Damn bottles... Mattress all lumpy.... [Crash. Tinkle.]

Bush's Department of Changing The Subject is working late and sending out for pizza! Just like Krugman warned us would happen ("Wag the Dog: Bush Right on Schedule" (back))

First, Bush tried that assassination ploy (ibid., back), but it didn't work—somebody figured out that since the presumed accused had doubtless been tortured by the Saudis, so his testimony would be worthless. Boy, did that one drop from sight fast!

So now, we have another extremely non-political terror alert:

A classified bulletin has been sent by the Department of Homeland Security...

Gee, I thought revealing classified information was a big problem for Bush. How wrong can I be?!

... to state homeland security advisers and others regarding "credible but non-specific threat information" that "reiterates the desire by al Qaeda to target the heimathomeland," officials said.

Credible as a Dick "Dick" Cheney heart attack, baby!

The officials stressed that there is nothing in the information to indicate when, where or how an attack might be carried out.

Wow! No specifics?! No actionable intelligence? What would Condi say? Yet Bush released it anyhow... I wonder why?

One official described it as "vague." Others said it was a "reaffirmation" of al Qaeda's goal of hitting the United States.

According to two officials, the information was picked up recently from an intercepted communication that was believed to have been between al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who is spearheading the insurgency in Iraq.
(via CNN)

Um, when we revealed that we'd intercepted OBL's satellite phone, he stopped using it, right? So could it possibly matter that now both OBL and al-Zarqawi know we're intercepting their communications?

Of course not! That's because The Department of Changing The Subject has supreme authority over all matters of natural security!

Remember when Bush blew another agent's identity in the gaslighting episode just before the Republican National Convention? (here, here, here, and here.)

Nobody turned a hair! It was OK then, so it's OK now!

Intelligence sources and methods? When The Department of Changing The Subject swings into action, Katy bar the door!

Now this story is not terrifically well written, or else the headline isn't, because it wasn't really "Fahrenheit 9/11" that got a slew o' Razzie Awards for various and sundry Worst Movie Moments of 2004, but several actors therein.
(via Newsbug, which I never heard of but it made the front page at Google News this afternoon)

Those who didn't win Oscars Sunday night may still have picked up prestigious movie award hardware this weekend courtesy of the 25th Annual Razzies, which were announced Saturday night at the historic Ivar Theatre in Hollywood.

Michael Moore's critical "Fahrenheit 9/11" also finished with four Razzies earning awards for Worst Actor (George W. Bush), Worst Supporting Actor (Donal [sic] Rumsfeld), Worst Supporting Actress (Britney Spears) & Screen Couple (George W. Bush & EITHER Condoleeza Rice OR His Pet Goat).

We kid you not.

[Rimshot. Thanks folks, I'm here all week. Try the veal and be sure to tip your server.]

For those keeping track of such things, the major sweeper at Razzfest was "Halle Berry's flop movie "Catwoman" took home top, or worst, honors raking in four Razzies including Worst Picture, Worst Actress (Berry), Worst Director & Worst Screenplay." And yeah, I bet if he had it to do over, Chris Rock would rather have worked the Razzies than the gig he got, although I'm sure it paid better.

Oh, gosh, that is a little over the top, isn't it? I've just got to learn to be more "responsible"... But not yet, Oh lord, not yet!

Anyhow, there are some interesting cultural points in the BTK saga, beyond the usual "Bobo's World" snark. First:

Dennis L. Rader -- a married father of two, a Cub Scout leader and an active member of a Lutheran Church -- was anything but a recluse.

At his church and around town, many expressed shock that Rader was accused of being the man responsible for at least 10 killings attributed to BTK -- a self-coined nickname that stands for "Bind, Torture, Kill."

"Disbelief, absolute disbelief," said a tearful Carole Nelson, a member of Christ Lutheran Church, where Rader was an usher and the president of the church council. "I never would have guessed in a million years."

"The guy that walked in here was not the face of evil," said Bob Smyser, an usher at the church.
(via CNN)

How innocent—To believe that evil would necessarily have any face other than an ordinary human one! As if life were a horror movie...

Remember how we've kept hammering on the POTL? One of characteristics of the the evil ("the People of the Lie") is that they hide in churches for protective coloration. (NOTE: It is precisely because most churchgoers are not evil that their strategy works.)

Rader is a clear case of one of the POTL using this strategy.

The Pharisees and hypocrites using religion to gain worldly power under Bush are an equally clear case of POTL in action, but that's a story told elsewhere.

Now, today's new fact about Rader. He worked for a security firm, ADT:

Before he started as a city code enforcer in suburban Park City, Dennis L. Rader was an employee at an ADT Security Services branch office in Wichita ...

In the year since BTK reappeared, the number of Wichita-area residents installing ADT-like security systems rose noticeably. In some cases, the waiting periods for systems installations increased from two days to almost a week.
(via AP)

Hmm... The guy who installs security systems is also the guy causing the fear that causes more security systems to be installed...

Sound familiar? It's the old gaslighting trick with a new twist, isn't it?

Hey, just a metaphor, folks ....

That would be "Scarlet" as in Pimpernel, not "I'll never eat carrots again."

I speak of our own elusive Pimpernel, The Freeway Blogger, who has a new campaign going in Northern California.

