. Perle was paid more than $300,000 a year and received $2 million in bonuses as head of a Hollinger subsidiary. It's good to have friends.

(I think Krugman gives Perle too much credit.)

Here.

Phew!

Here (via Atrios:

This fall, the Park Service also approved a creationist text, "Grand Canyon: A Different View" for sale in park bookstores and museums. The book by Tom Vail, claims that the Grand Canyon is really only a few thousand years old, developing on a biblical rather than an evolutionary time scale.

Vail claims this is a work of "scriptural geology".... Sigh....

Here:

It would cost hundreds of millions of dollars to set up a legal, safe program to import drugs from Canada, the Food and Drug Administration's head pharmacist said Tuesday.

Two cities - Springfield, Mass., and Montgomery, Ala. - are the only governments buying drugs from Canada so far. But states from New Hampshire to Wisconsin are studying the issue or are ready to start their own programs.

How convenient. And those Canadians are dropping like flies. Aren't they?

Here's an idea: Why not let us order Canadian drugs over the Internet, to be shipped to us by mail? That wouldn't cost hundreds of millions, right?

Gosh, I thought competition was good. And all that.

Just asking ...

After that Thanksgiving Day turkey stunt (fake turkey, fake President), anything's possible....

OK, now we know why Bush isn't yelling about Russia going ahead with new atomic weapons (back).

"Russia Offers to Forgive 65% of Iraq's Debt.".

Holmes: ... The curious incident of the dog in the night.
Watson: The dog did nothing in the night.
Holmes: That was the curious incident.

You scratch my back ....

"He wants this thing to go away", says one of his flaks.

Funny, that's how I feel about him!

Rush! Not in front of the servants!

Go Kos!

John H. Cushman Jr. and David Stout of the Times write:

Asked to address the paradox that Al Qaeda, despite its supposedly weakened state, is able to pose the biggest threat since Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. [Scott "Sucker MC" McClellan said: "We cannot rest. We must continue carrying out the war on terrorism and taking the fight to the enemy."

Q: Why doesn't the lightblub go on after the Republicans have screwed it in?
Scott "Sucker MC" McClellan: We must continue to seek out new light sources wherever they may be found!

Vladimir Isachenkov of AP writes:

Russia Deploys Fresh Batch of Strategic Nuclear Missiles
Russia has deployed a fresh batch of its top-of-the-line strategic nuclear missiles after a break caused by a funding shortage, and military officials presented ambitious plans Monday for building weapons even more potent.

Another triumph for Bush diplomacy! Remember all that crap about Bush looking into Putin's soul? Maybe Putin (making an arbitrary assumption here) looked into Bush's soul too...

Amy Wilentz of the LA Times writes:

The final, unhappy lesson: America has had a long education in intervention (we occupied Haiti once before, for example, from 1915 to 1934), but in the end, each country is its own country. Each has its own legacy, its own unreadable, idiosyncratic culture, its own recent past and — as in both Haiti and Iraq — a long and alien political tradition. You can't march in with a tool belt of solutions and fix things: It's not a simple plumbing problem. A nation is a collection of hearts and minds and erratic human behavior, and in order to run an occupation, you must somehow deal with obscure and dangerous political land mines planted beneath your feet. Look at Israel and the West Bank, look at Syria and Lebanon. Occupation and democracy can't coexist, and the one never engenders the other.

There's no indication, of course, that Bush gives democracy, let alone freedom, anything more than lip service, but we might as well puncture the rhetoric.

Japan and Germany being the counter-examples—but each at least had alternative political cultures to the dominant, war-losing one, and both were truly defeated nations.

AP:

Labor unions in the Czech Republic demanded Monday that stores stop playing Christmas carols incessantly or pay compensation for causing emotional trauma to sales clerks.

WaPo:

"It is incredible callousness" to refuse to consider the issue [of extending employment benefits for Christmas], Dean said. Extending benefits would cost about $1 billion per month, he said, and the Federal Unemployment Trust Funds already have roughly $20 billion in reserves.

Under the unemployment insurance system, workers who lose their job through no fault of their own are generally eligible for 26 weeks of unemployment insurance provided by state benefit systems.

Since March 2002, workers have been eligible for an additional 13 weeks of benefits provided by Congress after they exhaust state jobless benefits. Congress adjourned this year without again approving those extended benefits.

Republicans argue that the economy is beginning to improve and unemployment is on the decline, rendering it unnecessary to provide extended benefits. Dean rejected that argument, saying up to 90,000 workers will lose benefits because of the inaction in Congress.

The money is already in the fundmdash;what about all that Republican rhetoric about putting your own money back in your pocket?

Great to see the media focussing on an issue where many Americans share the same needs, instead of silly controversies about the Confederate flag and who called who before saying what ... Oh, wait.

WaPo:

The Republicans' aggressive moves caught the Democrats off guard. Although they had come to expect tough GOP tactics in the House, they were stunned when the strategies moved to the Senate, where relations between the parties have been less confrontational. Some Democrats now regret they did not react more quickly and aggressively.

Golly.

The Republicans steal a presidential election (say 38% (back) of the American people) and the Dems think it's going to be business as usual...

The consequence:

Nearly half the electorate -- people who chose Democrats to represent them in Congress -- are, to an increasing degree, disenfranchised. Their representatives aren't simply outvoted on the House and Senate floors, they're not even present when key legislation is discussed and refined.

Get it through your thick heads, Dems: The Republicans are playing for all the marbles, for keeps.

"A boot stamping on a human face—forever."

Two from Mustang Bobby at Bark Bark Woof Woof.

What, No Fishnet Stockings?

Fishermen Dress Lobster As Barbie

Barbie hasn't been seen since early December and apparently was unkempt and nearly naked, except for her shoes.

Must have wandered into Neil Bush's watery trap one too many times. (Leave the shoes on honey, I like the shoes.)

BBWW also wades into the surf of cognitive dissonance...

Last week everybody and their dog (with the notable exception of former Senator John Glenn) jumped Howard Dean's case because he said he didn't think America was safer now that Saddam Hussein is in custody. We heard from the Administration and several Democratic candidates, "Of course we're safer! A terrible dictator is no longer threatening our country! Dean has no understanding of foreign policy!"

But today we get this:

Administration Raises Level of Terrorism Alert to Orange
WASHINGTON, Dec. 21 — The Bush administration raised the nation's antiterrorism alert status a notch on Sunday, indicating a newly heightened concern about the possibility of an attack in coming days.

See: Thanks For Clearing That Up

Saddam, Libya, Orange Alert ... Next comes the capture of the "terror team," I imagine .... Sorry to wear my tinfoil hat, but ...

Why not? Just asking.

Here.

How deep does the rot go? In Iraq, for example?

We haven't hit bottom yet...

Depends on your definition of we?
More on the possible series of events leading up to the capture of Saddam Hussein. Capture announced in Iran prior to announcement by mainstream Western press.

Saddam Hussein arrested - Kurdish official
Dec. 14, 2003 via Independent Online (South Africa)

Tehran - Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has been arrested, an Iraqi Kurdish representative in Iran said on Sunday, but the US defence department said it could not confirm the report.

"I confirm that Saddam has been arrested," Nazem Dabag, representative in Iran of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), told Reuters.

The official Iranian news agency IRNA quoted PUK leader Jalal Talabani as saying that Saddam had been captured in his home town of Tikrit.

"The American forces in Tikrit announced that Saddam was arrested on Sunday. The Americans said that they will announce the news officially in the next few hours," IRNA quoted Talabani as saying.

Full article at Independent Online link above.

---

Again, as Lambert reported below - See earlier post:
Saddam really captured three months ago and kept on ice?" more details from that Sunday Herald article.

Dec. 21, 2003: Revealed: who really found Saddam? via
Sunday Herald Online (UK)

First reports – indeed the very first report of Saddam’s capture – were also coming out elsewhere. Jalal Talabani chose to leak the news and details of Rasul Ali’s role in the deployment to the Iranian media and to be interviewed by them.

By early Sunday – way before Saddam’s capture was being reported by the mainstream Western press – the Kurdish media ran the following news wire:

“Saddam Hussein, the former President of the Iraqi regime, was captured by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. A special intelligence unit led by Qusrat Rasul Ali, a high-ranking member of the PUK, found Saddam Hussein in the city of Tikrit, his birthplace. Qusrat’s team was accompanied by a group of US soldiers. Further details of the capture will emerge during the day; but the global Kurdish party is about to begin!”

By the time Western press agencies were running the same story, the emphasis had changed, and the ousted Iraqi president had been “captured in a raid by US forces backed by Kurdish fighters.”

Rasul Ali himself, meanwhile, had already been on air at the Iranian satellite station al-Alam insisting that his “PUK fighters sealed the area off before the arrival of the US forces”.

By late Sunday as the story went global, the Kurdish role was reduced to a supportive one in what was described by the Pentagon and US military officials as a “joint operation”. The Americans now somewhat reluctantly were admitting that PUK fighters were on the ground alongside them , while PUK sources were making more considered statements and playing down their precise role.

[...]

Of the numerous and more exotic theories surrounding events leading to Saddam’s arrest, one originates on a website many believe edited by former Israeli intelligence agents, but which often turns up inside information about the Middle East that proves to be accurate.

According to Debka.com, there is a possibility that Saddam was held for up to three weeks in al-Dwar by a Kurdish splinter group while they negotiated a handover to the Americans in return for the $25m reward. This, the writers say would explain his dishevelled and disorientated appearance.

But perhaps the mother of all conspiracy theories, is the one about the pictures distributed by the Americans showing the hideout with a palm tree behind the soldier who uncovered the hole where Saddam was hiding. The palm carried a cluster of pre-ripened yellow dates, which might suggest that Saddam was arrested at least three months earlier, because dates ripen in the summer when they turn into their black or brown colour.

Full article at Sunday Herald link above.

Additional, earlier article links posted below:
See Hmmm... Yet Another Bush Lie?! or scroll down page.

From the Cluetrain guys here:

The U.S. government should set a national goal: every citizen will have high bandwidth, open access to the Internet within five years, beginning with schools and public buildings, then businesses, other private enterprises and homes.

Since the Internet is a public good and has become a key tool in preserving democracy in this country, shouldn't everyone have the right to access it?

POTL, n. People Of The Lie.

This useful term was coined by Christian psychiatrist and theologian M. Scott Peck in his book The People of the Lie, which is, among other things, an examination of the nature of human evil. Peck quotes Martin Buber:

Since the primary motive of evil is disguise, one of the places evil people are most likely to be found is within the church.

Additional excerpts can be found here.

"Utterly dedicated to preserving their self-image of perfection, they are unceasingly engaged in the effort to maintain the appearance of moral purity. They are acutely sensitive to social norms and what others might think of them. They seem to live lives that are above reproach. The words "image", "appearance" and "outwardly" are crucial to understanding the morality of 'the evil'. While they lack any motivation to be good, they intensely desire to appear good. Their goodness is all on a level of pretense. It is in effect a lie. Actually the lie is designed not so much to deceive others as to deceive themselves. We lie only when we are attempting to cover up something we know to be illicit. At one and the same time 'the evil' are aware of their evil and desperately trying to avoid the awareness.

Peck's material, I feel, has great potential for analyzing and deconstructing the nature and behavior of the wing of the Republican party that has captured our government. With the caveats, that Peck raises, that evil is very dangerous to analyze—since we are, after all, all vulnerable to it.

"Drop dead" over the top? Not really, since prescription drugs can save lives, right? LIke your Mom's or your grandmother's?

AP:

Older Americans find the [new Medicare Prescription Drug] law too confusing to be able to say whether they like it, according to both it supporters and detractors.

More Bush trickeration? Here's all you need to know about Bush's prescription drug bill:

• It only kicks in after the 2004 election, so there's no chance for citizens to see the law in action before voting. I wonder why?


• There's no money to pay for it, because of Bush's tax cuts for the super-rich. So it's another typical bait and switch operation


• It doesn't legalize cheap drugs from Canada


• Big pharma likes it for that reason, and also because they have greater leverage to keep prices high than they would under a single-payer system

The combination of a war justified by questionable premises, political polarization and governmental secrecy seems on pace to deliver what might be dubbed "The Conspiracy-Theory Election of 2004."

Here (scroll down, down, down).

Instead, he leads with all this "Inside Baseball" stuff about Madeline Albright, Morton Kondracke, and the transmission belt from FUX to the RNC...

Though, come to think of it, would Bush keep OBL on ice until, say, November 10, 2004, as Albright joked?

Is this really so crazy? I mean, we would have to make the assumption that Bush was willing to use the intelligence agencies for political purposes.... And run a war according to the political calendar ...

Hmmm ....

This idea—that Bush has OBL on ice—would explain why we've somehow "failed" to find OBL, despite the fact that he needs kidney dialysis done...

Threat level (not to the Constitution, your civil liberties, your livelihood, your health, of course) rises to orange...

Happy Holidays from the Ministry of Fear!

UPDATE: Revised threat levels from alert reader MJS:

The Government Commander Flight Deck Shit Alert System has issued the following Holiday Color Coded Commander Flight Deck Shit Schematic:

#1. Pale Auburn: Soft texture, wormlike, watery. The public is advised to go out and buy things, but to not feel too safe at any given time.

#2. Tobacco-brown hue. Doughy, vaguely rodent shaped. Stay indoors but don't read the newspaper unless you really have to for sports scores and B.C. by good Christian Jonny Hart.

#3. Polluted River Bottom Black & Tan. A Mother of Pearl quality due to oil runoff, greasy, stain guaranteed. Lock your door and cover the children in plastic sheets--but don't smother them yet.

#4. Last Color the Devil Sees Before God Buggers Him--Transdimensional Mega-Void Matter Splatter Sub-Atomic Chili Flecks. You may now smother the children.

#5. Pure White. Go golfing with your country club friends. And make sure to smile for the cameras--a shit-eating grin is a patriotic capper!

YABL, YABL, YABL....

Of course we would expect Bush to claim that that the Iraq war brought success in Libya, and equally we would expect the lie to fall apart on close examination. Jennifer Loven of AP writes:

Announcing the Libya deal, Bush invoked the Iraq war that brought down Saddam Hussein as he issued a flat warning of "unwelcome consequences" for countries that do not follow Libya's lead.

But is the threat credible, given that we've tied our troops down in Iraq?

Many analysts say the war's aftermath has proved so difficult for the United States that other countries probably view U.S. military force as an unlikely option elsewhere right now.

"The plan was that Iraq was to be a message for everyone to either fall in line, or else," [Joseph Cirincione, director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's nonproliferation project] said. "The problem is this threat is not very realistic."

British officials say that perhaps just as important was the long diplomatic process of getting Libyan leader Gadhafi to take responsibility for the 1988 downing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

Gadhafi initiated the weapons talks in March, amid the buildup in the Persian Gulf area to the U.S.-led war in Iraq. The overtures came just after Libya agreed to a $2.7 billion settlement for the Pan Am bombing.

As a result, Britain pushed successfully for the lifting of U.N. penalties against on Libya, a sprawling desert country in northwest Africa.

Libya first contacted the British, not the Americans, noted Daryl Kimball of the private Arms Control Association. Also, Libya had worked for several years to shed its pariah status before Iraq became an issue.

See? Not even Bush's poodles believe him!




On to the next flimsy justification!

Not to be outdone by our planets creeping variegation of human fauna, Master Race brine shrimp maverick Harold Von Braunhut - known to his friends as Harold - and the "inventer" inveigler of the Sea Monkeys, has croaked at the age of 77. And no amount of water added will bring him back.

Harold, so the legend goes, was quite the wing-ding white supremacist neo-nazi sea monkey himself, according to a reported previous ADL report.

In a radically different sphere, von Braunhut's hard right-wing beliefs drew notice. According to a 1996 Anti-Defamation League report, he belonged to the Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan Nations.

So thats why the little monkeys wore those little crowns on their heads.
Whats more, Harold (as his friends used to call him), no doubt taught Karl Rove a few fast talkin' carnival pitchman showbiz tricks.

...managing the career of a man who dived from 40 feet into a kiddie pool filled with 12 inches of water. He sold invisible goldfish by guaranteeing that owners would never see them.

Heh. Indeed.

Harold, inventer extrordinaire of the Amazing Hair Raising Monsters, and devoted follower of white Christian light, may also have been something of a grand wizard of ironic humor.

The Washington Post in 1988 published an article on him and his affiliations, adding that his relatives said he was Jewish.

Well, obviously, thats just another liberal Jew controled media conspiracy lie.

No sir, Harold "Sea Monkey" Von Braunhut was nuttin' but "the Real McCoy!"