This is extraordinarily brave stuff, with none of the self-righteousness that often attends brave actions. The Freeway Blogger whose brainchild this has been, would insist it isn't all that dangerous or brave. The site encourages others to follow the example set. With success.

So Far We've Got...
1200+ Signposters in
250 Cities and
48 States.

If you haven't visited the site recently you should. I'm always inspired. This is about reclaiming public space for public speech. It's about insisting criticism of one's government is the essence of democratic governance, espcially when the critique is meant to inspire dialogue, not meant to shut up those who might disagree with you.

There's a whole lot of stuff to click on, go ahead and click, in each instance you'll find yourself some place of genuine interest. Check out, in particular, the FreewayBlogger Manifesto, Fun With Hate Radio, and Overwhelming Force. Oh go ahead and click on everything. Think about making a contribution, too.





now is the time for all

After the water board membership meeting yesterday, and general arguing about water rights, cleaning the ditches, and who owes dues and such, apparently everyone sat around drinking coffee and yammering. Anybody who owns water rights can come to the meeting, and so I’m told there were about 20 folks, a real mixed bag. I wasn’t there because I was tired of the arguing after the last meeting. Only happens quarterly and most of us only superficially know each other. But one of the members came by to give me the annual ballot for electing board members, and to see if I’d paid my dues, and we had some coffee and he told me what was said. I came away not knowing whether to laugh or cry. He’s a flaming Libertarian, so a tolerant sort, if misguided. His report over coffee went something like this:

So, he says then, what has to happen is, we gotta stop giving away our water to the Indian tribes. And the other fella said, there’s treaties that say it’s their water, not ours. And he said, but they’ve got plenty. The government needs to stop all these damn entitlements. I told him, hey, didn’t you take a check from the government last year for drought relief? And he says yeah, but, and I just told him right there that he ought to send it back. This is the wettest winter in a generation. Hay prices are high. You don’t need it. And he says that’s different. It was for last year. I told him, shit, come on now, you know it wasn’t. You already had your hay crop in when you got that check. That’s different, he says. I didn’t know it was gonna be so wet. Hell, he’s got his hand in the government’s pocket and talks all this libertarian horseshit.

And ain’t that just the thing? Redistribute the wealth, but do it MY way.

The pro-Syrian government of Lebanon has fallen, clearly the result of massive demonstrations by Lebanese citizens. The LA Times has the story here.

BEIRUT — With shouts of "Syria out!," more than 25,000 flag-waving protesters massed outside Parliament today in a dramatic display of defiance that swept out Lebanon's pro-Syrian government two weeks after the assassination of a former prime minister.

Cheering broke out among the demonstrators in Martyrs' Square when they heard Prime Minister Omar Karami's announcement on loudspeakers that the government was stepping down. Throughout the day, protesters handed out red roses to soldiers and police.

A similar, if less conclusive development occured over the weekend when, in a surprise announcement, President Hosni Mubarak ordered the election laws be amended to allow multiple candidates to run for the office of President.

"The election of a president will be through direct, secret balloting, giving the chance for political parties to run for the presidential elections and providing guarantees that allow more than one candidate for the people to choose among them with their own will," Mubarak said in an address broadcast live on Egyptian television.

Mubarak — who has never faced an opponent since becoming president after the 1981 assassination of Anwar Sadat — said his initiative came "out of my full conviction of the need to consolidate efforts for more freedom and democracy."

The audience before him at Menoufia University broke into applause and calls of support, some shouting, "Long live Mubarak, mentor of freedom and democracy!" Others spontaneously recited verses of poetry praising the government.

Okay, old habits die hard. Yes, Mubarak's sudden embrace of something resembling a democratic election may ensure the continuation of his dynasty, but it's still good news.

The AP report of all this places Mubarak's decision in the context of the two recent elections in the region, Iraq's and the Palestinians, "that brought a taste of democracy to the region," as well as the US's sharp criticism of the arrest by Mubarak of an opposition leader.

Don't let that get on your nerves; you are going to hear triumphalist echos of that again and again.

The head of an Egyptian human rights organization, while welcoming the development, gives the causal factors a somewhat difference emphasis: Hafez Abu Saada, director of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, praised Mubarak's "unexpected step," which he said reflected local, regional and international pressure. To its credit, the AP includes a centrally important statement from another Egyptian voice, although I would say the importance of Aida Seif el-Dawla's statement reaches beyond the AP's characterization of it as "tentative." "This concession is made to the United States of America. It is better for him (Mubarak) if this decision came as a result of the national dialogue with the opposition parties and in response to the protests against the law," she said. "Let us wait and see, because a free campaign of more than one candidate requires more than a statement from the president."

The difference here is crucial and crucially missing from the right wing take on what is going on in the Middle East, which is fast becoming the general take of the SCLM on the subject.

To be continued later this afternoon, and there is much more to say and think about. For now, take a look at what Abu Ardavark has to say about reactions to what's happening in Egypt, as well as an interesting discussion of alarmism about Turkey in the WSJ online, that is traced back to MEMRI.

This was from yesterday but I missed it because I was screwin' off and because my friends Mr and Mrs Harry Woodpecker invited me over to their hell hole for Sunday suet dinner.

More plagarism by White House Spermato Swallow JD Clucking Guckert Gannon. Via Why Are we In Iraq:

Sunday, February 27, 2005How To "Write" Like Jeff Gannon: Example #2
Does Bob Allen of the Associate Baptist Press know that significant portions of an article that he wrote and published a year-and-a-half ago later appeared as a Talon News/GOPUSA exclusive credited to the poor-poor-persecuted propagandist and plagiarist - Jeff Gannon? Bob Allen's story "Christian Coalition divided over Alabama tax reform" (August 12, 2003: ABP Press) only got so much play, but Jeff Gannon's "Conservative, Christians Battle Alabama Governor on Tax Hike" (August 22, 2003: cache link) travelled all across the Internet, appearing here, here, here, and was even cited in this Reverend's sermon).

Catch up...: read entire post.

*

"It was DeLay's operatives, including his daughter, who set up and ran Trmpac," Mr. Feldman said. "Tom DeLay figures prominently in the events that will be discussed at trial."


Defendants' Ties to DeLay Draw Nation's Eyes...
- By Philip Shenon NYTimes (login not required)

More on Delay, and what you can do about it, from Riggsveda

******

Via The Moscow Times:

Global Eye -- Core Values
By Chris Floyd

February 25, 2005 -- Day in and day out, patriotic American dissidents on both the left and the right keep shovelling through the bloody muck of the Bush Imperium. The filth is endless, Augean; Salon.com recently catalogued 34 ongoing major scandals, equalling or surpassing the depravity of Watergate. Yet still the patriots bend to the task, tossing up steaming piles of ugly truth before the public.

And with every loud splattering of fresh Bushflop, there's a flurry of hope that this time, the dirt will stick; this time, the stench of corruption will be so overwhelming that the nation's long-somnolent conscience will be aroused. Yet each time, the rancid slurry just disappears down the drain: The Bushists tell their butt-covering lies, the "watchdogs" of the media wag their tails and all is well again in the land that Gore Vidal so aptly dubbed the United States of Amnesia. No scandal, no matter how outrageous, ever gains any traction.

But there is a simple reason why patriots on both the right and the left are stymied: because the center is rotten to its well-wadded, self-righteous, wilfully ignorant core. We speak here of the nation's "great and good," pillars of the community and stalwarts of the established order, the "captains, merchant bankers, eminent men of letters, the generous patrons of art, the statesmen and the rulers, distinguished civil servants, chairmen of many committees, industrial lords and petty contractors," in T.S. Eliot's words -- to which we might add, as a modern gloss, the highly credentialed academics, extremely well-remunerated corporate journalists, politically wired churchmen and the innumerable massagers of public opinion and commercial desire. --- continued...

*

BTK = Bind Torture Kill

It's Called Torture
By Bob Herbert. NYTimes (no login required)

A Massachusetts congressman, Edward Markey, has taken the eminently sensible step of introducing legislation that would ban this utterly reprehensible practice. In a speech on the floor of the House, Mr. Markey, a Democrat, said: "Torture is morally repugnant whether we do it or whether we ask another country to do it for us. It is morally wrong whether it is captured on film or whether it goes on behind closed doors unannounced to the American people."

[...]

I asked Pete Jeffries, the communications director for House Speaker Dennis Hastert, if the speaker supported Mr. Markey's bill. After checking with the policy experts in his office, Mr. Jeffries called back and said: "The speaker does not support the Markey proposal. He believes that suspected terrorists should be sent back to their home countries."

Surprised, I asked why suspected terrorists should be sent anywhere. Why shouldn't they be held by the United States and prosecuted?

"Because," said Mr. Jeffries, "U.S. taxpayers should not necessarily be on the hook for their judicial and incarceration costs."

It was, perhaps, the most preposterous response to any question I've ever asked as a journalist.

*

Poll: Associated Press:

How Different Groups Feel About Bush's Social Security Proposal

AGE: About half of those 18-39 support President Bush's proposal to create personal accounts in Social Security. About one-third of those 40-64 support it; one-fourth of those 65 and over support it.

PARTY ID: Three-fourths of Republicans support the personal accounts plan, while more than three-fourths of Democrats oppose it. Two-thirds of independents oppose it.

EDUCATION LEVEL: Three in 10 of those with a high school education support the proposal to create personal accounts. More than a third of those with some college support it; half of those with college degrees support it.

INCOME LEVELS: About three in 10 of those who make $25,000 or less support the proposal to create personal accounts. About four in 10 of those who make more than $25,000 but less than $75,000 support it. Almost six in 10 of those who make $75,000 or more support it.

******

Jerry Falwell still not dead: "Falwell no longer breathing through ventilator." (Lynchburg News & Advance)

Woke up, fell out of bed, dragged a comb across my head...

All well and good, except my mattress in the tiny room under the stairs of The Mighty Corrente Building is on the floor, and most of my hair is a fading memory...

Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, Steel has been on the New York Times bestseller list forever, despite—or, dare I say, because of—its scientific, reality-based subject matter and tone. On page 277, Professor Diamond discusses kleptocracy. The concept is that in any society that's made it past hunting and gathering, there's a surplus, and there are kleptocrats, the kind of people who—human nature being what it is—have appropriated the surplus, and have to figure out how to hold onto as much of it as they can. From page 277 and 278 of the Norton paperback:

Kleptocrats throughout the ages have resorted to a mixture of four solutions:

1. Disarm the populace, and arm the elite. That's much easier in these days of high-tech weaponry, produced only in industrial plants and easily monopolized by an elite, than in ancient times of spears and clubs easily made at home.