So take that Dr. Charles Richard Drew!

Don't say angry whitey ain't never done nothin' fer y'all.

POTENTIAL 5 ALARM YABL!

Via: Talk Left - Sunday, December 21, 2003
Saddam: Drugged and Held for U.S. by Kurds
citing sg.news. wire story below.

Saddam Hussein was captured by US troops only after he had been taken prisoner by Kurdish forces, drugged and abandoned ready for American soldiers to recover him, a British Sunday newspaper said.

More from: Yahoo News

Saddam came into the hands of the Kurdish Patriotic Front after being betrayed to the group by a member of the al-Jabour tribe, whose daughter had been raped by Saddam's son Uday, leading to a blood feud, reported the Sunday Express, which quoted an unnamed senior British military intelligence officer.

Also found at: ABC Online Australia

Update Three more as of noon Sunday:

Two fully mirrored via: Common Dreams

1- Sunday Herald (Scotland)

Also, for a quick take and direct link to the Sunday Herald article
see: Lambert's earlier post to this page. Saddam really captured three months ago and kept on ice?

2- The Age (Australia)

and one more mention via the Sunday Morning Herald (Australia)

Meanwhile, CNN Breaking News dittybird Connie Mayberry is all over tidings of Michael Jackson's Neverland ranch rally and Britain's Pop Idol contest winner story as well as your token holiday happy talk CEO gives the little people big one-time holiday bonus story and of course the Al Gore's son smokes dope big reefer bust story. Then there's the Clay Aikens graduates from school story and the .......

and put Frank Rich on the Op-Ed page, next to Krugman, where he belongs? One of the many gems in Rich's analysis:

A tough new anti-Dean attack ad has been put up on the campaign's own site, where it's a magnet for hundreds of thousands of dollars in new contributions.

Dean could turn Bush's $200 million into a negative, couldn't he? Internet judo!

Oh, why put Safire and Brooks in the Arts section? Well, they exemplify the principles of that classic by Sun Tzu: The Art of Whores...

Adam Nagourney of the Times writes:

38 percent say they do not believe that Mr. Bush was legitimately elected.

Cyncicism? No. Realism. The Romans lost their Republic when they chose Empire. Have we?

Of course, given what we now know about electronic voting technology (back) there will be no reason to regard a "win" by Bush in 2004 as legitimate either. Fool me once ...

A: You! Go change that lightbulb!

Of course, there are more such jokes—but there can't be too many. Ridicule is an excellent weapon against tyranny.

From alert reader stradiotto:

Q: How many Republicans does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: None! The failed policy of appeasing the darkness has brought us enough trouble.

From alert reader mjs:

Q: How many Republicans does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: The White House does not release information that may jeopardize the security of the United States.

From alert reader agitpropre (slightly edited)

Q: Mr President, Howard Dean has said lightbulbs burn out, that they can actually cease to provide light. Can you comment?
A: He is entitled to his opinion. But when it comes to lightbulbs, actually changing lightbulbs. I am the one who has to make the tough decisions.

From alert reader NTodd:

Q: How many Republicans does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
Scott McClellan: I am not aware of any issue with lightbulbs at this time. I suggest you ask the people in charge of changing the lightbulbs. We have always said the White House will work closely with the lightbulb changers to make sure America is safe and well-lit.

From alert reader Flory:

Q: How many Republicans does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: What difference does it make?

From alert reader bizutti (slightly edited):

Q: Secretary Rumsfeld, just how many Republicans does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

Rumsfeld: You see, there are lights that we know don't light, and there are lights that we don't know don't light. What makes you think that we can predict which kind your [waving hand imperiously] so-called hypothetical light bulb is referring to?

From alert reader emal (slightly edited)

Q: How many Republicans does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: At least 3:

1 to give the order
1 to award the non-competitive/no bid government contract
1 to have a financial relationship or connection to the company awarded the contract, such as CEO, past/current president or board member,substantial pension/stock options in said company. This person may also be a former government employee whose family is closely connected with person number 1 or his administration, or may be a large donor to the election campaign of person number 1.

UPDATE: People seem to have having fun with this, so I'm moving it up.
UPDATE: Ditto, ditto.
UPDATE: Ditto, ditto. Thanks to farmer for inspired "dim bulb" graphic! (I missed the "43W" the first time).
UPDATE: Ditto, ditto, ditto. I'm still trying to work out the one that goes, "Republicans don't screw in a lightbulb, they screw in a"—gotta get that parallelism in there, or "Republican's don't screw. They"—but I can't quite get it right.... In any case, all contributions gratefully recieved....

David Pratt of the Scottish Sunday Herald writes:

But perhaps the mother of all conspiracy theories, is the one about the pictures distributed by the Americans showing the hideout with a palm tree behind the soldier who uncovered the hole where Saddam was hiding. The palm carried a cluster of pre-ripened yellow dates, which might suggest that Saddam was arrested at least three months earlier, because dates ripen in the summer when they turn into their black or brown colour.

Interesting, if true.

Lots of good detail on Kurdish involvement as well.

WaPo:

When US President George W. Bush visited Canberra in October, he told his friend [Prime Minister] John Howard that the Democratic candidate who, if he won the primaries, would be his most formidable opponent in the 2004 presidential election was Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman," the newspaper reported. "What a fantastic irony it would be if the capture of Saddam Hussein this week led to the derailing of former Vermont governor Howard Dean's anti-war candidacy and Bush had to face the formidable Lieberman in November."

Wow! Honesty is the new irony!

Those who won't learn from history are condemned to repeat it.

Krauthammer, that is.

Read Daily Howler's demolition job, and ask yourself why WaPo is still giving this fraud a platform.

For workers: Less butter over even less bread.

What a whore.

Jeebus:

In Prestonwood Baptist Church's retelling, brightly lit angels with fluttering, 12-foot-long organza gowns, shiny headbands and red wigs fly over a sanctuary filled with about 6,500 spectators.

The angels hang six stories up - suspended from harnesses attached to 150-foot long tracks on the sanctuary's ceiling. Fifteen operators with wired headsets control the angels' movement toward the stage, where shepherds with real sheep herald the Messiah's arrival.

There's a word for this. It starts with "i"....

Infantile?

Idiotic?

Ideology? No, wait, I've got it:

Idolatry!

So, why don't they sell the wigs and the organza gowns, and use the money to feed some poor people who don't know where their next meal is coming from? Because they're SICs (Self-identified Christians), that's why. Woe to you, hypocrites, Pharisees!

As usual, Atrios nails it.

Though the timing is a little odd, isn't it? They work on the deal for nine months, and then, while Saddam's capture is still in the news...


Anyhow, it was sanctions, not the war. The timing is just a little backhander from Qaddafi. WaPo:

Libya's stunning decision yesterday to surrender its weapons of mass destruction followed two decades of international isolation and some of the world's most punishing economic sanctions. In the end, Libyan leader Col. Moammar Gaddafi was under so much pressure that he was forced to seek an end to the economic and political isolation threatening his government -- and his own survival, according to U.S. and British officials and outside experts.

So, try to restrain that strut, Pretzel Boy.

And, oh yeah, the oil. Reuters:

Lifting sanctions could allow U.S. oil companies back into Libya, where they once produced more than one million barrels per day (bpd) and where oil facilities could reach two million bpd within five years, the U.S. Energy Department says.

U.S. sanctions dating from 1982 and strengthened in 1986, ban the import of Libyan crude oil, as well as direct trade and commercial contracts, and keep U.S. firms out of Libya. (Additional reporting by Louis Charbonneau in Vienna; Heba Kandil in Dubai and Bernard Woodall in New York)

Should he run in 2004?

Apologies to Chris Brown for not posting this link sooner. It's been one of those kinda weeks.

CB, appearing thru the weekend at the TLB Showcase

When Gov. Kindergarten Cop repealed the increased vehicle license fee (or "tax" as the conservatives like to say) it meant fewer money to city governments. Well lo and behold, now the cities want the state to pay the difference on the backs of other essential services, or the cities will have to cuts in local departments, including Police and Fire. Let's do the math here, the Federal government won't raise taxes, the state government won't raise taxes, and the local government won't raise taxes....but as the population grows the need for services grows with it. In addition, our infrastructure (roads, bridges, etc) needs improvement or upkeep. How will we pay for these things?

Read What's so funny about peace, love, and higher taxes
by: Chris "Lefty" Brown

Long as I remember
The rain been comin' down
Clouds of myst'ry pourin'
Confusion on the ground
Good men through the ages
Tryin' to find the sun
And I wonder
Still I wonder
Who'll stop the wh-i-i-i-i-n-e....

Man. Whiney Joe is getting more and more tiresome... I've always said I'd vote for any Democrat over Bush, but my virtue is being sorely, sorely tested.

AP:

President Bush signed legislation Friday that outlaws selling and shipping lions, tigers and other big cats across state lines without the proper permit or accreditation.

Gosh, though—I sure hope Bush checked with Frist before signing any legislation about cats. (What is it with the Republican leadership and torturing small animals, anyhow? Frist, cats; Bush, frogs; even DéLay, bugs).

And how are the Republicans going to get a quorum if shipping weasels across state lines is a crime?

No, but seriously, we get a law like this... We get a sixty-hour straight-to-winger-video filibuster... But what we can't get is, oh, the appropriations bill that would fund the government for FY2004... That's only two months late...

Yep, that's Representative Janklow, the serial speeder who ran down Randy Scott in his car. We haven't been hearing much about "the rule of law" from Republicans lately; I wonder why? Isn't it great to see the media all over this one? Oh, wait...

Anyhow, Janklow only killed someone. It's not like he got a blow-job or anything. So, he's appealing (in the judicial sense, I mean). And the beauty part:

On Friday, the official judgment of Janklow's conviction was entered into the court record. He is to be sentenced Jan. 22, two days after his resignation from the U.S. House takes effect.

Janklow's original sentencing date was set for Jan. 20, but a scheduling conflict has delayed his sentencing.

January 20, eh? That's when Congress reconvenes. Could it be that Thug leadership needs prisoner Janklow's vote really bad, either on the energy bill or the budget bill? Dealing with felons doesn't bother this crowd one bit, does it? As long as the job gets done....

Wonder how Randy Scott's family feels about this?

So, do you feel safer?

I don't think you do (I don't)—but not for the usual reasons.

First, AQ speaks yet again:

An audiotape purportedly from Osama bin Laden's deputy in Al Qaeda, aired on Arab television today, warned that the terror group would target Americans "in their homeland" and would drive U.S. forces from bases in the region.

Next, the calculated leak:

A classified Bush administration report has found that the largest counterterrorism exercise conducted by the federal government since the Sept. 11 attacks was marred by communications problems, serious shortages of medical supplies and hospital rooms and confusion over where the residue of a radiological attack would spread, administration officials said on Thursday.

The five-day exercise last May in Chicago and Seattle, known as Topoff 2, tested the response of federal agencies and local governments to nearly simultaneous terrorist attacks using biological agents and a so-called dirty bomb, a crude radiological device.

Look, I can blast the administration on this one: Frankly, Bush's arrogance, incompetence, cynicism, ruthlessness, and lust for power scare me a lot more than AQ.

But I think, with Bush, it's "watch what he does, not what he says" time now. Untangling the lies is good clean fun, but it takes a lot of energy, and the returns are diminishing now anyhow. So in that mode, what's the net result of a new AQ announcement and a leak that Homeland Security still isn't working?

Fear.

Why do we never hear "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself" from Bush?

Can anyone doubt that keeping us fearful is what Bush intends?

Can anyone doubt that Bush intends to keep us in fear because it is in his interest to do so?

Think! Is AQ and terror worse than Vietnam? Worse than Korea? Worse than World War II? Worse than World War I? Worse than the Civil War? No, no, no, no, no, and no.

So why does the war on terror justify the extreme measures Bush has taken to dismantle our civil liberties, militarize the government and the culture, pack the courts, and gut the New Deal?

The answer is, it doesn't. But people don't think straight when they're in fear. Which is why Bush wants to keep us that way.

This is almost too rich!

Via Atrios at Wired News (though the site seems quite slow: I wonder why!)

Voter advocate Bev Harris alleged Tuesday that managers of a subsidiary of Diebold Inc., one of the country's largest voting equipment vendors, included a cocaine trafficker, a man who conducted fraudulent stock transactions and a programmer jailed for falsifying computer records.

The programmer, Jeffrey Dean, wrote and maintained proprietary code used to count hundreds of thousands of votes as senior vice president of Global Election Systems. Diebold purchased GES in January 2002.

According to a public court document released before GES hired him, Dean served time in a Washington state correctional facility for stealing money and tampering with computer files in a scheme that "involved a high degree of sophistication and planning."

Maybe the planning to tamper with computer files was the background check, eh?

Given this new information, and given the statement by Deibold's head of election systems, Wally O'Dell that "I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president [Bush] next year," and given what we now know about how Florida purged the electoral rolls of Democrats using technology, I think it's time for us to start questioning the legitimacy of the 2004 elections, wherever electronic voting technology is being used.

After Florida 2000, only a fool would think that the Republicans won't do whatever it takes to hold onto power, and that includes widespread and undetectable vote tampering.

We know the Republicans have the motive, the means, and the opportunity. We know they have a record. Now we see them putting criminals in place to carry out the crime. Why wait to blow the whistle?

Alan Fram of AP writes:

Government watchdog groups criticized Sen. Ted Stevens on Thursday following a newspaper report that the Senate's senior Republican had grown wealthy from investments with people who benefited from legislation he helped write.

Heck, it's not like Stevens got blowjob or anything. In fact, it's business as usual in Bush's America!

Since David Kelly is bailing.

Now it appears Bush is going to wire Saddam's show trial to solve his WMD woes.

From Haaretz (thanks to alert reader kelley b):

ATHENS - Deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein could be offered a deal in which he would give his captors information on if and how he hid weapons of mass destruction and if he smuggled some of them into Syria. In exchange, he would face life imprisonment and not be executed for war crimes, senior Iraqis attending a conference here on the future of the region have hinted.

On to Syria!

Adam Geller of AP writes

The chill in year-end bonuses partly reflects companies' continued concerns about the economy and their own earnings, despite a rebound in corporate profits. After several years of limiting salary and wage increases and shifting benefit costs to employees, some companies are now looking to bonuses for cost-savings.

Right. Not to executive salaries, bonuses, stock options, perks ....

But it also is part of a long-term change, pronounced since the mid-1990s, analysts say. More companies are canning the set bonuses they believe workers take for granted in favor of variable "pay-for-performance" plans that pay smaller rewards when times are tight.

Right. So you get less money if you perform better in hard times. Seems to be the reverse for the CEOs, though. I wonder why that is?

I'm so tired of hearing about how "the economy" is doing better, when the jobs picture is still dismal, bonuses are down, Bush is trying to screw us out of overtime, you name it. When are people going to do better, instead of this mythical "economy"?

CBS:

For the first time, the chairman of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks is saying publicly that 9/11 could have and should have been prevented.

"This is a very, very important part of history and we've got to tell it right," said Thomas Kean.

"As you read the report, you're going to have a pretty clear idea what wasn't done and what should have been done," he said. "This was not something that had to happen."

Appointed by the Bush administration, Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, is now pointing fingers inside the administration and laying blame.

"There are people that, if I was doing the job, would certainly not be in the position they were in at that time because they failed. They simply failed," Kean said.

Asked whether we should at least know if people sitting in the decision-making spots on that critical day are still in those positions, Kean said, "Yes, the answer is yes. And we will."

I guess if Saddam hadn't been captured, this would be front page news... And it's great to see the Beltway Dem candidates jumping all over this one. Oh, wait...

It's that circular firing squad again. I mean, Senators are known for thinking they can and should be President (each one of them) but this is getting ridiculous. And it's not Whiney Joe this time ...

I remember an old Russian story:

An angel comes down from heaven, stands before a Russian peasant and grants him a single wish.

The peasant doesn't even hesitate.

"I wish my neighbor's cow was dead."

Remind you of anything? Could it be the behavior of the Beltway Dems and the Stop Dean types? Check out this quote from a senior advisor to the Kerry campaign:

"The fundamental underpinning of [Dean's] campaign is, 'I am the straight shooter who will tell you the truth no matter what. And I have stood up for these principles the entire campaign,' " said the advisor, who asked not to be named. "To the extent that is demonstrated to be fundamentally untrue, he becomes just another politician. And that really hurts him."

Not just "him," you loser! All Democrats! Maybe Kerry's problems have more to do with his choice of advisors, or his message... Could it be?

Michael Moran of MSNBC writes:

“There is no way anything that transpires with Saddam will ever be described as a plea agreement,” a U.S. official says, requesting anonymity. “There are ways to make sure a death penalty isn’t imposed, though. I don’t think it will come to that, but if the information is there, there is nothing stopping it”

OK....

Two days ago, we were going to have a trial for Saddam that would "withstand international scrutiny."

Yesterday, Bush gave in to his blood lust and said he wanted Saddam dead.

Today, anonymous US officials take plea bargaining off the table, and talk about the inner workings of the trial as if, well, they were in charge ...

What's so tragic and stupid about all of this, and so indicative of Thug behavior generally, is that an actual judicial proceeding, as at the Hague, would be:

• better for Iraqis, who need to see a system of justice at work where the results aren't pre-ordained by their ruler (now Bush)


• better for the Arab would, who would see the rule of law in action (not that Bush gives the rule of law anything other than lip service)


• better for us, since if the Iraqis ended up condemning Saddam themselves, in an open and transparent judicial forum, the bunker-less and Democratic citizens of our great cities would be far less likely to be the target for revenge killings....

You'd almost think Bush wanted chaos to continue, wouldn't you?

Meanwhile, building the case is expected to take a long time. I'd say Fine! if I had confidence that the Iraqis were really running the show, but as it is I'm imagining Saddam "finally breaking down" and revealing WMD information on, say, November 9, 2004, with enough time to break the story but not enough time for it to be investigated ....

Here.

Another triumph for Bush diplomacy.

Maybe it brings the Rapture closer? No, apparently not.

Dana Milbank of WaPo writes:

This is not the first time the administration has done some creative editing of government Web sites. After the insurrection in Iraq proved more stubborn than expected, the White House edited the original headline on its Web site of President Bush's May 1 speech, "President Bush Announces Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended," to insert the word "Major" before combat.

Down the memory hole!

Crisco Johnny not only loses to a dead man, he breaks the Federal election law doing it.

It couldn't be clearer: when the Thugs talk about accountability, responsibility, the rule of law, and all that, that applies to you. For themselves, they're grabbing as much as they can, as fast as they can, any way that they can, and laughing all the way to the bank. But it's great to see our media watchdogs all over this one. Oh, wait...

Media yawns, citizens yawn, even Democrats yawn ...

Business as usual in Bush's America!

Gimme an A! A!

Gimme a W! W!

Gimme an O! O!

GImme an L! L!

What's that spell? aWol!

What's that spell?aWol!

What's that spell? aWol!

And who knows... The story might get covered.

An all-time great teaser headline from WaPo's front page:

Bush to Have Tests on Both Knees

Hey, I thought this kind of joke went out with Monica!

Our superbly trained troops execute a flawless and well-covered maneuver, with the immediate issuing of lots of video (including dramatic medical data), a huge media frenzy, and a pop for Bush in the polls.

Then, months later, we learn it was a stunt, and everything Bush and the eager SCLM told us, and all the events that we "saw," turn out to be lies.

Jessica Lynch, right? Fool me once ....

Not that Saddam's capture would fall into that category, of course (though see below).

Tresy's right—enough with the Martha Stewart already!

Ken Lay, Ruthless Enron CEO - In Custody!

HOUSTON: Federal law enforcement officials in Houston Texas have confirmed that the man captured early this morning in a remote area of Waller County Texas is in fact the former Enron strongman Kenneth Lay. Lay's capture comes nearly two years after his brutal corpoarate regime of terror collapsed in late 2001.

"The tyrant is a prisoner," shouted Pauline Bremmerman, a former employee of Lay's power corrupt Enronian dictatorship. "My entire family and future were nearly destroyed by this ruthless greedy liar lunatic," Bremmerman remarked. "I'm glad they got the bastard, and I hope they lock him up in a little tiny dank SuperMax hidey-hole, just like the one they noodled him out of."

Law enforcement investigators were tipped off late yesterday to the possibility of Lay's whereabouts when a local waitress reported hearing rumors of a bearded old man trading in weather forecast futures and living beneath a foam rubber mattress pad under the floorboards of an abandoned radiator repair shop near the banks of the Brazos River in western Waller County.

Federal, State, and local law enforcement officials, including a heavily armed division of the Hempstead Jaycees, assembled an advance operational command post just before dawn and by early morning had narrowed their search down to the abandoned radiator shop and a tool storage shed behind Miss Ida Mae Beauregard Hampton's Plastic Illuminated Holiday Lawn Ornament Emporium.

A Special Weapons And Tactics team discovered Lay cowering under the foam rubber mattress pad inside the radiator shop at about 9am when a small dog named Ernie began barking wildly at a debased Brooks Brother sock laying at the rear of the building. A short search of the interior of the vacant garage resulted in Lay's capture.

Lay surrendered peacefully, but was "purty dis-oriented," as sheriff deputy Bobby Wilson Pickett Lee Wilson noted while dunking a fat sorghum-glazed donut into a hot styrofoam cup of fresh coffee. "Shee'it, I ain't seen excitment like this 'round these parts since pastor Eunice Crowley went crazy like a horn-dog and run off to Branson Missouri with the Marshfield twins," concluded Wilson.

In any event, the unshaved and disheveled former Enron despot who emerged from under the radiator shop floorboards was a shaky shadow of the belligerent high profile titan who controlled commodity trading floor rape rooms, accounting book torture chambers, cozy offshore financial partnerships, money laundering terror networks, and hoodwink investor scams designed to bilk his own people out of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Lay, bearded and tick-bit, and babbling about a dead battery in a stolen golf cart parked beside the building, was led away by law enforcement officials and transported to a hospital facility in Prairie View where he was given a complete medical examination and a haircut. Waller County officials later photographed Lay, mainly for the novelty hell of it, and he was moved to a secure location in Houston for further interrogation and delicing.

Ironically, Kenneth Lay, the once celebrated CEO super-leader-hero of Enron Corporation, was found groveling in a dirty hole only miles from the shimmering glass tower corporate kingdom of fraud that he and his Fastow Party loyalists had built. No more number one patron of a GOP "President". No more limited-liability companies. No more magic balance sheets. No more lap dances in the executive suite. No more palaces in Aspen or summer homes in South Hampton. No more JEDI and Chewco and cute Star Wars characters soaring off to regulate distant cosmic energy universes. Nope. Nothing left but a dead battery a stolen golf cart and a bad jailhouse haircut.

Spokesperson's for the Bush White House refused to comment fully on Lay's capture, saying only that "President Bush is personally unfamiliar with Mr. Lay and his tragic circumstances, but enjoyed his potato chips for many years." Vice President Cheney was unavailable for comment and reportedly swaddled away in a secret undisclosed underground spider-hole location of his own.

Here.

I seem to remember that Jesus would sit down to dinner with just about anyone. These SICs won't ("Woe to you, hypocrites, Pharisees!").

Interesting geography for the "dissident" dioceses though:

Albany; Pittsburgh; San Joaquin in California; South Carolina; Florida, Central Florida, and Southwest Florida; Dallas and Fort Worth; Quincy and Springfield in Illinois; Western Kansas; and Rio Grande, which includes parts of Texas and New Mexico.

Red states, and the red parts of Blue states. I'd say this is a precursor to the 2004 elections, which will be very, very ugly.

Although, in my opinion, civil unions is a wedge issue that works for Democrats. Because of the courage of many thousands coming out, the families (can you say Cheney? Gephardt?) who can deny this obvious civil right are in the minority, and the families who practice the kind of demonization Thugs are so very good at are even more so.

We can hope, anyhow.

Since Bush had the infernal gall to first poison New Yorkers by suppressing EPA reports about Manhattan air quality after 9/11, and then to politicize a national tragedy by holding the Republican National Convention in Manhattan on the anniversary of the tragedy, I think it only fitting that Manhattanites give him the kind of welcome he deserves ....

Presumably, despite disclaimers, plans are afoot to have some some functionary lay the cornerstone at the Twin Towers site during the convention.

I suggest that Manhattanites protect the Twin Towers site from Thug exploitation by joining hands to surround it with a human chain. Would need to happen well before the convention... Food and relief would have to be brought to the links in the chain... People would need to bring many video cameras and lots of cell phones that take photographs...

Big (I sure couldn't organize it!) but do-able, and a great image of what this country is really all about—people joining together.

Since it turns out—and could this be a surprise to him?— that his people financed the attack ad on Dean: a crass, narcissistic, vengeful, and monumentally stupid act doesn't help Gephardt and does help Bush.

I sure hope the Dems can clean house before 2004 ....

Remember the hullaballo about the Pentagon program to place bets on terrorist events? Turns out that's already privatized, and administration insiders are making money on it!
Reuters:

The odds on U.S. President George W. Bush being re-elected next year posted their biggest daily gain on Monday after the weekend capture of Saddam Hussein, according to an Irish-based online betting exchange.

Tradesports.com said "futures" contracts on Bush's chances of staying in power for a second term rallied more than 7 percent to 70.7 percent.

The Web site gained notoriety during the U.S.-led war that toppled Saddam as Iraqi president by offering online gamblers the opportunity to place wagers on how long the conflict would last and whether weapons of mass destruction would be found.

Punters were also able to bet on when Saddam would be captured.

"Interestingly, this contract was bid up yesterday before any public announcement was made", said Tradesports.com Chief Executive John Delaney.

I'll say it's interesting! Not to our SCLM though!

So I'm walking to my WiFi hotspot in Philly when I spot the Inky headline through the window in the newspaper box:

Bush: Hussein deserves to die

Wow! 24 hours ago, Bush was going to try Saddam before a tribunal that would "withstand international scrutiny." Today, he knows not only what the verdict, but the penalty should be.

Why the sudden turnabout? It's obvious that Bush simply can't control his emotions.

Bush wants to kill, and what he wants, he gets (divine guidance and all that).

Think this over the top? In fact, we've always half-known that Bush is a killer—but maybe, because of our all-too-American willingness to give others the benefit of the doubt, we've not faced facts squarely.

Think! What about the photos and bios of terrorists kept in a drawer in the Oval Office? One imagines Bush taking them out, at night, and fantasizing... Something it's not easy to think of Reagan doing, or even Nixon, let alone FDR. What kind of a man is Bush?

Think! What about Alberto Gonzales pimping 56 easy kills for Bush in Texas, detailed in The Texas Clemency Memos? What kind of a man signs a death warrant on the basis of "the most cursory briefings"?

Think! What about Bush mocking condemned Christian prisoner Karla Faye Tucker, pursing his lips while saying "Please don't kill me?" What kind of a man jokes like this to a national reporter?

Think! What would you do if your neighbor's child did things like put "firecrackers in the frogs and throw them and blow them up"? (Kristoff, in the Times, now archived behind the green door, quoting childhood Bush friend Terry Throckmorton). You'd try to get that child treatment. Or move away from that family. What kind of a child would do that? What kind of a family would allow him to?

You just have to hear Bush spit "killers" to recognize a classic case of winger projection.

Think! This is the man with whom we have to deal. Beneath the affability, beneath the veneer of "My Utmost to His Highest": a small man, dressed in Floridian "borrow'd robes", desperate to live up to his idolized father, deeply aware that he isn't up to the job and for that very reason all the more vicious to those who oppose him; still at heart the child who likes to "put firecrackers in [living things] and throw them and blow them up," but now the head of the world's most powerful country and licensed to indulge his lust on the grounds of national security... .

Yes, we can dream, can't we?

Still, I was snatched from the farmer's delightful reverie by memories of a book I just finished reading, The Informant, by Kurt Eichenwald. A riveting, nearly incredible story of the Archer Daniels Midland price fixing case of the early 90s and the government witness at its center who secretly taped nearly everything, the book is also a window on what really goes on in the back rooms of the world's most powerful corporations. It should be required reading of anyone claiming to know how corporate execs really talk and act. If Hollywood created characters who talked like Dwayne Andreas' son, Mick, or his counterparts at Ajinomoto and other multinational co-conspirators, wingnuts everywhere would sneer at the crude Marxist dialog ("...ADM's motto: Our competitors are our friends, and our customers are our enemies") and the general uninformed hostility it revealed towards the benevolent stewards of the world economy. As one DOJ lawyer puts it, the ADM tapes will be shown in every first-year law school antitrust class for at least a generation. If only The Smoking Gun would post them for the rest of the world to see.

Anyway, despite the relatively successful, if clumsy prosecution of the case by the Clinton Administration, Eichenwald can't help but observe:

Eventually about thirty different grand juies investigated price-fixing in almost every corner of the food and beverage industry; by 1999, the government had obtained more than $1 billion in fines. In the wake of Harvest King, it has become apparent that price-fixing was a workaday endeavor around the globe, involving scores of corporations and executives.

And yet.

The only person to step forward and reveal these crimes--despite his bizarre reasons for doing so--was Mark Whiteacre. It took someone as deeply troubled as he--a man so reckless he would steal millions of dollars while working for the FBI--to tip the first domino in what has emerged as a multibillion-dollar criminal enterprise.

And that was before the "era of personal responsibility." Something tells me Ken Lay isn't sweating too hard.

A ritual disclaimer issued by a blogger in the hope of preventing comments from being infested by trolls, the irony-free, and the clueless.

Usage example: "Troll prophylactic: Saddam is a really bad person." See also here.

Lolita Baldor of AP writes:

Federal regulators are hoping to persuade Boston and New Hampshire officials to abandon plans to buy cheaper prescription drugs from Canada.

The FDA has repeatedly argued that buying drugs from Canada is illegal and risky because it cannot guarantee the safety and dosages of imported products or Internet sales.

Gosh, those Canadians are dropping like flies, aren't they?

Tells you all you need to know about Bush's phony Medicare bill.

Right out of the box, what happens when the bill is passed? Corporate welfare for Big Pharma, while US citizens who want to get more value for their prescription drugs are turned into outlaws.

Sigh...

"If I can't be the one to run for Pwesident, then nobody can!"

Except for the once and future holder of that office, if current trends among the Dems continue....

"It can't happen here."

Anyhow, let's hope, with the invaluable Orcinus, that it's only "incompetence" that leads Bush to downplay domestic, winger terrorism.

It may seem that one of the real reasons for alarm about the Tyler, Texas cyanide bombers is the sheer size of the arsenal uncovered by FBI agents: 100 explosives, including 60 fully functional pipe bombs, as well as briefcase bombs, land mine components, detonation cord, trip wire, and binary explosives; machine guns and other illegal weapons; some 500,000 rounds of ammunition; a stockpile of chemical agents, including a large quantity of sodium cyanide and acids such as hydrochloric, nitric and acetic acids; and racist, anti-Semitic and antigovernment literature, including William Pierce's Hunter and The Turner Diaries.

The thing is, by right-wing extremist standards, this arsenal may not even be the most impressive ever.

More Bushit.

Evelyn Iritani of the LA Times writes:

Incensed that foreign countries were playing favorites in doling out billions of dollars to build airports, roads and dams, the U.S. became a prime cheerleader for a global agreement on government procurement.

Now, the U.S. stands accused of violating the very pact it worked so hard to create.

The Pentagon said last week that companies from France, Canada and other countries that didn't contribute militarily to the Iraq war would be barred from bidding on $18.6 billion in U.S.-funded reconstruction contracts.

But, but—What about the rule of law?

And what about competition? I thought competition was always good, especially if it might save the taxpayers money?

President Bush, at a news conference Monday, called Saddam "the kind of person that is untrustworthy, and I'd be very cautious about relying upon his word in any way, shape or form."

Projection, anyone?

I'm with Tresy on this one.... Let's forget the Martha Stewart stuff. And the Miss Manners stuff, too!

Exit, pursued by monument loons.

Debt.

Outrageous.

Who knew? Besides you, me, and the troops, I mean.

Yvette Walters, the wife of a Fort Stewart soldier, took a different approach, filing a class-action suit against Heritage Bank after taking out cash advances at annual interest rates of 340 to 592 percent. The bank settled last year by agreeing to pay $1.9 million to more than 11,500 people, many of them military.

What're the odds that this class action is exactly the kind of "frivolous" lawsuit Bush would like to outlaw?

This on top of not getting the troops the kevlar vests that would protect them.

Jim Wasserman of AP writes:

[CALPERS], the nation's largest public pension fund announced Tuesday it is suing the New York Stock Exchange and seven trading firms, alleging fraudulent practices cost it millions of dollars.

And these guys want to privatize Social Security... Why, I wonder.

(One thing you can be sure of: Whoever rippped off the pension money donated a chunk of it to Bush.)