2. Make the masses happy by redistributing much of the tribute received, in popular ways. This principle was as valid for Hawaiian chiefs as it is for American politicians today.

3. Use the monopoly of force to promote happiness, by maintaining public order and curbing violence....

4. Construct an ideology or religion justifying kleptocracy. ... The supernatural beliefs of bands and tribes did not serve to justify central authority, justify transfer of wealth, or maintain peace between unrelated individuals. When supernatural beliefs gained those powers and became institutionalized, they were thereby transformed into what we term a religion. Hawaiian chiefs were typical of chiefs elsewhere, in asserting divinity, divine descent, or at least a hotline to the Gods. The chief claimed to serve the people by interceding for them with the gods and reciting the ritual formulas required....

Chiefdoms characteristically have an ideology, precursor to an institutionalized religion, that butresses the chief's authority. The chief may either combine the offices of political leader and priest in a single person, or may support a separate group of kleptocrats (that is, priests) whose function is to provide ideological justifications for the chiefs. That is why chiefdoms devote so much collected tribute to constructing temples and other public works, which serve as centers of the official religion and visible signs of the chief's power.

A long quote, but revealing of the present day, for two reasons.

First, the fundamental conflicts between Democrats and Republicans are finally becoming clear, revealed by the Social Security battle.

The Democrats, in the FDR tradition, are klepocrats in style #2 ("make the masses happy by redistributing much of the tribute received") The Republicans, in the person of George Bush, are attempting to change the nature of the kleptocracy under which we live to from #2 to #3 ("Construct an ideology or religion justifying kleptocracy"). And there's no question I'd prefer to live in an FDR-style kleptocracy; eating half a shit sandwich is always preferable to eating a whole one.

Second, Diamond's acute analysis of the nature of chiefdoms reveals much about our enemies, the Republicans, as well.

The "priests" who provide "ideological justifications" are the VRWC of media whores, talking heads, pundits, dirty tricksters, and Federalist Society operatives (F/Buckhead; Scalia).

And the "visible signs of the chief's powers" are things like the troops at the inaugural.

You thought that was about security? Silly!

Or the [snort] missile defense system. You thought that was about protecting us? Silly! It's a high tech temple, a multibillion dollar artificial dick that shoots into the air and blows up, as an offering to the sky gods! The point is not whether it works—that's so reality based! The point is: Big Chief can do it! So he does it!

Bush, Big Chief! Bow down before Him! I'm going to give him and his priests all my retirement money because since they already have so much, they must deserve more!

Honestly. Have they no decency? At long last, have they no decency?

The battle over Social Security has been joined by an unusual lobbyist, a 9-year-old from Texas who has agreed to travel supporting President Bush's proposal.
(via NY Times)

"It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones." (Luke 17:2)

He could wrap City Hall—in a giant green trash bag.

A giant green stinkin' trash bag.

Discuss.

How about complete capitulation, followed by massive and prolonged grovelling?

That "moderate" or "centrist" Democrats would do anything to foreclose this outcome.... Well, it's hard to imagine a Democrat doing that, isn't it?

At least a Democrat that doesn't want to win The Darwin Award. Doing a deal with the White House? Like Max Cleland? Like Mary Landrieu?

Too bad that SicherheistdienstKomissar slot isn't open over at DHS anymore, but doubtless Inerrant Boy has another thirty pieces of silver in mind for Whiney Joe— if a big, fat, sloppy kiss at the State of the Union isn't enough in and of itself, that is.

What an ugly thought.

But since GPS chips are already in cell phones, why not?

I'm with the gun nuts defenders of the Second Amendment on this one.

The newest offense: DWD—Driving While being a Democrat. Of course, that's just a paranoid fantasy: The black lists Rove's local operatives have compiled to exclude The Not Adulatory or Idolatrous from Partei rallies would never be handed over to the Staties, let alone any Federal departments. Phew! I'd glad I referred that one to my own, internalized Department of No! They Would Never Do That! I was verging on tinfoil hat territory, there! Now I'm calm.

Then again...

Drivers could just leave their driver's licenses at home, rather than be tracked, but that rather defeats the original purpose of a driver's license, eh?

Alternatively, there's this scenario:

YOU "Gosh, officer, the chip seems to be broken!"

OFFICER "Yes, I pinged your car with the digi-gun and your chip didn't respond. That's why I pulled you over. Can you step out of the car now, please?"

Personally, I don't drive, but for traitors outliers like me, there will always the option of subcutaneous injection...

What's wrong this this picture:

FARGO, ND - Local Republican operatives compile blacklist, make sure no Democrats attend "town meeting" with Bush.

WASHINGTON, DC - National Republican operatives give male escort daily passes to press rooom, where he offers "lifeline" to both Bush's press secretary and Bush when they face hard questions.

Come on. You're telling me the Republicans in the famously disciplined Bush White House didn't know exactly who and what "Jeff Gannon" was?

Or should we bring some of those Fargo operatives up to DC to tighten things up?

It seems like Froomkin has finally lost patience. And about time, too.