AP:

"I think he ought to receive the ultimate penalty ... for what he has done to his people," the president said. "I mean, he is a torturer, a murderer, they had rape rooms. This is a disgusting tyrant who deserves justice, the ultimate justice. But that will be decided not by the president of the United States but by the citizens of Iraq in one form or another."

More Bushit: "Freedom to do what you need is the freedom to do what I demand."

And yet more Bushit: "Withstanding international scrutiny means withstanding the scrutiny of the only nation that matters: Us."

Sigh... Heck, it took Bush a single news cycle to trash any pretense of a real trial.

This guy can piss away any sense of being fair and high-minded—well, as fast as the Big Dog can unzip... And which'd you rather?

From the LA Times:

The nation's largest homeless district, skid row spans 50 square blocks of downtown Los Angeles. To enter here is to confront a society that is raw, scavenging, extraordinarily complex.

At least 11,000 people bed down here every night, most in some 60 single-room-occupancy hotels established just to house them.

The rest inhabit the sidewalks and the undersides of bridges spanning the Los Angeles River. Their skid row operates 24 hours; its cycles are tied to county checks and busy shelter kitchens.

I'm reminded of Frank Herbert's dictum in Dune (quoting from memory):

Guilt starts as a feeling of failure. The wise ruler provides many opportunities for failure for his populace.

Black is white.

Ignorance is strength.

Brutality is compassion (thanks to alert reader zenjohn for filling in the blank, and alert reader Rash Nussel for the parallel construction).

Hard to think of anything, isn't it?

Personally, my solution for both OBL and Saddam would be to give 'em both talk shows and let 'em both sink slowly into the muck, handling "long time listeners, first time callers" as they go. Ridicule is an excellent antidote to tyranny, eh?

Some Israeli analysts think Saddam was already a captive.

The hole had only one opening. It was not only camouflaged with mud and bricks – it was blocked. He could not have climbed out without someone on the outside removing the covering.

Interesting, if true.

Also interesting is the hysterical winger reaction to (Democrat) Rep.Jim McDermott's comment on Saddam's capture—essentially, "How conv-e-e-e-nient"— while ignoring (Republican) Rep. LaHood's comment in early December that "I know something you don't" on Saddam's capture...

Let's remember—before going all Martha Stewart on this, as Tresy remarks—that Bush and his people truly are people of the lie. Their behavior has been consistent throughout. There's no reason to think they have changed in this instance.

UPDATE: McDermott, says alert reader 537 votes. Mea culpa, the blood is only now returning to the frozen capillaries of my brain...

Gives me hope.

What an astonishing, what an astonishing American musician.

To read liberal blogs over the last few days you'd think Martha Stewart had been guest blogging. Why do we feel compelled to say, over and over, that "it's a good thing" Saddam was captured? After the umpteenth profession of joy, this mantric incantation starts to sound, um, a little forced, notwithstanding the obvious truth of the underlying statement.

If a zoo turns a marauding animal loose on the community, then only belatedly hunts it down after countless unnecessary attacks, everyone would be relieved, but few would think highly of the zookeeper. Certainly the sight of the zoo staff praising the zookeeper for his wisdom and courage would be a matter of no small embarrassment to normal people.

The fact of the matter is that, like Noriega before him, Saddam was a creature of the very people who now have him in custody, a psychopath whose depredations were long of no concern at all. Our many jingoes tell us, when confronted with this fact, that that's a cynical interpretation, that a new-found moral clarity underlies this sudden turnaround, that we're not replacing one pliant kleptocrat with another, but rather correcting an injustice. Fine: then what is called for now is not triumphalism and gloating, but an abject apology. I'm pretty sure the Bible would agree with me. Perhaps Bush, who professes to be a disciple of Christ, can find the relevant passage.

Meanwhile, excuse me if I don't join the hosannas about Saddam's capture. Like loyalty oaths, the fact that we are expected to utter them drains much of the meaning from the act, while simultaneously serving a larger, quite antithetical agenda. If freedom means anything, it means not having to kiss the ruler's ring. This is the example that democratic people have to share with Iraqis. Media-orchestrated cults of personality and shameless historical revisionism, they already know about.

Jodi Wilgoren and Randal Archibald of The Times write:

At the same time, a group of Democrats known informally as a "stop Dean" coalition began running a television advertisement in New Hampshire and South Carolina that shows a photograph of Osama bin Laden with the warning, "It's time for Democrats to start thinking about Dean's inexperience."

From Thugs, we expect this. Well, uh, ....

Update: Ran the Corrente page through HTML Tidy's online tool as Lambert suggested via comments in the First Techno post below.

[ HTML Tidy (online version): enter a blog URL and the page will list all errors on that page. see: http://infohound.net/tidy/ ]

There were 900 "warnings" for the page but most were minor, unclosed tags etc...while some I still don't understand. But if anyone wants to try out HTML Tidy, its a handy tool.

So I made some changes, fixes, and hopefully things will work better. Still some more to do, but currently, the page loads properly in my IE5 browser. So, if anyone continues to have problems... if things look worse, and so on, please continue to let me know. I'll keep running it through the washing machine till I get it cleaned up right.

And thanks to everyone for all the helpful input.

At least one hopes so at the AARP:

AARP, already under fire from within its over-50 membership for endorsing the new Medicare law, is backing out of Social Security forums it agreed to sponsor with the Bush administration and from a group advocating a system overhaul to allow stock market investing. ...

The nation's largest advocacy group for older Americans already faces a backlash from some members for endorsing the Republicans' Medicare legislation. ...

Seniors have been ripping up or burning their AARP membership cards and flooding the group with complaints in what has been characterized as the largest revolt in its ranks in decades.

I mean, the guy who actually killed US citizens?

Safire's peroration on Saddam's forthcoming trial:

But so will the ghosts of poison-gassed Halabja and Iraqi children forced to clear minefields in Iran. The meticulous presentation of his offenses against humanity will demonstrate again that all that would have been necessary for the triumph of evil was for good people to do nothing.

Uh, Bill—who sold Saddam the gas? Bad people doing something, I guess....

The Times opines:

While every effort should be made to maximize Iraqi involvement, Iraq's judicial institutions are too weak to handle the case. Although last week's creation of an Iraqi war crimes tribunal was a promising step, we would suggest this trial be conducted in Iraq under United Nations auspices by international and Iraqi judges. A tribunal picked by Americans would lack legitimacy.

What they said...

Incidentally, it's a little weird that the Iraqi tribunal was set up only last week, especially since the "Governing" Council finds it difficult to agree on anything.

Did the Council (and Bremer, and Bush) know something we didn't?

From Bush's recent press conference:

I believe, firmly believe -- and you've heard me say this a lot, and I say it a lot, because I truly believe it -- that freedom is the almighty God's gift to every person -- every man and woman who lives this in this world. That's what I believe.

....

"Justice was being delivered to a man who defied that gift from the Almighty to the people of Iraq. And justice will be delivered to him in a way that is transparent and for the world to see."

Can someone who knows the lingo Bush's base uses decode this for me?

Leaving aside the issue of whether "gift from God" is the same as "endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights" (I don't think so...):

What does "justice was being delivered" mean? Is justice a pizza?

What does "defied that gift" mean? How on earth do you defy a gift?

Sign me, Puzzled.

I've had some people point out that this page may be displaying wrongly at times. Sidebar links not loading correctly or completely. Sidebar links appearing on the left hand side of the page. Yikes! And other strange aberrations that can only be described in hushed conversation.

The thing is I don't see any of this in my browser. It all looks normal to me. Posts on the left. Sidebar on the right, the whole page loads normally. The colors look ok and the type size looks normal to me. Maybe I'm adnormal? Who's can say for sure?

So please, if you have trouble viewing this page, or reading it, or it fails to load correctly, or does anything weird at all, aside from allowing me to post to it, let me know whats wrong with it in the comments thread so I can perhaps figure out why it's doing what I don't think it's doing.

Does that make sense?

Reuters; WaPo (with multimedia presentation); aWol's speech; and its analyis (he "furrowed" his brow); Dean; Clark.

Now the Bush administration has a chance to gain legitimacy for the war by bringing him before the Hague Tribunal (Herald Trib; Clark) for crimes against humanity (Or an Iraqi one? Depends on whether it's a second Gitmo, or not, doesn't it?) It would be encouraging if we didn't botch this one like we botched the capture of Saddam's sons.

And the questions become:

Will Saddam's capture halt the insurgency? Probably not. Since Saddam didn't have a phone with him in his hidey-hole...

What about the WMDs? In Syria? Where? Maybe now we can start planting those weapons... And get Saddam to regurgitate at a show trial... Yeah, that's the ticket...

Where is Saddam now? An "unknown location," says CBS. Although apparently with Iraqi Governing Council visited him before he left.

Who will be the first winger to say that "those who opposed the war were wrong"? (Respectful of Otters)

And what about OBL? (Daily Kos)

And who's the enemy now? (the base needs one!, says Atrios)

For the sake of all those who sold Saddam his weapons, where's Jack Ruby when we need him? (stranger, via Atrios).

Now that we've captured the bad guy, can we go?

Who authored the keen name for the operation, Operation Red Dawn?

And, oh yeah, what about the 2004 election? (Reuters) Given that a week is a long time in politics (Newsweek), what about it? Lieberman seems to think capturing Saddam has made the world a "less dangerous place." Huh? Meanwhile, Clark is testifying in the Milosevic trial—rule of law, anyone?

Oh, the bottom line: From aWol's speech, it's "The Forever War":

The war on terror is a different kind of war, waged capture by capture, cell by cell, and victory by victory.

Meanwhile, Bush calls it "an enchanting day." Well, I suppose "enchanting" is an improvement on "fabulous."

It's Crapatistic, whose moving report of a death and a funeral is espcially poignant to consider this morning. If you've read it already, go read it again. And no, I don't mean that the loss Clonecone memorializes here cheapens the arrest of Saddam Hussein. That is the one event, in this wretched mess, that is an unalloyed good. And as much as Andrew Sullivan will have begun to imagine, immediately upon hearing the news of this capture, on the unclean thoughts running through the minds of decadent leftwing critics of Bush's Iraq policy, he will have been wrong, but will be unable to see that the unclean thoughts are all his own.

And Rivka of "Respectful of Otters," and isn't that a wonderful title for a blog. Actually, I'm just adding my two cents of approval to that of Tresy's below in regards to her wonderful analysis of why, in addition to all the other reasons that the new Medicare bill is a certifiable disaster for seniors, for health in general, for the cause of affordable prescription medicine, for the future of Medicare, it is also a disaster, it turns out, for AIDS patients. And from the many other interesting posts already up there, one gets the impression that Rivka is something of an otter (belongs on the list of everyone's favorite animals) herself.

And Peter at "Kick The Leftist," whose insight about "big music," previously liinked to by Digby, is the kind of original, previously unnoticed-but-waiting-to-be-noticed observation about a much discussed topic that are the real joy of reading blogs. Peter does a similarly excellent job on the peculiar idiocy of Gregg Easterbrook, and has a delightful answer to a WorldNetDaily letter about the possible consequences had there been an abortion clinic somewhere in Bethlehem, and had Mary and Joseph been pro-choice.

We're all "objectively pro-Communist" now.

I like it when Digby gets mad. Look here now. What Digby is trying to tell y'all is that democracy, especially the campaign political exercise of the democratic process is a roller-coaster ride. It's a rollicking yee-haw zoo-plane kick out the jams get naked full tilt boogie shit slingin' orgy. And thats how it should be. Thats the way it works.

And what Digby is also reminding us of, should you be lost in the lu-lu land of some instant breakfast victory, is thus: most of the hard-core internet only political fan base, at least on the left, is a small minority of of the electorate. Weez blog travelers have a long ways to go to convince a whole shitload of peoples that they should vote for our guy, be it Howard Dean or Wes Clark or Dennis K. or John K.....or any other candidate.

Recall here that only 51% of the people in this country voted for anyone in the 2000 Presidential election. How many of that 51% do you think read blogs and keep track of the roil-n-rock of day to day politics on a day to day basis? Eh? Not many would be my guess. That leaves a pretty big artic zone out there that demands discovery. At the least, more than half the Voter Age Persons reflected in that 51%. Those VAPs are going to become important at some point, because they are going to vote, and no-one should forget it. Not to mention the mining opportunities available in the other 49% of the non voting wasteland.

And furthermore, it ain't over till the fat lady sings. And that goes for primary politics as well as the race to the final curtain. And I'm not interested in seeing a fire alarm pulled half way through the primary rehearsal because I like the fat ladies and I like to hear all the fat ladies singing. Ok?

So. May all the fat ladies sing on behalf of the same show. But may all the best fat ladies sing their own best songs and may the best fat lady get the part. Thats the way it works. Hopefully. Then we gotta sell the tickets to the opening night and fill all those seats month after month until we bump the Bush Follies from the big marquee.

Its a sobering thought. So go sober up with Digby for a spell.

Digby: Friends In High Places

Digby: Virtual Democracy

Then maybe I'll tell ya about what it was like to be a bellringer for George McGovern's 1972 campaign. We thought we were invincible too.

Bush is a post turtle: Thanks to Pansypoo

While suturing a laceration on the hand of a 70-year-old Texas rancher (whose hand had caught in a gate while working cattle), a doctor and the old man were talking about George W. Bush being in the White House.

The old Texan said, "Well, ya know, Bush is a 'post turtle'."

Not knowing what the old man meant, the doctor asked him what a post turtle was. The old man said, "When you're driving down a country road, and you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that's a post turtle.

The old man saw a puzzled look on the doctor's face, so he continued to explain, "You know he didn't get there by himself, he doesn't belong there, he can't get anything done while he's up there, and you just want to help the poor dumb thing get down."

Posted by GloriaSmith on Fri Dec-12-03 12:26 AM
Forum Name The DU Lounge
Topic subject Joke: Bush is a post turtle
Topic URL

Ha! Well, ok, so he's actually gotten a whole lotta really horrible dumb things done while he's up there. Maybe some Party, needs to tend to their fence posts a little more often.

While I'm at it: Art.

so far no calls from the FBI

58 more Bush weeks to go
58 Bush weeks to go
Gore for Dean
shut up Joe
58 more Bush weeks to go.

From: Pansypoo's personal poetry post

Dear Anti-Christ,

America's Constitution is founded on the right and wrong of the Holy Scriptures. The worship of "other gods" is judged by God to be immoral. ("If your own full brother, or your son or daughter, or your beloved wife, or your intimate friend, entices you secretly to serve other gods, whom you and your fathers have not known, gods of any other nation, near at hand or far away, from one end of the earth to another..blah blah... kill him. Deut. 13: 7-10) Therefore, killing your entire family and everyone in your neighborhood or apartment building because they worship "other gods" is a moral issue.

Since before the founding of America and the writing of our Constitution and laws, the worship of "other gods" has been judged immoral by nature, societies and nations. Therefore, it is on all counts, immoral. It is not just a new "discrimination" as Osama bin Laden might have you believe. Previously, Anabaptists and Anglicans and Quakers and Jews and Native Americans and labor union activists and immigrants beholden to a foreign beast and modern medicine and decorating Christmas trees and getting married to people with different skin color and allowing women to vote and attending movie shows on Sunday and dancing and drinking alcoholic beverages and wearing skirts above the knee and riding kitty cats through the moonlight on Easter morning had not been accepted as normal, moral or legal, but are now being strongly promoted in our country. Look at nature! Do you see creatures, other than man, decorating Christmas trees or attending movie shows on Sunday or riding kitty cats through the moonlight on Easter morning? Of course not.

We are not humans, we are animals!

Yours in the hot spotlight of Christ,
Pastor Smitty Bellows
First Church of the Prairie Loon
Bozeman, Montana

ed note: Yeeks, huh? Continuing coverage (and further explanation) from Jeff at Speedkill. Or see specific links below.

See: more gems from the Bozeman public

See: so it begins

Recording industry corporate weasels harrassing the parents of children who download music from the internet? Might lawsuits aimed at the parents of these children have some negative financial impact on the welfare of those children? Toss some RIAA geek into the hoosegow for a couple of months for endangering the welfare of a child. Let em think of it as an "educational" experience. They can learn a couple of Blues tunes while they're at it.

I have mixed feelings about the whole music download thing, for the same reason I have problems with the cheap bozo who purchases a book from a bookstore, reads it, and returns it for a full refund inside the thirty day return limit. But in this case we're talking kids, who don't understand the pros and cons and intricacies of such trade. So leave the kids alone RIAA. Go pick on someone your own size you greedy playground stalking bullies.

The industry blames illegal downloading of music for slumping sales of CDs.