It was an amazing moment: After the introductory comments, Andrey Kolesnikov, a correspondent for the Russian business newspaper Kommersant, got up and said -- albeit not so succinctly, and not in English -- Hey, no wonder you guys see eye to eye! You're both authoritarians.

This prompted Bush to launch into a possibly unprecedented defense of himself as a democratic leader. He did it by describing his view of the country.

"[BUSH] I live in a transparent country.

• Cadre grows to rein in message; Ranks of federal public affairs officials have swelled under Bush to help tighten control on communiques to media, access to information, Newsday, Feb. 24, 2005; Administration Paid Commentator; Education Dept. Used Williams to Promote 'No Child' Law, Washington Post, Jan. 8, 2005; Groups raise concerns about increased classification of documents, GOVEXEC.com, Oct. 27, 2004.

"I live in a country where decisions made by government are wide open and people are able to call people to -- me to account, which many out here do on a regular basis.

• High Court Backs Vice President; Energy Documents Shielded for Now, Washington Post, June 25, 2004; Mr. President, will you answer the question?, NiemanWathchdog.org, Dec. 3, 2004; Bush Says Election Ratified Iraq Policy, Washington Post, Jan. 16, 2005 (in which Bush says: "We had an accountability moment, and that's called the 2004 elections.")

"Our laws and the reasons why we have laws on the books are perfectly explained to people. Every decision we have made is within the Constitution of the United States. We have a constitution that we uphold.

• How U.S. rewrote terror law in secrecy; White House group devised new system in aftermath of 9/11, New York Times, Oct. 24, 2004; In Cheney's Shadow, Counsel Pushes the Conservative Cause, Washington Post, Oct. 11, 2004; Slim Legal Grounds for Torture Memos; Most Scholars Reject Broad View of Executive's Power, Washington Post, July 4, 2004.

"And if there's a question as to whether or not a law meets that constitution, we have an independent court system through which that law is reviewed.

• Recount 2000: Decision Sharpens the Justices' Divisions; Dissenters See Harm to Voting Rights and the Court's Own Legitimacy, Washington Post, Dec. 13, 2000; Scalia Won't Sit Out Case On Cheney; Justice's Memo Details Hunting Trip With VP, Washington Post, March 19, 2004.

"So I'm perfectly comfortable in telling you our country is one that safeguards human rights and human dignity, and we resolve our disputes in a peaceful way."

• Torture at Abu Ghraib, the New Yorker, May 10, 2004; Ground War Starts, Airstrikes Continue As U.S. Keeps Focus on Iraq's Leaders, Washington Post, March 21, 2003.

(via WaPo)

Pin this one up on the fridge; xerox it, and hand it out in the streets.

The reality-based blogging community couldn't have said it better.

What was Al Gore thinking? Anyhow:

Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid has declared that Senate Democrats are united in their opposition to personal accounts carved out of Social Security. That is a deal-killer if true, since as a practical matter the most controversial ideas typically need a supermajority of 60 votes to end filibusters and allow a vote. Despite Reid's assertion, however, several moderate Democrats have not ruled out backing a more modest version of the president's plan.

Some of these centrists, such as Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), have been meeting with Republican colleagues to discuss whether there is a middle ground.
(via WaPo)

"Centrists"... My God.

OK, so maybe Modo's all cheesed off because she couldn't get a White House Press pass, while working boy "Jeff Gannon" eased into the White House press room on a daily basis. Wouldn't you be?

It was remarkable to see President Bush lecture Vladimir Putin on the importance of checks and balances in a democratic society.

Remarkably brazen, given that the only checks Mr. Bush seems to believe in are those written to the "journalists" Armstrong Williams, Maggie Gallagher and Karen Ryan, the fake TV anchor, to help promote his policies. The administration has given a whole new meaning to checkbook journalism, paying a stupendous $97 million to an outside P.R. firm to buy columnists and produce propaganda, including faux video news releases.

As we keep saying—that's a budget for 200 media whores Secretly Paid Policy Advocates, and we know about 6. Who are the other 194? (back)

This White House seems [I know not "seems"!] to prefer softball questions from a self-advertised male escort with a fake name to hardball questions from journalists with real names; it prefers tossing journalists who protect their sources into the gulag to giving up the officials who broke the law by leaking the name of their own C.I.A. agent.
(via Times)

Nice to see all this finally make it somewhere in the Times, but where was The World's Greatest Newspaper (not!) when this shitstorm was building?

DarkSyd at Unscrewing the Inscrutable has been persuaded to adjust his lesson plan:

Science For Right-Wing Dummies

And now our feature attraction ... Judging by the continuing steady trickle of rather bizare e-mails from supporters of creationism who also happen to be self proclaimed 'right-wing patriots', and the continued flow of wingers on Pharyngula who claim to be against science on behalf of God, I must; I admit don't seem to be getting through on this whole science thing.

Then I had an epiphany! I've been going about it all wrong. I've been stressing accuracy, evidence, references, peer review, methodology, and testability/faslifiability. That's way, way too complicated for Neo-Christian extremists! Besides, to help wingers understand the importance of science, all I needed to do was point out that science helps us Smite the Dirty Heathens with God's Holy Wrath, i.e. killing human beings, bombing civilians, shooting women and children more accurately, and poisoning their air, crops, and water supplies, much more effectively! - continued here

*

Emperors we never knew. Worth a quick review in these dark and troubled times. From Eutropius’s History of Rome (Watson translation):

JULIUS Caesar returned to Rome, and began to conduct himself with too great arrogance, contrary to the usages of Roman liberty. As he disposed, therefore, at his own pleasure, of those honours, which were before conferred by the people and did not even rise up when the senate approached him, an d exercised regal, or almost tyrannical power, in other respects, a conspiracy was formed against him by sixty or more Roman senators and knights. The chief among the conspirators were the two Bruti, (of the family of that Brutus who had been made first consul of Rome, and who had expelled the kings) Caius Cassius, and Servilius Casca. Caesar, in consequence, having entered the senate house with the rest, on a certain day appointed for a meeting of the senate, was stabbed with three and twenty wounds.

TIBERIUS distinguished his reign by great indolence, excessive cruelty, unprincipled avarice, and abandoned licentiousness. He fought on no occasion in person; the wars were carried on by his generals. Some kings, whom he induced to visit him by seducing allurements, he never sent back; among them was Archelaus of Cappadocia, whose kingdom also he reduced to the form of a province, and directed that its principal city should be called after his own name; and, having been before called Mazaca, it is now termed Caesarea. He died in Campania, in the three and twentieth year of his reign, and the eighty-third of his age, to the great joy of all men.

NERO, who greatly resembled his uncle Caligula, both disgraced and weakened the Roman empire; he indulged in such extraordinary luxury and extravagance, that, after the example of Caius Caligula, he even bathed in hot and cold perfumes, and fished with golden nets, which he drew up with cords of purple silk. He put to death a very great number of the senate. To all good men he was an enemy. At last he exposed himself in so disgraceful a manner, that he danced and sung upon the stage in the dress of a harp-player and tragedian. He was guilty of many murders, his brother, wife, and mother, being put to death by him. He set on fire the city of Rome, that he might enjoy the sight of a spectacle such as Troy formerly presented when taken and burned.

When, having become detestable by such conduct to the city of Rome, and being deserted at the same time by every one, and declared an enemy by the senate, he was sought for to be led to punishment (the punishment being, that he should be dragged naked through the streets, with a fork placed under his head, be beaten to death with rods, and then hurled from the Tarpeian rock), he fled from the palace, and killed himself in a suburban villa of one of his freed-men, between the Salarian and Nomentane roads, at the fourth milestone from the city. He built those hot baths at Rome, which were formerly called the Neronian, but now the Alexandrian. He died in the thirty-second year of his age, and the fourteenth year of his reign; and in him all the family of Augustus became extinct.

Not that there are any historical parallels or anything, here. I’m just saying it pays to know your imperial history.

More examples of cut and paste journalism. Via rab at Why Are We Back In Iraq:

How To "Write" Like Jeff Gannon: Example #1

Ya know, ya gotta wonder if the JD Gannon "the White House Porn Cannon" is even attached to his own penis. Who knows these days. Maybe he borrowed Ann Coulter's. That would explain a lot of things.

*

Lamber asks below: "So, if God is in the White House, why was Guckert in the press room?" - Bill Berkowitz tries to get some answers...

Christian right mum on Gannon Affair
Why have the 'traditional family values' folks erected a wall of silence around the Gannon scandal?

They were livid over SpongeBob Square Pants' participation in a video advocating tolerance, and fuming about Buster the Bunny's visit to a lesbian household. So where's the outrage from the Christian right over the Jeff Gannon Affair? Despite a chunk of time having passed since the Gannon Affair was first uncovered, Christian right organizations are still cloaked in silence.

[...]

Curious about this wall of silence, I phoned several Christian right groups on Tuesday, February 22, hoping to find someone who could comment on the Gannon Affair. This is what I found:

go see what Bill Berkowitz found.

Meanwhile: other more pressing OUTRAGES continue to mount. Shrieks Agape Press headline:

UW Officials Slammed for Allowing Transvestite Inanity, Published Profanity

By Jim Brown (American Family Radio News)
February 25, 2005

(AgapePress) - An institution of higher learning in Washington State is being criticized for allowing a drag queen competition on campus and permitting the student newspaper to run an article containing profanity.

According to University of Washington Daily reports, 600 people came to see the second annual "Gender Bender Drag Competition" on the university's Seattle Campus. According to the Daily, the event included graphic sexuality, sex jokes, and other kinds of dirty humor. Reportedly, 150 would-be spectators had to be turned away due to limited seating.

The UW Student Affairs Office declined to comment on the drag queen competition or on the Daily's use of profanity in its coverage of it. However, Bob Knight of the Culture and Family Institute had plenty to say about what he calls an "utterly indefensible" event.

Bob Knight
"Parents and taxpayers who pay good money to ensure that kids get a good education don't have this kind of stuff in mind," Knight says. "These groups are being allowed to corrupt kids -- that's really what we're talking about -- they're tempting kids into weird sex, weird depictions of sex, gender-bending. They have no business doing this on a publicly supported campus."

Hmmm. It's a good thing the White House is no longer public property or Bob might be pretty upset with some of the weird "depictions" that have been oozing, of late, out of that Washington campus.

Seize the moral high ground - concede nothing..... This Modern World

*

So, if God is in the White House, why was Guckert in the press room?

I mean, I've heard of Mary Magdalene, but this is ridiculous!