Maybe the "music" industry should stop churning out oceans of mindless mass marketed tweeny-pop garbage that they market to 13 year olds at 18 bucks per CD. Did it ever occur to these music industry vermin that most of the children they aggressively target aren't running around with $18 burning a hole in their pocket, and that might account to some extent for "slumping sales" and internet downloads. I'm no economics genius, thats for sure, but maybe they should try selling their shitty products to people who actually have some money.

Kick the Leftist offers more on the subject.

I'm feel sorry for the music industry. They've now sued the family of a 13-year old who downloaded songs off the Internet. It's unfortunate that so many of these suits are aimed at poverty-stricken families.

Thats all. I gotta go video-record twenty hours of I Married a Sleazy Corporate Music Industry Executive and a hundred hours of hideous Classic Rock radio programming which I intend to hand out as Christmas presents to people I dislike. If the RIAA or the VCR-police or whoever the hell else is out there prowling around in the webbery, doesn't like it, too bad for them. Come and get me you dirty bastards!

And thats my 2 cent download on that.

Since Ted Koppel and the rest of our betters have decided that "boring" stuff like Medicare is barely worth covering, it's left to folks like Rivka of the new blog Respectful of Otters to help us understand the screwing over we're getting on so many levels. Check out Rivka's post on the ramifications of Medicare "reform" on HIV treatment here.

What all of this means, in the end, is that the cost of prescription drugs for people with HIV will be pushed back onto state AIDS Drug Assistance Programs. And ADAPs are already so overloaded and underfunded that many states arerationing access to AIDS drugs - including, thanks to Gov. Schwarzenegger, California. From now on, in California as in poorer states such as West Virginia, new HIV patients won't be able to get their drugs paid for by the state until an existing patient dies or gets private health insurance. And that'sbefore all the Medicare/Medicaid patients get kicked back into ADAP.

It's an unmitigated disaster.

Another unmitigated disaster from a miserable failure. Did I mention that Bush is unelectable?

Seems that even the "winners" in Bush's game of Musical Chairs are finding out what a Bush promise is worth:

Though the [Iraq contract] policy was intended to reward allies, officials from some key coalition countries say they are unhappy because the business they thought they were promised in return for support has failed to materialize and they do not expect the decision to change that.

Elena Poptodorova, Bulgaria's ambassador to the United States, said that her country has received no subcontracts for work in Iraq. Romania, the Baltic nations, Slovakia and others in Eastern Europe share the disappointment, she said.

Take a number and get in line, lady.

"A party with a plan and a ferocious will to win?"

I hope citizens are giving the Dems an earful over the holiday recess. So far as I can tell—resisting the worst of Bush's winger court-packing aside—the Dems roll over, put their paws in the air, and start wriggling whenever Bush tickles their belly with the tip of his boot.

What was Teddy thinking, that he could work with Bush on Medicare?

What was Daschle doing, that the AARP fucks over its own members on Medicare and hands Bush a "victory" giveaway to big pharma that doesn't allow people to buy cheaper drugs today and doesn't kick in 'til 2006?

What's Pelosi doing? The Thugs try to arrest Dems right on Capitol Hill, hold fifteen minute votes open for three hours so members can get their arms twisted (or get bribed) and we don't hear about this every day? Barney Frank says in WaPo that this means the end of partliamentary democracy—as it does—and so he does what? Goes home to his Mom!

Can't the Dems running for President that are are on the Hill (Lieberman, Kerry, Edwards, and whoever else) get out of circular firing squad mode? Couldn't they get together and compete on how Bush sucks, and how they'll fix it? Wouldn't they look better, wouldn't the party look better?

And where's the ridicule? President Flight Suit stages another stunt on Turkey Day, everything about it is fake—from the flight plan to the turkey itself to the troops who have to eat MREs because Chimpy's fluffers thought they were security risks—and the Dems don't call him on it! Where are the jokes? Heck, where are the attack ads? People get this stuff, since they're smart enough to read between the lines. Do the Dems? Are there signs of intelligent life in their universe?

The Pennsylvania Tourism Board has a new slogan (or so I hear): "Philly: What the @#$&#%!"

That's how I feel about the Dems.

I've got to drink coffee with a FUX news logo on it cause the winger's had a good idea to propagandize on that medium. Where's the guerilla marketing to substitute cups 60% of the city's voters could vote for? For that matter, where's that liberal radio station I keep hearing about?

Dems: What the @#$&#%!

Get it together, guys! Haven't you figured out there's something more at stake besides your offices and perks?

Not that W the Pooh's Lunar Expotition would be Yet Another Bait and Switch operation, or anything. Oh no.

The headline: aWol serves up a platter of streaming crap

The image:



And now the steamy story comes out. In today's WaPo:

Stars and Stripes is blowing the whistle on President Bush's Thanksgiving visit to Baghdad, saying the cheering soldiers who met him were pre-screened and others showing up for a turkey dinner were turned away.

The paper also published a letter to the editor from Sgt. Loren Russell, who wrote of the heroism of his soldiers and then added: "[I]magine their dismay when they walked 15 minutes to the Bob Hope Dining Facility, only to find that they were turned away from their evening meal because they were in the wrong unit. . . . They understand that President Bush ate there and that upgraded security was required. But why were only certain units turned away?"

Russell added that his soldiers "chose to complain amongst themselves and eat MREs, even after the chow hall was reopened for 'usual business' at 9 p.m. As a leader myself, I'd guess that other measures could have been taken to allow for proper security and still let the soldiers have their meal."

Phew! What's that smell?

Everything is Beautiful!

Dixon Boardman, New York socialite and CEO of the Optima Fund of New York and Bermuda was in Washington last week. Boardman and his stunning wife, Princess Arriana von Hohenlohe, were guests of Lea and Wayne Berman at their Whitehaven home for a small dinner party.

Dixon married the beautiful Arriana — whose father, Prince Alfonso von Hohenlohe, developed the stunningly beautiful resort at Marbella, Spain — at a big wedding on the Costa del Sol this summer. Dixon was married for years to Pauline Boardman, pretty darn beautiful herself. (Their daughters Samantha and Serena are immensely popular in New York’s young social set.) Pauline and Dixon divorced in 1999, and Dixon rewrapped himself in his almost legendary mantle as a lady killer.

[...]

Lea Berman has left as Lynne Cheney’s aide and is quietly working on the Bush - Cheney reelection team.

[...]

Wayne has been a successful lobbyist and international business consultant who was an assistant secretary of commerce and close to Commerce Secretary Bob Mosbacher in the first Bush administration. ~ Boardman’s charmed life

Typical snooty pampered Hollywood elitist liberals. They ain't like the rest of us small business owner reg'ler workin' folks you know.

---

Freedom French Club

Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio), who, as chairman of the Committee on Administration, ordered the three House cafeterias to change french fries to "freedom fries" and French toast to "freedom toast," has joined the caucus....

The "French Caucus" that is.

...35 members have signed on, including Rep. Billy Tauzin (R-La.) and Sen. John Warner (R-Va.) 'French Caucus' is in full effect

---

Santorum Sanatorium

Senate Republican Conference Chairman Rick Santorum, who has decided to move the annual GOP legislative retreat from previous sites at the exclusive Greenbrier Resort in West Virginia and in historic Williamsburg, Va., to his home state’s largest city.

All Republican House and Senate members are expected to attend the multiday event, which begins Jan. 29 at the luxurious Loews Hotel in downtown Philly, along with spouses, top staffers and administration officials.

[...]

The hotel where lawmakers will plan their legislative agenda boasts Cartier clocks and bank-vault upcoming doors, as well as "sleek polished black granite, carved glass, and rich rare woods," according to its website.

Days naturally will be packed with strategy sessions, though members will surely find time in the evenings to relax and explore the City of Brotherly Love.

But let's hope they don't make the same mistake Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) did when he ordered one of Philly’s famed cheese steaks with Swiss cheese instead of the locally preferred Cheez Whiz. ~ Santorum: in Philadelphia

John Kerry, where does he think he is, Costa del Sol? Next thing you know he'll be wantin' a ginger ale in one of them fancy carved glasses like they have at that Hotel with all them carts full of clocks. You know, that place where that Rich Rare Woods fella works. Stupid elitist liberals can't even eat the same food as the rest of us.

Kerry says, "Dean also supported war in Iraq! See, he's as gullible as I was! Vote for me!"

Problem is, despite AP's best efforts to convince readers otherwise, the difference between Biden-Lugar and the one ultimately approved by Congress was significant, significant enough in fact that the Bushies determined to sink the former, with the help of Kerry, Lieberman and Gephardt. As Seth Ackerman writes in The New Republic, a magazine not known for its pro-Dean sympathies:

[T]he Biden-Lugar resolution was an attempt by the eponymous senators last fall to tether the war authorization to some form of multilateral cooperation. Most importantly, it required President Bush to return to Congress and argue that war was immediately necessary if he considered U.S. security hopelessly mired in fruitless U.N. diplomacy. Gephardt instead endorsed Bush's preferred resolution, which contained no such encumbrances. And with Gephardt's support, Bush was able to hold up his resolution as a true product of bipartisan compromise, effectively killing Biden-Lugar.

Although Dean hasn't made this argument yet, Bush's refusal to accept even Biden-Lugar's mild fetters should have signaled to anyone with half a brain what the Administration's real agenda was, and why any further cooperation with the White House was a sucker's bet. Dean apparently got that; the others didn't.

Jim P, the heart and mind that has given us The Rittenhouse Review, as well as TRR, "the lighter side of Rittenhouse," which together, over the years, has put out as much copy as a lot of weekly magazines, and of much higher quality, got mugged Monday night. Maybe you've heard. I hadn't. I just realized this morning that I hadn't checked in on The Review this week, and one click brought me face to face with Jim's quiet, steely description of what happened.

No, he wasn't mugged by "reality," as Jim is careful to point out, he was mugged by a mugger.

Jim downplays the loss; thankfully, he didn't sustain any bad physical injuries. But all muggings are injurious. To be subject to the physical force of another who has undoubtedly had to dehumanize you in order to assert that force is an awful experience. One of the worst things about it is the sense of isolation it can leave one with; irony of ironies, as if the mugger has, for a moment, discharged his own isolation onto his victim. Nor are bright assurances that we all know and understand "what you're going through," necessarily either true, or helpful.

So, I'm not sure what to do to let Jim know he's not alone, or that we don't want him to feel that he is, even if he is...except perhaps to say that a bad thing happened to a very good man, who is also a damn fine writer and a wonderful wit, and whose moral compass is always worth consulting.

The Rittenhouse Review is a wonderful enterprise; an example of personal journalism that would have brought a smile to IF Stone's sly puss. But one paid for IF Stone's Weekly, so I'm glad to see that Jim has finally installed a PayPal button, to allow devoted readers to help defray costs whenever they can. A better bargain than that doesn't exist.

Marriage, scandal, sex, "unusual acts done with love motive."
War and heroes and sports and conquests, phony flight suits, cakewalks, millionaires & billionaires, power and privilege and greed and fashion and gossip and innuendo and Hollywood celebrity pop, and Nokia phones, dot.com bubbles, and murder and mayhem, designer drugs, fat ballerinas, shark attacks, freeway car chases, blowjobs, terror, fear..... "primitive emotions".

All bright, snappy, interesting stories delivered up by perky snappy well dressed go-getters. Young clean and athletic. Movers and shakers. The dippity-doo news gigglers @ MSNBCNNFOX.con and elsewhere are on the job 24/7. Yes siree. You betcha'. A fountain of babble gurgled up by a handful of pasty old white conservative geezers and company men, the occasional hunky guy, and the omnipresent gaggle of bubbly wide-eyed TV-News dollybirds who all look and act like they were plucked fresh each moring from the sales floor at Abercrombie and Fitch. Like totally.

Formulated stuff for sure. So where did all this shallow-end pool-splasher journalism come from? And who is buying this collective junk?

Perhaps it's not so much different from dangling cheap costume jewlery in front of a throng of teengae girls or instigating a towel snapping fight in a boys locker room following a wrestling match. Who knows. I don't want to think about it to be honest but I did run across the item below. Let me know if the formula sounds familiar. (bold emphasis mine)

The principles of Hearst Journalism, as set forth in a memorandum for the reporters of the Washington Times.

[--- begin memorandum ---]

The Washington Times should be full of bright, snappy, interesting local stories.

We have a natural tendency to place emphasis on matters which are ponderous, dull and uninteresting. We must resist this tendency.

We must consider the COMPOSITE newspaper reader does not care a hang about tax rates, budgets, insurance, disarmament, naval appropriations, public utilities policies, municipal improvements, or scores of other subjects which may appear to be important.

Newspaper readers are most interested in stories which contain the elements most dominant in the primitive emotions of themselves, namely:

1. Self-Preservation.
2. Love, or Reproduction.
3. Ambition.

Stories containing one of these elements are good; those which contain two of the elements are better; those which contain all three elements form first-class newspaper material.

Self-Preservation - Under this heading come stories of murder, suicide, rescues, accidents, fights, facts as to health, food, liquor, etc.

Love, or Reproduction - This element is contained in stories of marriage, scandal, divorce, human triangles, romances, unusual acts done with love motive, jealousy, sex attraction, etc.

Ambition - The ambition element is contained in articles tending to stimulate the reader to emulate the activity of a character in a story. Sports come under this classification.

The ambition element is aroused, also, by the mystery factor in a story. Mystery forms a challenge to the intelligence, and it thus stimulates the reader to buy further editions to note whether his solution, perhaps unconsciously made, is verified.

For example: The Hall-Mills story contained all three major-interest elements. The killings provided the self-preservation element. The intimacy of the preacher with Mrs. Mills introduced the love element. The mystery of who did the killings, why and how, challenged the intelligence and fired the reader's ambition to solve the problem.

Let us write stories for the COMPOSITE reader.

Let us minimize stories which do not carry the major-interest elements. Let us disregard, or cover perfunctorily, subjects which are merely important, but not interesting.

Let the same principals apply to headline writing, selection and editing of telegraph news and departmental features.

A bonus of $5 will be paid for the best written local story each week, until further notice. The city editor will be the judge.

A bonus of $5 will be paid the copy desk for the best headline of the week. This will be awarded by a vote of the copy editors, the head of the desk to cast two votes if necessary to break a tie.

- Avery C. Marks, Jr.

Sounds familiar doesn't it?
The "memorandum" above, issued to employees of the Washington Times (a Hearst newspaper at the time), was reprinted, 76 years ago, in the December 1927 issue of the American Mercury.

Just goes to show ya....the more things change the more they stay the same. Or history is condemned to repeat itself - or some people never learn. Or whatever the hell it is they say.

---

"This is a commercial enterprise. This is not PBS. We're not here as a public service. We're here to make money. We sell advertising, and we do it on the premise that people are going to watch. If you don't cover the miners because you want to do a story about a debt crisis in Brazil at the time everybody else is covering the miners, then Citibank calls up and says, 'You know what? We're not renewing the commercial contract.' I mean it's a business." ~ CNN anchor Jack Cafferty, on "American Morning", [Published January 3, 2002 by FAIR's Media Beat

Gore's endorsement of Dean is bound to send the press Heathers into paroxysms of facile comparisons, all of them designed to resurrect their Golden Oldie smears. It's not as if they have been waiting for Gore to trot them out:

* Crazy? Check.
* Liar? Check.
* Elitist faux populist? Check.
* Doesn't know who he is? Check.
* Extremist? Check.

I actually hope they try; it will make them bigger targets. Not only does Bush need to go down, so, too, do the lazy lying liars who've degraded journalism and made Bushism possible. Dean shows he's willing to take the fight to the enemy, and Gore seems to have belatedly recognized it too. Millions of decent people have gotten wise to this crap. This is a fight that needs to happen eventually. Bring it on.

I just revisited the Pledge, and it doesn't appear to preclude my pointing out this loathesome remark by Lieberman yesterday:

Clinton made our party once again fiscally responsible, pro-growth, strong on, on values, for middle class tax cuts; and Howard Dean is against all of those. (emphasis added)

I really don't want to think we're sinking to code words about civil unions, since Lieberman actually has a halfway decent track record on gay rights. (So, of course, did Clinton, DOMA aside.) But what else are we supposed to think? That Dean is soft on Eminem?

The rest of the comment isn't much better.

Being squirreled away in the snowy northeast liberal occupation zone I almost forgot that there was another election rolling up the beach in California.

Mayoral runoff bigger than S.F. / RACE OUTCOME COULD AFFECT PENINSULA, OTHER CITIES WITH COMMON INTERESTS / By Renee Koury / Mercury News.