In another bizarre piece of fluffery by Lizzie "Girl Reporter" Bumiller, we get the usual next-to-nothing that two minutes worth of Googling would surround with some context:

"I worked there as a 14-year-old kid," Mr. Bush said. "I left Texas for Scotland to work on a sheep farm. And I'm riding my bike, taking this one sheep, you know, from here to there, and a big tour bus stops. And they got off, and a woman with a Texas accent said, 'Look at the little Scottish boy.' "
(via NY Times)

Now, let me be the first to admit that we were wrong, wrong, wrong. We were wrong about the vile rumor about goats (back).

Sheep. Oh George...

There is some confirmation that the story isn't entirely made up here. Nice to think of the fourteen year old Bush "working" on a sheep farm owned by a millionaire financier friend of Bush pere, William Gammel, who was later one of the original investors in Bush's first failed venture, Arbusto.

And it sounds like Gammel learned a lot from his experience!

The loyal Gammell is rigorously discreet about his two famous friends [Tony Blair and Bush], but he has acknowledged: "I learned a lot about the oil business from George W Bush."

Like what, I wonder?

"I learned two golden rules, double what you are told are the technical risks, and halve what you are told about the upside," Gammell said.
(Energy Bulletin)

My guess is that Gammel learned that lesson the hard way—being taken for a few million in Bush's Arbusto fiasco.

And you know? It's too bad Bush didn't learn those same two rules in His war of choice in Whack, isn't it? If Bush had doubled the technical risks, we might have had a plan to win the peace. And if Bush had halved the upside... Well, damn. We never were quite sure what the upside was, were we? Because it kept changing all the time... Oh well...

Georgie! Leggo of that sheep! How would you feel?!

Running against Bush, that is:

A day after opting out of the U.S. ballistic missile defense shield, Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin reiterated Friday that Washington must get permission from Ottawa before firing on any incoming missiles over Canada.

"This is our airspace, we're a sovereign nation and you don't intrude on a sovereign nation's airspace without seeking permission," Martin said.
(via AP)

You've gotta know that the world has taken Bush's measure when—sorry about this Tresy—the Canadians kick sand in His face. I mean, first the Estonians and the French give up one (count 'em) soldier each for Whack, and now this.

GEORGE: What say we whup them Canadians next, hon?

CONDI: [Thinking: With what Army?] Would you like the boots on this time, Master?

Of course, Martin was the quintessentially polite Canadian for not pointing out that Bush's multibillion shrinking-dollar Pentagon-contractor-on-the-tit boondoggle [cough] system just doesn't work. And it isn't like we'd try to bring down incoming warheads on Canadian territory, anyhow. Well, except maybe for the French-speaking part, and then we'd be doing them a favor anyhow, right?

Oh, sorry. I forgot to warn you to put your coffee down.

Anyhow, I'm not making this up.

Readers, suppose you were writing an ad to find "Hannity style romance." Just suppose now. How would it read?

Bonus points (conservative gals): Work in "knee-high boots"! (back)

Bonus points (conservative guys)... Oh, what's the point... Why go on.... Damn, where'd I leave that bottle... Well, how about "candlelight and walks on the the beach"?

Wow. Following in Xan’s steps here of ripping off the best (see below), the best things I’ve seen yet on the “creeping fascism” meme. From Luciana Bohne:

February 22, 2005—Fifty years from now, historians (if any survive the next 50 years in any fit shape to take time out from foraging for food to scribble and to theorize) will puzzle over this question as Italians still do today over the exact beginning of fascism (roughly, 1920-1943).

Was it with the USA PATRIOT Act? The military tribunals? Nine-eleven—Reichstag fire that some think it was? Florida elections 1998-2000? Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib? Gonzales? Negroponte? PNAC? Panama invasion? Gulf War I? Reagan? NAFTA and the Washington consensus, in general? Chile coup?

Or was it with Hiroshima and Nagasaki—when the US showed the world that it would back its existing economic hegemony with its military death machine?

The whole thing’s at Attacks on academic freedom, or when exactly did Bushism begin in the USA?

And this from Mark Drolette:

…Have I been dropping the f-bomb too casually, verbiage that has been guaranteed to stop practically any conversation in America dead in its tracks for just about forever? Or have circumstances changed such in this country that it can now be spoken without shame (though regretfully), and that, instead of causing jaws to drop, heads to shake, and people to leave, the moment is upon us in which this once-spurned term may now be considered appropriate (an unfortunate necessity) for everyday conversation?

I assert the latter: it is time to acknowledge our democratic system of government has been replaced by fascism.

Find the whole things at Part I and United States government, 2005Part 2: If it walks like a goose . . . over at Online Journal.

Worth a trip. Now, off to find some whiskey. And consume it.

We never learn, do we?

The University of Colorado is reviewing administrative records of all employees to see if they signed loyalty oaths after a controversy was sparked by the school's inability to find the loyalty oath of professor Ward Churchill.
(via Denver Post)

Of course, the Republicans who took oaths to the person of George Bush (back)), as opposed to the Constitution, or the country, say, have nothing to worry about. There's no conflict, and nothing to worry about, since under Fuhrerprinzip, the country Nation, The Consitution, and Dear Leader are all the same!