Shystee should have more on this SF race but I've not been able to access the blog this morning. So keep trying. Somethings gotta give eventually, and it can't hurt to keep trying. Know what I mean?

Slacktivist can tell you why the bigger picture matters with respect to the corrosive nature of fundamentalist Christian end-timer prophecy story-time hucksterism. And why there is more to the message than meets the easy reader eye.

I have, as a kind of antidote, been re-reading Jane Jacobs' The Death and Life of Great American Cities. This is a whipsmart book that I hope will serve as a prophylactic against the potential intellect-eroding effects of LaHaye and Jenkins' stupefying work.

But why take the risk at all? Why expose myself and the readers of this blog to the potentially toxic foolishness of Left Behind?

Because LB is more than simply a wretched novel. It is a wretched novel with serious consequences.

[...]

At a very basic level, this worldview opposes and undermines any long-term thinking, any sustained effort to make the world a better place -- replacing the hope of redemption with a perverse longing for apocalypse.

LaHaye's Left Behind series is of course colorable nonsense.
But colorable nonsense has never been an obstacle to the wowsers who bow on knee in the shadow of the Great Crayon. Just ask Hal Lindsey. Better yet, just go read: L.B.: Welcome to the Hellmouth

James O. Goldsborough on the Brooks mutiny and the leaky "conservative" ship of fools.

In our quest to understand, to give the word "conservative" meaning, we return to the roots. Edmund Burke is recognized as the first conservative, whose pro-monarchist, anti-democratic views in England would give birth to the Conservative Party. Whigs, by contrast, were progressives who sought to weaken the monarchy.

To be conservative in Burke's time was to defend traditional things – values, institutions, above all the pound sterling, for society's stability was built on bonds. Change was the enemy, which led to unrest, even revolt, the enemy of tradition, of conservatism.

[...]

Our distillation of conservatism leaves the vat almost empty. Economic conservatism is gone, and social conservatism under attack. What's left to bind together the fraying brotherhood, to keep government halls filled with dyspeptic fulminators and the airwaves with angry ranters?

Even robbed of doctrine, conservatives have a unique glue to bind them together. It is the thing that identifies them in every setting and separates them from others. It is the one thing left in the vat when all else is boiled away, disappeared into the ether.

It is their anger, anger at a world that doesn't fit their ideas of it, that will evolve as it sees fit.

Read full article, mirrored here -- What's Left of Conservative Values?
by James O. Goldsborough

Grassroots documentary filmmaking in America. The American Consensus Project rolls on.....

Filmmakers from around the US are interviewing people from their communities. The result will be a documentary film detailing the answers we heard.

Seeking Volunteers

We need volunteers. Less than a month after the outreach began, the project has attracted interest from filmmakers across the country. We still need more. Anyone is invited to help out, but we particularly need filmmakers from the Midwest and Mountain West. Have a look around the site; if this is something you're interested in, let us know.

The American Consensus Project
http://americanconsenus.genfoods.net

"They were going to look at war, the red animal - war, the blood swollen god." ~ Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage

Tipton, Iowa is planning the largest funeral the town has ever witnessed.

[...]

We've been given so many reasons why this war was so necessary. The goalpost have moved so many times that I don't know what the objective is anymore. Weapons of mass destruction, Al Quida connections, enforcement of UN sanctions human rights violations, the freedom of the Iraqi people...they all read like a mission statement in the Halliburton quarterly report. What I do know is the price is too high. And not just for Tipton.

Please, continue reading entire post: What is the point?

Also featured this week via The Truth Laid Bear's New Webblog Showcase

Who will nominate Max Cleland's replacement on that 9/11 Commission?

Guess what? It's none other than Tom Daschle. A usually reliable friend just emailed me this information.

Who better for Sen. Daschle to nominate than someone from the 9/11 Families' Steering Committee, which, I believe, is the group that has refused to stop asking questions about precisely what it is the Commission is supposed to be investigating.

Why not one of those four "battling" moms Gail Sheehy profiled in the NY Observer back in August?

There's still another five months or so to go before the Commission report will be produced.

Call Daschle's office and let him know what a terrific idea this is, on every possible level, not least, politically. What could be wrong about inviting one of those American citizens most profoundly affected by 9/11 to take a place at the table?

Follow up with an email that includes the url to the Sheehy article.

Here are the numbers: (800) 839-5276 or (800) 648-3516 or Fax
(202) 224-6603

And once again, here's the link to Juan's Contacting Congress, which will allow you to find the webpage of any member of congress, where you will find instructions on how to email.

If you like this suggestion, by all means, let others know, including other bloggers.

Hi, its farmer family Monday again and this Monday is all about feeding wild birds.

Many of you survived the massive weekend snowstorm that dumped nearly 65 inches of snow on parts of the Northeast. Many of you didn't. If you didn't, then just ignore this post. But if you did, then you are probably wondering how you can attract wild nuthatches and woodpeckers and chickadees to your backyard bird feeder stations. Thats why I'm endorsing the GW Bush Nutroll SuetCake* feeder. The birds will love it and if you're one of the few folks out there who have never experienced the awesome power of a downy woodpecker as it batters away at your forehead for hours upon hours at a time then you are in for a real treat! And so are the downy woodpeckers. So get your George W Bush Suetcake Nutroll today and enjoy the savage brutal feeding frenzy that ensues.

Note: The GW Bush Nutcake Suethead WeevilRoll may attract squirrels. If your George W Bush suetcake nut-head is attacked by squirrels I suggest that you do not interfere. Viscious squirrel attacks can prove to be educational and entertaining experiences, but hungry squirrels are dangerous and can turn ugly when provoked. I personally was attacked by a half a dozen squirrels while hiking the Appalachian Trail, in 1977, in search of my hermetic nomadic grandparents. I never did find my grandparents but the memories and physical scars of the attack will live with me forever.

So. Just dangle your GW nutroll outside your window and stand back and let nature take it's toll.

suitable for year round use in any climate

I'm still waiting for my Hiller Hornet "fly-bug" to be delivered, so, another sack race sprint to the moon doesn't really interest me much. Whats more, considering the characters who would be poking their fingers into this pie, I'm apt to think that any kind of "space race" to anywhere, at least at this point, under this administration, would be turned into little more than a clever PR gimmick by the current administration and their fellow travelers to tweak the public's sleepy romanticized notions of some lost retro-atomic America, while simultaneously shoveling money out the back door to Defense Contractors and National Missle Defense initiative boosteroos. Lets not forget that space cadet Rumsfeld is the guy who chaired the right-wing defense hawk Committe for the Free World (CFW) in the late 80's. CFW's purpose was, in part, to pimp Reagan's SDI programs. By 1996 Rummy was back at it again, this time the chairman of the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missle Threat to the United States. Rumsfeld's Commission eventually produced the "Rumsfeld Report" which earned, in 1998, Frank Gaffney's Center for Security Policy (CSP) "Keeper of the Flame" Award. The award given to Rumsfeld by the CSP was a salute to his efforts to renew interest in the old Reagan SDI, and later renamed NMD, programs. For more on CFW, CSP, the "Rumsfeld Report" etc... see: The American Prospect, February 26, 2001, "Darth Rumsfeld", by Jason Vest.

That aside, I'm still not sure why a space race to the moon is really necessary. And why does it have to be to the moon? Why not stick a big space pylon out there and race around the pylon and back? You know, like some kind of cosmic catamaran dash. Probably be more cable-tv friendly too. If we hurry up we can kick it off by early next Summer. Load up a rocketship with Rummy, W, Dick, Rove, and a dozen Bush Ranger fundraiser clodhoppers and a couple of cases of bourbon and let em whoop it up while chasing a handful of Chinamen around the pylon. Maybe if we're lucky they'll miss the post and go hurdling of into deep space and be sucked into a space worm hole. Hey, I'm entitled to my sci-fi fantasies too! Maybe I'm just being to cynical on this one. I dunno. In any case, i'm still waiting for my fly-bug, where the hell is my "Hiller Hornet" fly-bug! And while I'm waiting for that thing to show up in my driveway why not have a race to build a better public elementary school. Right here on earth! What a futuristic concept.

NTodd at Dohiyi Mir also has some thoughts on the back to the moon subject:

But then I think: why the hell is Bush talking about going to the Moon? Is he trying to cloak himself in comparisons to JFK? Is he trying to distract us from Iraq? Domestic trouble? I'm sorry, but I'm so cynical at this point that I must consider "what political gain would Bush get from this?" I can't imagine any other reason for Bush to consider a renewed mission. --- Read full post here: A Little Closer To Earth

Likewise Keith at Invisible Library offers his unique take: Be careful though, hes playin' with your mind, man.

Everyone in the Blogosphere is talking about President Gore?s announcement this week to start a new Space Race with China but I want to add my two cents worth to the aether.--- See: Dispatches From an Alternate America: President Gore?s Mission to the Moon

ITEM Feminism. Jeff at Speedkill makes this point and asks this question:

"The objectification of women just seems to come from a drive to sell more shampoo or whatever, so why did it get dumped on feminism."

Yeah, good question. Probably for the same reason that feminism took the fall for Heffner's Playboy bunnies and swinging bachelor pads. I suppose in part this "objectification" charge got dumped into the lap of feminism (at least in the case Speedkill points too) because feminism is a hot button heads we win tails you loose gambit for so many conservatives. A bastardized characterization conservatives like to apply as a cartooned generalization of the entire feminist movement. (As Speedkill also noted.)

The conservative's have our cake and eat it too cartoon suggests that the feminist movement somehow unleashed legions of unholy sex crazed sirens upon the land and therefore it should be no wonder that female sexuality is used to sell everything from chainsaws to cheap beer. Despite many feminist groups outward criticism of such practice. While at the same time these same titilation-fearin' conservatives don't seem to have any problem with nubile seventeen year old cheerleaders in mini-skirts bending over and hopping around on a high school football field in Texas like so many crotch crickets in a summer meadow. And when was the last time you were subjected to some mind-numbing harangue from some NASCAR daddio declaring he will no longer attend the ClusterFuck 5000, or whatever it is, because all them Daisy Duke feminazis with bodacious ta-tas, wearing sunglasses and shorty shorts, like to get uppity and pour Coors Light all down the front of their sheer nipple hugging t-shirts. Yes siree, thats just the thing that'll send your average Republican voting angry white guy gear-head dood scurrying for the saftey of the nearest Southern Baptist Convention sanctuary. Those damn feminist sluts are destroying family value NASCAR driving to no-where events!

Uh oh.......via Lilith at A Rational Animal --- World Nut Daily has this newsflash.

ELECTION 2004 - Bush faces new enemy: Sexy American babes -Scantily clad women join forces to strip president from office. [...] If there's any truth to the belief "Sex sells," then President Bush could have an additional political enemy to deal with in the upcoming election year: American babes. 'Babes Against Bush' seeking regime change
A group of scantily clad Michigan women calling themselves "Babes Against Bush" is joining forces to strip the commander in chief from office and have some fun in the process. "We figured that this was a good, fun way to make people aware of the damage George Bush is doing to America," says spokeswoman Eleanor Vast-Binder. "Guys like hot girls. So maybe they wouldn't mind getting the message from us."

I hope these feminist tarts don't infect NASCAR racing and Country Music with their tawdry commercialized ass wiggling filth. What will we tell the children then? Next thing you know our daughters will be turned into foul mouthed no-nonsense danger thugs sneaking out of the house at night in search of international "hotspots"!

As Oracle, she was even a member of the Justice League. In Birds of Prey, she sends agents to hotspots to fix problems before they become too massive. She's efficient, intelligent, and the fact that she happens to be stuck in a wheelchair is secondary to the strength of the character.

Continuing in the vein of folks I wouldn't really want to hang out with, but love to read, would be Deena Pilgrim from Powers. A tough, no-nonsense cop who's in way over her head but keeps up anyway. Foul-mouthed and angry, she's the right person to handle the giant Christian Walker. Petite and powerful, Deena proves that big things do come in small packages... even confronting a being with the power of a god in her last (as of this writing) appearance in the book.

Jabberin' jumpin' Jeezis! What'd I tell ya. Elayne Riggs has more superhero horrors.

ITEM: BlogAmy notes: "Hey folks, I just saw that our Coalition friend Pen-Elayne is up for a vote! - Blog Awards 2003"

ITEM: Upyernoz at Rubber Hose has a message for every one of those loopy TV weather persons who announce that some kind of end-timer prophecy is about to be unleashed upon Christendom whenever a snowflake flutters down from above or the sun sneaks away behind a cloud for a couple of days or the temperature dives into the nether regions of the mercury pool.

whenever i wake up and look out the window to see snow on the ground part of me screams "snow day! no school!" (i don't actually scream, i just do in my head). this happens even when the snow comes over the weekend and there would have been no school anyway (the voices in my head apparently don't look at a calendar, just as they never got word about my graduation), and dispite the fact that i usually have to go to work anyway when it snows. but even when i have to work, it puts me in a good mood all day.

ITEM: And speaking of mercury. Mercury at MercuryX23 has a link to the "Which historical lunatic are you"/ "Loon Me Up! examination.

I admit I really enjoyed this questionaire and was delighted to learn that I was a cinch for Caligula.

You are Gaius Caesar Germanicus - better known as Caligula! [...] Although you only reigned for four years, brief even by Roman standards, you still managed to garner a reputation as a cruel, extravagant and downright insane despot.

See, can't make up stuff like that. Which is just fine by me just so long as those Superhero feminists leave me alone and busy themselves instead with hounding NASCAR goobers.

Next ITEM: edward pig, who, if you ask me (Caligula), has the best blogger name in the blogger world and has more details on the Ernest Gallet Elementary School situation concerning Marcus.

Upon hearing this, Marcus's teacher scolded him in front of his classmates, telling him that "gay" is a bad word and he should never say it at school, then sent him to the principal?s office instead of letting him go to recess. The following week the school required Marcus to attend a special behavioral clinic at 6:45 in the morning, where he was forced to repeatedly write "I will never use the word 'gay' in school again."

Ay yi yi. I suppose the Ernest G Elementary School will purge their shelves of any reference to Gay Georgia, Gay Michigan, Gay Oklahoma, Gay West Virginia, Gaylord Michigan - Virginia - Oregon - Kansas and Minnesota. Gaylordsville CT, Gayly PA, Gays IL, Gays Mills WI, Gaysport OH, Gays River NS, Gaysville VT, and Gayville SD. (those places are clearly a slap in the face of every living Christian, if not God hisself) And if that hain't enough how about Gay Talese, Gaylord Perry's ERA averages, Gay Paris, Annamese fishing boats, and the Florida Gaytors. Heave the dictionary overboard too. Morans.

ITEM: And Then... Scout has the "student behavior contract" (via the ACLU) sent home with Marcus. Check it out. EG Elementary is also apparently in need of a spelling teacher.

ITEM: Back to Keith at the Invisible Library (thanks for the "purty" art review K.) for the Democratic Republic of Dohiyi Mir See: "Traveling Without Moving" link to the Commonwealth of Blogosphere. I, Farmer Caligula, don't have a place in the DRD or the CofB at this time but if I ever decide to "build" I believe I will settle upon the isthmus just east of SpiceSasstopool on the Sea of Attila. I will also ban the word "isthmus" from the language while I'm at it. Say "isthmus" ten times as fast as you can. Go ahead, do it.

Jesus huh? See what I mean? That has to be the gayest word ever muttered. It's even more gay than gay. Someone alert the earnest busy body scoldpottles at Ernest G Elementary.

ITEM: Peter at Kick the Leftist (see: "Playing with the big kids") notes the John Kerry "F-Word" flapdoodle and reminds us of other past public poopymouth eruptions.

What is this, second grade? Suck it up, gentlemen, it's a word. Note how Hess has to use "public interview" because Bush was caught calling Adam Clymer an asshole in the 2000 campaign as a side comment to Cheney.

ITEM: Mustang Bobby at Bark Bark Woof Woof adds the Key West Citizen to his newspaper links. The KWC ain't the greatest paper in the land but the KW Crime Report can sure be fun and somewhere I have one of em which descibes the harrowing late night rescue of a Key West Citizen who was being visciously tormented by a demonic talking gecko. Or sumpin' like that. I'll have to dig that one up and show it to you one day.

ITEM: Craptastic comments on the Cult of Reagan's recent attempt to redecortate the common dime and Nancy Reagan's reaction to such frippery.

Hera makes this announcement from Olympus: Nancy Reagan opposes replacing FDR with Reagan on dimes

And how come nobody ever named anything after Spiro Agnew? I propose they rename Agnew Washington, Spiro Agnew Washington. Its a start. Email me if you'd like to join my fight.

ITEM: CCC&G. Via T. Rex's Guide to Life

This Is What's Wrong With America and Capitalism.
Consumerism, conspicuous consumption and greed:

Self explanatory.

ITEM: Says it All Quote Award goes to Charles2 at The Fulcrum (see: Friday, December 05, 2003, Small Lies and Big

This administration has to put some kind of spin on everything they do. No statement can contain the complete truth. No utterance can be taken at face value. Not the small turkey, nor the large.

ITEM: Again, and this one has been linked to many times, anyone who hasn't already read Stradiotto's piece on "Morality" should do so. This is just one of those posts that is always relevant.

ITEM: No more items for now. Although I'm sure hundreds more were created in the time it took me to write up this post. Doesn't matter though. I'm Caligula and I have a talking horse and a fer-de-lance to feed. I'm also drunk and tired and I haven't brushed my teeth in three weeks. Although I always splash the whiskey around in my mouth before I swallow it, so that should provide some degree of dental hygiene protection. One would think.

Please don't leave any comments because I don't want to spend my quality Caligula time reading them.

In the middle of a depressing NYT article about the short-lived "hearts and minds" approach to pacifying Iraq, we find out that our military has mistakenly mistook a Monty Python sketch for a counterinsurgency strategy:

"You have to understand the Arab mind," Capt. Todd Brown, a company commander with the Fourth Infantry Division, said as he stood outside the gates of Abu Hishma. "The only thing they understand is force — force, pride and saving face."

I bet the Iraqis didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition:

Ximinez: NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our chief weapon is surprise...surprise and fear...fear and surprise.... Our two weapons are fear and surprise...and ruthless efficiency.... Our *three* weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency...and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.... Our *four*...no... *Amongst* our weapons.... Amongst our weaponry...are such elements as fear, surprise....

The Crusades, on the other hand....

Seriously, how sad is it to read that the U.S. is studying Israeli tactics in the West Bank? There's a template for success. What next--Gen. George Custer on the importance of the element of surprise?

George Romney, you will recall, derailed his candidacy in the Vietnam era by declaring that he'd been "brainwashed" by generals and the White House on his visit there.

Who, people asked, wants a President who can be brainwashed?

And who, we may ask, wants a President who doesn't know Bush is a liar? (Jesse Barney, via Atrios).

PS: Jesse, Barney: the die was cast for the Iraw war long before the "product rollout" following Bush's summer vacation. Once we'd positioned the troops and supplies there, we were going in, and that started happening months before the marketing campaign. Another classic case of "Watch only what they do," since whatever they say can be utterly discounted.

And Tim's one giant turd, all right. Normally, I don't trade in scatology, but when the poop fits...And, by the way, so's his wife.*

It started early in the week, with one of those unpatented, mind-numbing grotesqueries of his that so many other equally lesser minds have learned to...well, to use the word, "ape," would be unfair to several of my favorite species, so help me out here and fill in the blank. This particular grotesquerie had to do with, who else, Senator John Kerry.

If I give you the title, "Does Teresa Heinz Trust John Kerry?
If not, why should we?", do I really have to tell you what the Noah piece proposes? Do you really need to click on that link to know that Tim will be asserting some true facts that more than adequately answer the question he poses, (why Kerry's wife's Heinz heiress wealth is not available to Kerry for his campaign - a pre-nup agreement signed at the time of marriage, 18 years ago) which will be followed by wild, even crazed speculations, (about how, despite statements by Kerry's wife, Teresa, that she would consider using her own money to defend him against unjust campaign attacks, she can't legally, and she must know that) that are meant to distract you from the fact that matters, a pre-nup agreement, followed by more distracting speculation based on meaningless details, and then the switcheroo lie, a question about "back then" if the pre-nup was even necessary, given Heinz-Kerry's age, 65, though back then, her age was 65 minus eighteen, all this argumentation having the express goal of distracting you from the clear fact that there is no "here" here.

So Teresa Heinz Kerry could have found ways to make her money available to her husband in the foregone likelihood that he would run for President, the evidence here for her certain knowledge that he would, the fact that Morley Safer noticed Kerry's ambition in a thirty-two year old 60 Minute interview. True, Noah admits, many rich couples sign pre-nups, but not all, for example, Paul McCartney didn't.

Okay, you can see where Tim is leading you -- into the very heart of the whopping turd that is Tim Noah.

To be sure, Kerry had every expectation, heading into the 2004 race, that he was going to lead the pack in fund raising, which he did for awhile. But Heinz Kerry has been around politics long enough to know that a presidential candidate can't count on anything. And she had the example of George W. Bush's nomination race in 2000 before her to show that presidential candidates don't always stay within the limits imposed by public financing.

Heinz Kerry must have had some inkling that the day might come when her second husband would need her money. And knowing that, she didn't make it available. That doesn't make her a bad wife. But it does raise a disconcerting question for voters. If Teresa Heinz Kerry won't give John Kerry the keys to the car, why should we?

This isn't reporting. This isn't commentary. This isn't even punditry. It's not even, God help us, gasbaggery. It's gossip. Pure, but quite complex gossip. Speculative assertions, for which there is no direct hard evidence, offered in the tone of the knowing insider, who definitely has the dirt you want to hear, repeated and repeated within the gossip narrative, and destined to be repeated and repeated in other versions of the same gossip narrative, until the speculations take on the patina of unquestionable fact - which is precisely how gossip works, isn't it?

For example, later in the week, TNR blog, &c. took Noah to task for the inadquate quality of his gossip narrative, though they did find that he'd made a "provocative" case that " Teresa Heinz Kerry, wife of John (and John before that) can't possibly trust her husband with her copious wealth." The problem with Noah's column is not that it's gossip based on speculation, the problem is that Noah's gossip narrative isn't nearly as clever as the gossip narrative this New Republic band of turds can come up with.

The relevant characteristic here isn't Heinz's savvy; it's her arrogance--the kind of arrogance most rich people have when it comes to how and when they spend their money. Heinz probably assumed, not improbably, that no measly campaign finance restriction was really going to keep her from spending money on her husband's campaign. After all, if worst came to worst, she could always go ahead and break the law and pay the fines down the road.

So, Noah isn't wrong about Kerry Heinz not trusting her husband with her money, he's just wrong about Kerry Heinz herself, who "is probably not nearly as shrewish and diabolical as Noah takes her to be."

Had enough? Dying to go take a shower? Sorry, I'm not through yet.

Another gossipy item was floated early in the week, by Instaturd in this case, i.e., that a Vanity Fair piece on Joe Wilson and his wife, that is accompanied by a snapshot of both in which Mrs. W is wearing large dark sunglasses, and her hair, already identified as blonde, is mainly hidden under a scarf, that also obscures the shape and details of her face, proves that both Wilsons are nothing more nor less than attention-seeking self-promoters, and that the entire Plame scandal was a bogus one. The piece has been artfully dealt with by others, notably Hesiod, T. Bogg, a don't miss, and Atrios, who offers two other good links.

I didn't think this one would have legs; why oh why, when it comes to gauging this Republican party's shamelessness, am I always behind the count? I realized I was wrong when Wolf picked up on this non-story story within hours of its first appearance among Republican and right wing ranks. CNN ran with it all week. And yesterday, Howie Kurtz was given special CNN moments to sling manure at both Wilsons, secure in the knowledge that the entirety of Plamegate had been certified by Tim Noah as the Whopper of the Week.

Was there ever any doubt that once such a manure smeared whopper of a juggernaut was launched, Tim Noah would be scrambling aboard? Well, he does more than that. He attempts, successfully, to top all the other turdmasters, proclaiming that Mrs. Wilson's failure to hide in her house and not be seen during daylight hours, once she'd been exposed as an agent, (even though, unmentioned by Noah, she'd always had a high public profile, except that no one knew she was actually a CIA agent), culminating in the Vanity Fair piece, effectively ends Plamegate, i.e., any questions that might need to be answered by the Bush administration, and suggests, instead, that we should now be questioning whether we can believe Mr. Wilson's story?

As if that story hasn't been vetted all over the place already by what passes for a press in this country.

None of this comes as any surprise to you, I know. One hopeful sign this week, a commentator on a Slate thread does a fine job of explicating why Mickey Kaus is a gossip columnist, although he's far to sanguine about the issue of Mickey's motives.

So, aside from providing an opportunity for angry venting, why do I bother with a post like this? Because the mode of gossip is, by now, so firmly and invisibly entrenched in our political discourse that nine out of ten times it goes unnoticed.

Example: Remember back in the nineties, Senator Thompson's investigation into the whole issue of campaign finance, with what turned out to be an exclusive emphasis on the unpretty attempts by the Clintons, during the 95 Presidential campaign, to keep up with the Republicans?

Thompson was everyone's hero among pundits; he was the good Republican who would guide a reasonable, fair investigation into the perfidy of the bad Clintons, and yet, on the opening day of the hearings, Senator Thompson made headlines by accusing the administration of playing treasonable footsies with the Chinese, a claim for which no evidence was ever provided. You remember that? And do you remember that after some weeks of this kind of "fairness," Senator John Glenn got good and mad, uncharacteristically, and accused Senator Thompson of running a partisan investigation that left untouched Republican sins against the campaign finance laws? You would have thought that Sen. Glenn, American hero extraordinaire, quiet Democratic centrist, would have had the credibility to make some in the press actually listen to him, and take a look at what was actually going on, day after day, in those committee hearings. And you would have been wrong.

Instead, from Al Hunt to Mark Shields to Novak, to Matthews, well, pretty much all the gasbags, John Glenn was pronounced a "disappointment," and accussed of being the partisan one. One missing piece of this story was why John Glenn would risk his reputation in a partisan defense of, of all things in the world, the Clinton adminbistration. And soon, we had the answer. NASA announced that Glenn, at the age of seventy something, would return to space, not just for the fun of it, but to provide a now considerably aged body upon which to measure the effects of space travel.

Was there even a remote possibility that these two events, Sen Glenn's uncharacteristically partisan anger at the partisan nature of Sen. Thompsons campaign finance inquiry and this NASA story weren't somehow linked? Of course not. And what was the link? A deal between President Clinton and Sen. Glenn; if Glenn would uncharacteristically get partisonally angry at Thompson, Clinton would approve Glenn's second trip into space. Not a shred of evidence was ever presented by any of the numerous commentators who ran with this story. And yet the story covered any further need to ask whether or not Glenn's objections to the Thompson committee, even after it was pronounced a failure by most pundits, for not having gotten the goods on the Clinton administration, were fair and accurate. (They were, of course.)

It never seemed to occur to any of the gasbags that making such a deal was even more uncharacteristic of Senator Glenn than his partisan anger. Nor did the story make any kind of sense on its face. Once it was made known that NASA was interested in having Glenn go back into space, and it was a great story from NASA's point of view, how on earth could President Clinton have kept it from happening, politically speaking? There was absolutely no reason for Senator Glenn to make such a deal, and no way for Clinton to enforce it.

Thus was a highly credible Democratic complaint about the Republican cooking of evidence against the Clinton administration discredited. To this day, you will hear Republicans get away with the same accusations of quasi-treasonous fund raising by the Clinton administration. You think that doesn't matter? It does. It's why the Bush administration gets away with presenting itself as restoring honor and integrity to the White House.

Obvious next step - what do we do about this? I have some notions, but I'm exhausted for now. How about you tell me your thoughts on the matter. That's what the comment threads are for, right?

*Here's evidence of why "so's his wife."

Mustang Bobby at BBWW has this to say about Judge Roy Moore's banishment from the temporal seat of judgement.

He is not a martyr. Martyrdom is never sought out; it is only a last resort to those who hold so strongly to their inner beliefs that they would rather suffer in silence and sacrifice everything they have - including their life - rather than yield. Martyrs do not promote themselves. They shrink from the spotlight. They turn themselves over to God, not Larry King. They do not become the issue. Chief Justice Moore's battle was not about the monument or his beliefs - it was about one man who sought the limelight because he wanted to promote his religion, not his faith.

Read MB's entire post here: More On Moore, Who Is No More

... we're used to that now.

What gets me is that they think we won't check up on them, or figure out that they are lying. They think we're stupid and lazy. That's the insulting part.

Like the latest one about Air Force One on the way to Iraq for aWol's Turkey Day stunt (go Dana!)

Truly, the Thugs are The People of The Lie.

With Reagan's portrait on it? That's the latest hysterical idea from the wingers (FUX).

Isn't defacing the currency a federal crime? And aren't "Christians" supposed to be against making graven images? And idolatry?

Anyhow, the best way for citizens to halt this nonsense is to refuse to use the coins. Just hand them back, and ask for real money. People will get tired of keeping separate Gipper drawers soon enough.

Of course, the real agenda here—since the dime is now blessed with FDR's image—is trashing our New Deal legacy. Surprise!

Well, it looks like the smart money in the Bush camp is on Howard Dean (though if their track record on Iraq is any guide, that should point to Dennis Kucinich as the ultimate nominee). In an attack ad running in Iowa--the first to attack a Democrat by name--the Club for Growth is predictably associating Dean with a string of alleged Democratic tax hikers (McGovern, Mondale, Dukakis). The lies are typical, from the reflexive deployment of the "average" scam to inflate the cost of Dean's proposed tax cut rollback, to the inclusion of archetypal "loser" McGovern (who actually ran on a negative income tax for those living below on the poverty line). Interestingly, the Big Dog is omitted from the list, despite the false claim throughout his Presidency that he was the worst tax hiker of all. (Needless to say the biggest tax hiker, Ronald Reagan, is not mentioned.)

Anyway, the Dean camp has prepared a response and is soliciting funds to get it on the air. Frankly I think the response could be better, and have my own qualms about the wisdom of Dean rolling back even the child tax credit. But this is the opening salvo in the campaign, the first whiff of grapeshot across our bow. It must not go unanswered.

This is no time for Celebration
This is no time for Shaking Hands
This is no time for Backslapping
This is no time for Marching Bands
This is no time for Optimism
This is no time for Endless Thought
This is no time for my country Right or Wrong
Remember what that brought.
--Lou Reed, "There is No Time"

So now Bush is removing the steel tariffs.

I guess he must have gotten the results of a focus group ...

Since steel manufacturing states (kinda, sorta) win with the tariff, and steel fabricating states (who purchase the steel) lose—

Good news would be: Unka Karl hoped to win swing-state, steel-manufacturing Pennsylvania by putting the tariff on, but now he knows he's going to lose Pennsylvania, so he's writing it off, and hoping to win swing-state, steel-fabricating states instead.

The best news would be: Everybody gets pissed at Bush: the steel manufacturing swing states because Bush took the tariff off, and the steel fabricating swing states because Bush put the tariff on in the first place, and then for the transparently whorish manner in which he backtracked on it.

Or maybe the EU threatened to beat him silly, and Bush wussed out. I dunno...

Just as before the Civil War, we had "The Slave Power," today we have "The Corporate Power"—politically based, oddly enough, in the same region of the country, and using a lot of the same methods: gerrymandering, militarism, whining about big government while parasitic on it....

Though a Thug, Bloomberg has an interesting notion: the Blue States should get back from the Federal government the same amount of tax dollars they give it. Since, after all, the Blue States subsidize the Red States... Not spot on for dealing with The Corporate Power, but a blow at the Red State politicians who front for it.

Am I tired of hearing about "the economy" and how well it's doing now.

The question is: Who is the economy doing well for?

Not the people who haven't got jobs—unemployment isn't down.

Not the people who do have jobs—the recent productivity jump comes from an old-fashioned application of the lash, where the whip is fear of being fired, overtime being taken away, fear of losing insurance, and so on.

For the corporations who haven't moved their offices to a box number in the Caribbean, all is well, though. (Especially since the ones who have moved your job offshore. )

But the economy is real people, not paper persons...

Why is Rod Paige still on the job? I mean, excuuuse me, but why hasn't the Secretary of Education been fired?

We now know that the claims for a Texas education miracle under George Bush, most often personified by tough-guy Rod Paige, Superintendent of Schools in Houston, who did for education in that city what conservatives have been telling us for three decades should be done - bring it back to the teaching of the basics, evaluate it with high stakes system-wide tests that not only decide which students will be promoted to the next grade, but also which are the "good," and which, the "bad" schools, was a hoax.

So, why, at the very least, has there been not a mention of congressional hearings into the Secretary's role in this not-just-Enron cooking of the books?

Not to oversimpligy, the answer here is simple: Both houses of congress are controlled by Republicans, who are putting the best interests of a Republican President ahead of those of the American citizenery. Not exactly a man bites dog story. And before anyone pipes up that Democrats behaved the same way when they controlled congress, let me remind one and all that the first congressional hearings into the Whitewater matter were by a Democratic congress, a full week in both the House and the Senate, this despite on-going investigations by the RTC and a Special Prosecutor. Republicans were able to participate fully in the hearings, including getting their own list of subpoenaed witnesses. And what was their response? Endless complaints that the hearings were a farce, because in the House, all Representatives would be limited to one five minute question period at a time, which happens to be the standard in such hearings.

This week the NYTimes had yet more on the miracle that wasn't, with an emphasis on the ways in which teaching to a test has deprived the very children Secretary Paige has proclaimed evidence of his and his Governor's successes in Texas, of the kind of education the parents who bought into the "miracle" thought their children were getting, one that would allow them to succeed in college. Yes, indeed, the soft bigotry of low expectations; apparently, neither the then Governor, nor Secretary Paige defined "success" for these children as being able to do college level work.

Jeanne at Body And Soul says all that needs saying about the Times piece, and Cal Pundit has fun trying to conform to the template of good writing fobbed off on these children - the five paragraph essay, so I'll limit myself to a personal observation.

Some years ago, in order to qualify to participate in a program by which writers could volunteer to help teach writing in public schools, I had to take a state of California standard test required for teaching candidates. Not at all sure, after so many years, that I still remembered how to take a test, I purchased a book that explained specifically how to take this one. What was both fascinating and depressing about the recommended way to approach the essay portion of the test was the way the scoring standard used to evaluate the essay was so clearly designed to evoke a formulaic response - a more sophisticated version of the five paragraph essay. Some of the examples of "bad" or low scoring essays were those that were questioning the eminently questionable terms of the essay subject, and those by students who hadn't been taught the formula, but clearly knew how to think outside the box, and had good instincts, if not yet the actual technique, for how to make an original written argument. And despite being armed with this knowledge of what the test expectations were, I had a tough time time, myself, writing a suitably formulaic essay.

Maybe if we would start listening to the people who actually have to teach children - our public school teachers, instead of to Phyllis Schafily, and James Dobson, and Lynne Cheney, and Fred Barnes, and George Wills, and Bill Bennett, and....fill in your own favorite clueless education expert, as a nation, which was once defined by its committment to public education, we wouldn't be such patsies for the prouncements of the very people whose goal it is to dismantle the nation's public school systems.

And as a first of many small steps in that direction, let me recommend this article by an actual teacher who teaches in Texas, and could have told all of us way back in 2001, what utter rot President Bush's education program was based on. And click here for another first-rate article one that summarizes the whole "no child left behind scandal, " is suitable to keep in your arsenal of handy references, and is also by someone who has been an educator.

Paramilitary. Conjure up anything?

Let's see, death squads in Central America; ethnic cleansing in Bosnia; mayhem in Kosovo used deliberately to push a million people into a no man's land of instant refugee camps.

To be fair, in Iraq, paramilitary groups have no such hideous record; they were an understandable response to Saddam's own homicidal tendencies. But surely now that we're trying to help the Iraqis rebuild an army and a police force, the last thing on earth the US would want to do is anything that might legitimize the notion of militias attached to political parties, or anything that could be labelled paramilitary.

Think again.

Do ideas come any worse than this one?

Well, yes, as a matter of fact.

And now I think I'll just tiptoe off and refurbish my heart and mind with a large Margarita.

CIA, drama queen?

Apropos of Tresy's discovery, below of just such a tendency at the heart of the agency that provides world-wide intelligence to the mightiest superpower the world has ever known:

Riverbend, the twenty-something girl-blogger of Baghdad has discovered the inside dope on Iraqi nukes, with the help of an Iraqi nuclear expert who has just written a tell all book, and whose opinions you can sample on his own webpage. Riverbend supplies the link; I'm refraining because you ought to be visiting her blog at least twice a week to check if anything new is up; she's that good (a writer) and that important (to understanding Iraqi through a set of Iraqi eyes).

Why no nukes found? Try, a mirage in the desert.

If you've been at all remiss in keeping up with Riverbend, who managed to blog, despite the rigors of Ramadan, and you're curious about her response to Bush's bold visit to Baghdad Airport, you can find it here. And don't miss this wonderful post that tells a tale of the rigors of living next door to a Baghdadi Martha Stewart, especially during "Eid."

That book and website of that Iraqi scientist looks to be a mighty important resource.

No, this is not from The Onion.

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has issued a spirited defence of the now-suspect assertions that Iraq had secret arsenals of germ and chemical weapons, and says second-guessing its work may undermine analysts' willingness to make bold assessments in the future....

"If we eventually are proven wrong -- that is, that there were no weapons of mass destruction and the WMD programs were dormant or abandoned -- the American people will be told the truth; we would have it no other way," writes Stuart Cohen, a senior CIA official and acting chairman of the National Intelligence Council, which produced the report.

No, of course we wouldn't. We're the CIA. Anyone in the audience batting an eye? No? Good. Now on with the real bullshit.

Mr. Cohen also warns of the risks to future intelligence estimates if the spy community becomes preoccupied with allegations about past failures.

"The need to confront these charges [has] forced senior intelligence officials throughout U.S. intelligence to spend much of their time looking backward," he says in the statement. "I worry about the opportunity costs of this sort of preoccupation, but I also worry that analysts labouring under a barrage of allegations will become more and more disinclined to make judgments."

I didn't know the CIA hired drama queens with egos more fragile than hothouse flowers. But if freedom from criticism is what's required to maintain the CIA's stellar track record (see below), it's a small price to pay, I'm sure we all agree.

Mr. Cohen seeks to defend the U.S. intelligence community by debunking what he calls "10 myths" that have arisen since the war.

Myth No. 1 is that the "NIE favored going to war." Myth No. 10 is that the "NIE asserted that there were 'large WMD stockpiles' and because we haven't found them, Baghdad had no WMD."

Myth No. 11: Alchemists asserted that phlogiston was one of the three essences of matter and because they haven't found it yet, phlogiston does not exist.

He blames "media frenzy" for the now-widespread view that the spies were wrong.

If you can't imagine yourself being Peter Pan, you won't be Peter Pan.

...Mr. Cohen also challenges critics who suggest that U.S. intelligence agencies -- which had been proved woefully wrong after the 1991 Persian Gulf war when it emerged that Iraq had an advanced nuclear-weapons program about which U.S. spies knew nothing -- were determined not to get caught flat-footed again.

"In no case were any of the judgments 'hyped' to compensate for earlier underestimates," he says.

See? We're not biased. Our assessments are consistently and even-handedly wrong for no reason, and we resent implications to the contrary that impugn our professionalism.

Finally, he credits the brutal effectiveness of the now-fallen Baathist regime for the failure -- so far -- of U.S. and international weapons experts to find any evidence of poison-gas or germ-warfare arsenals.

We're just the intelligence agency of the World's Only Remaining Superpower. How can we be expected to know that when Iraq said it had no WMD, it was telling the truth? That kind of deceit no one can be prepared for.

To hear the right wing in this country go on and on about how films and TV programs get made is a source of endless frustration and amusement for anyone who's ever actually worked inside the entertainment industry. Whether it's O'Reilly, that gang that hangs out at The Corner, Chris Matthews, or Joe Scarborough, the mythic view expressed is of a small, closed community of exteme leftwing activists, all of whom know each other and check in regularly, to make sure neither they nor anyone else is straying from the path of "political correctness," and that virtually no projects gets off the ground without an America-hating seal of approval having been granted to it by one of these co-equal centers of power - Alec Baldwin, Jeananne Garafola, George Clooney, Barbra Streisand, Stephen Speilberg, Michael Eisner, anyone working for Dreamworks, and, of course, that most powerful of all power couples, Susan and Tim, whose last names one needn't even bother with, that's how powerful they are.

Now, finally, comes a bit of reporting that actually mirrors the complex mix of creative and business concerns that produce, at the end of a long process, a film, or, as in this case, a new concept for a CBS series. If you want to really understand the process that gave the world "The Reagans," this is a must read.

Blackened Scorpions and Watersnake Medley.



Tommy want new line cook job.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 2 - The federal official who runs Medicare and was intimately involved in drafting legislation to overhaul the program is the object of a bidding war among five firms hoping to hire him to advise clients affected by the measure.

[...]

"Our firm would be a perfect fit for Tom because we have built one of the top health care practices in the country. We do both legal and lobbying work. Tom's recent experience at the highest levels of the government makes him very attractive to our firm."

Chris Anderson of Interesting Times was kind enough to point out in a comment that I might have been over-reacting just a tad to the WaPo article featured in a Digby post I'd still recommend.

Minimizing the task ahead is a path towards defeat, but so is over-estimating it. Remember that a good part of that Post article is based on numbers coming out of the Republican camp.

They are trying the political equivalent of shock-and-awe. Why should we trust them to give accurate estimates of the number of volunteers they have at their disposal?

It won't be a cakewalk. But don't be discouraged by the braggadacio of the Republicans.

Wise words, upon which he elaborates here.

Chris was an early Dean supporter, but his blog is a template for the kind of Democratic Party communality that's going to be crucial if Bush is to be beaten next November. Always ready to question a critical response to what some other candidate might be saying, Chris never takes his eye off the prize. In addressing some dissatisfaction with a particular Democrat, or the party itself, Chris's answer is almost always a bottom up one. Which in my view is the only kind worth talking about.

I have much more to say about this, so let me content myself for now with the observation that filling blog posts or comment threads with constant references to the Democrats selling out, being cowards, or otherwise dumping on them accomplishes very little, especially now that we're less than a year away from the election. Be critical, yes, but bring that criticism to bear in some form of action that is going to change the way the Democrats are doing business.

Public expressions of dismay and/or disgust with their own side is a mistake you hardly ever see Republicans or the right make.

Chris has a pledge up at his blog that's worth taking a look at, worth signing, and most of all, worth using as a basis for rethinking how we go forward from here.

after getting blindsided by the AARP on Medicare and covering his snout with ethanol on the energy bill?

So this morning I splurge and spend fifty cents on the Inky, only to be greeted with a full page ad from the AARP leadership trumpeting the Medicare bill.

All you need to know about the Medicare bill:

• It only kicks in after the 2004 election, so there's no chance for citizens to see the law in action before voting. I wonder why?


• There's no money to pay for it, because of Bush's tax cuts for the super-rich. So it's another typical bait and switch operation


• It doesn't legalize cheap drugs from Canada


• Big pharma likes it for that reason, and also because they have greater leverage to keep prices high than they would under a single-payer system

Way to spend those member dues, AARP!

Here (via Atrios).

Over Medicare, naturally.

To his credit, though a Republican, Rep. Smith revealed the attempt.

To his discredit, Rep. Smith refuses to reveal the name of the criminal—though bribery is a Federal crime.

Man, the Thugs sure know how to defile democracy, don't they?

First, arresting Democrats right on the Hill; now, protecting potential felons.

Not to mention ... And ... And ... And remember when ....

Remember all that hooey about "the rule of law" during the VWRC coup against Clinton? We don't seem to hear so much of that these days. I wonder why?

Good God, Bush was right about something.

Apparently, in that moment when, as is his habit, he took the measure of a man by locking glances with him, he was right about what he saw on the other side of Putin's eyeballs.

From the NYTimes:

"Putin Aide Rules Out Russian Approval of Kyoto Protocol"

A senior adviser to President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that Russia cannot ratify the Kyoto Protocol limiting greenhouse gas emissions, dealing a mortal blow to the pact that required Russia's ratification to take effect.

``In its current form, the Kyoto Protocol places significant limitations on the economic growth of Russia,'' Putin's economic adviser, Andrei Illarionov, told reporters in the Kremlin. ``Of course, in this current form this protocol can't be ratified.''

Putin had previously cast doubts on Moscow's willingness to ratify the protocol, but hadn't ruled out ratification completely.

(edit)

Russia's reluctance to ratify the pact despite its earlier pledge to do so has vexed Kyoto's European and U.N. backers, who warned Moscow that it would lose politically and economically if it fails to ratify Kyoto.

The saddest thing about old Europe is that it doesn't know it's old. "Lose politically and economically?" Who're they kidding? Russia should worry about a bunch of nerdy countries and pathetic activists like Greenpeace? Not when you have an American President like George W. Bush as your best bud.

The protocol's proponents see Kyoto as a vital first step in cutting emissions, warning that failure to quickly put it into force would trigger a dangerous, steep rise in greenhouse gas concentrations that would be far more difficult to control in the future.

Losers!

WaPo:

It is interesting how that story dropped off the radar screen. The main explanation is one of logistics: now that the inquiry is under way at Justice, we're not likely to hear anything official for many months; people who do leak investigations, after all, are not the sort who do much leaking.

Right.

Like the "career prosecutors" in Starr's office never linked to Dana's colleague, Steno Sue.

Develop some sources, Dana! Quit yer alibi-ing!

Mike Allen writes up Bush's poll-shoring-up trip to Iraq over Thanksgiving, including this little gem:

"Now, the plane was cruising at an average speed of 665 mph, Baghdad or bust. Richard Keil, a 6-foot-5 reporter for Bloomberg News whom Bush calls "Stretch," leaned across the aisle of the hushed press cabin.

"The president of the United States is AWOL, and we're with him," a grinning Keil said as he shoved aside his iPod headset.

No shit, Sherlock! But to liberals, and those who choose to inform themselves, this is not news.....

Cigar Aficianado interviews Tommy Franks:

The first step would be a nexus between weapons of mass destruction of any variety ... and terrorism ... in order to change the mannerisms, the behavior, the sociology and, ultimately, the anthropology of a society.

That goes to step number two, which is that the western world, the free world, loses what it cherishes most, and that is freedom and liberty we've seen for a couple of hundred years in this grand experiment that we call democracy. Now, in a practical sense, what does that mean? It means the potential of a weapon of mass destruction and a terrorist, massive casualty-producing event somewhere in the western world-it may be in the United States of America-that causes our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass-casualty-producing event. Which, in fact, then begins to potentially unravel the fabric of our Constitution. Two steps: very, very important.

CA: If that's true, why have so many critics attacked the president of the United States and tried to diminish the work of the military?

(Via the ever excellent Orcinus)
Right... We've got to militarize our country to prevent it from being militarized... We've got to destroy the Constitution in order to preserve it.... We've got to destroy the village in order to save it.

Memo to general Franks: There is nothing on earth, including any additional terrorist attack that the incompetence and cynicism of the Bush regime allows to take place, that would induce me to "question the Consitution and militarize society."

In fact, General Franks, why are you even raising the question? Could it be ... Naah...

Media yawns, buries story.

Oh, did I mention the speeder (Rep. Janklow) is a Republican?

Here in Philly, we've got little silver mini-diners on lots of street corners—I get coffee at my favorite when I'm feeling flush with cash.

And damn if the local FUX station hasn't gone and given a lot of branded styrofoam cups to all the Philly mini-diners as promotions. So now I can choke on my coffee when I read the Orwellian "fair and balanced" on the side of my cup...

Why doesn't someone from the Dean campaign get smart and give some cups to the mini-diners?

Philly being such a polite town, I bet there's a lot of people like me who are diffident about asking for coffee without winger tripe, but who would be glad to see a Dean cup, and brighten the diner owner's day by mentioning it.

We missed this one over Turkey Day ....

Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush, an air defense general captured Oct. 5 in a raid near the Syrian border, was being questioned Wednesday while in American custody in Qaim near the Syrian border when he lost consciousness after complaining he didn't feel well, the military said in a statement.

Well, at least he wasn't shot while trying to escape.

Takes on new meaning with Gitmo, and the obvious but never-talked-about likelihood that Bush is conducting an Operation Phoenix-style dirty war of targetted assassination against AQ (that's what the "no longer a problem," and "American justice" comments in the SOTU were code for, right?).

Torture, assassination, arbitrary detainment ... Hope none of the karma on this catches up with us!

Be afraid. Even terrified. Then, get organized.

Digby has a crucial post that spells out, courtesy of the Wa Po, what all those hundreds of millions of dollars Bush has collected to run in an unopposed primary are buying him and the Republicans.

Just reading about it got my heart rate up, my hands clammy, and my throat all dry, just like when you watch a horror flick; I don't see many of them precisely because I hate that feeling of dread.

Digby's right though, minimizing in any way the battle that's ahead is the first step toward defeat. There was no percentage in ignoring Cassandra. Let's hope this is the start of a practical dialogue, among bloggers and readers, friends, relatives, anyone concerned about this country from a left perspective, one that leads to all kinds of actions. So go read, and then start thinking.