Beware of Rove Nations:

Via The Agonist

The Rise of Rove's Republic - Stirling Newberry | February 24

The Agonist - Most people in the outside world do not explicitly believe we are passing through a period of constitutional crisis. That an impeachment was run over a blow job didn't clue them in. That a president was installed by judicial fiat did not clue them in. That a war was launched which is, and was, essentially a giant looting expedition on the Treasury has not clued them in.

So what is going on? What is the thread that unifies Iraq and Social Security, the election crisis of 2000?

The process of American Constitutional change, and according to that process, the greatest dangers lie ahead, not behind us.

Continued...much more...go read the full article.

Thanks to kelley b at Singularity for the heads up on this post.
Also see, Singularity: Bad Moon on the Rise - The Rise of Rove's Republic.

*

Juan Cole steered me to this one, which comes from Bob Harris. Please note the headline is his [Bob's] title for the piece, not mine...and we'll repeat it one more time because...well, just because:

Uncle Bucky and the Rocket-Fueled Breasts

Wednesday, 23 February 2005
No, that's not a children's book from hell. (Although now I kinda want to write it.)

Two quick things from today's LAT which I haven't seen in other blogs yet:

Item 1: Chimpy's uncle William H. T. "Bucky" Bush just made half a million bucks cashing in stock options from helping run a defense company that got no-bid contracts which look pretty hinky.

Item 2: Mother's milk -- pretty much anybody's, at least in the U.S. -- now also contains a key ingredient of rocket fuel. Which is surely what nature intended. Downside: thyroid impairment leading to cognitive dysfunction and learning disabilities, and thus another possible generation of Bush supporters. Upside: American babies can now incinerate their own diapers by farting. So that's a time-saver right there.

I'm sure a lot of mothers in Iraq right now are hoping, just hoping, someday to do well enough to pass rocket fuel contamination through their own breasts.

We can only dream.

Have a great day. Yeesh.

*And what is it with these people and their need to maintain both a long string of initials indicative of pedigree, displaying their breeding papers like a show dog, and widdle-kid nicknames, as if to announce, hey, we're not all that serious about the elitist rights of inherited dominion we affirm with our every waking breath? I mean, hell, everyone's related to somebody who did something. If any of these people believed their own crap about personal responsibility, they'd occasionally act like who they are was defined by their own actions, not the eugenic cotillion-closet genetic filesharing which allows them to escape any consequence.

Hell. Maybe I should start calling myself Robert Clemens Priestley Cleopatra "Skeeball" Harris and hope somebody hands me a no-bid contract. Worth a try.

Being in the middle of a periodic stab at giving up tobacco, I of course am unable to write anything myself, so figured it was only fair to give our readers the best stolen material available elsewhere. If anyone reading this is inspired to hand out any no-bid contracts, just steer it here to the Mighty Corrente Building and we'll be sure to pass [most of] it along to Bob.

WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived at the Wiesbaden Army Airfield on Wednesday dressed all in black. She was wearing a black skirt that hit just above the knee, and it was topped with a black coat that fell to mid-calf. The coat, with its seven gold buttons running down the front and its band collar, called to mind a Marine's dress uniform or the "save humanity" ensemble worn by Keanu Reeves in "The Matrix."

As Rice walked out to greet the troops, the coat blew open in a rather swashbuckling way to reveal the top of a pair of knee-high boots. The boots had a high, slender heel that is not particularly practical. But it is a popular silhouette because it tends to elongate and flatter the leg. In short, the boots are sexy.
(via WaPo)

Even though every thing Condi has touched over the past four years has turned to, well, you know, the press isn't talking about that. Even though she's continuing to screw stuff up on a daily basis, we're not talking about that.

No, oh no. Instead of talking about anything of substance, the paragons of the Washington press corps are now writing silly-ass fluff pieces about Condi's clothes.

Holy shit. How vapid is that?

I heard a guy from Mississippi on NPR this morning (yeah, I know, I torture myself, but it still beats commercial radio and I don’t have teevee). He said he voted for aWol because he was once in the military and he knows you don’t change commanders in mid-war. He then went on to say that he favored the Democrats on the social security issue and thought aWol was dead wrong to try to meddle with the system.

Isn’t this the kind of guy you just want to throttle? I mean, WTF? I couldn’t help but think of that fella I overheard who basically said, hell yes, you change horses in midstream if the nag has two broken legs and is drowning. I think of Truman firing MacArthur. And on and on.

The reasoning skills displayed here just astound me. Now you have a “commander” whose clusterfuck is rapidly going from bad to worse, AND handling of domestic issues you don’t like.

Reminds me of someone I met last week at the library in town. The head librarian is a friend of mine, a flaming liberal, and she introduced me to the new kiddie librarian by saying, “She’s nice enough, but I don’t think she’d like our bumper stickers.” (Referring to the Kerry-Edwards, Dump Bush, Regime Change Begins at Home stickers all over our trucks.) The kiddie librarian just laughed and said, “Oh, I’m a Democrat. I just voted for Bush because of some personal reasons I’d rather not talk about.”

My thought was, yeah, personal reasons like those demonic voices that keep yammering in your head. I mean, WTF?

And then I hear where a peace activist in Bangladesh said to a reporter, ''Bush and his second-term election was a surprise to people here. Most people didn't believe that U.S. citizens were going to reward Bush after what he has done.''

Some days I just want to crawl under the covers with a bottle of sipping whiskey and a good tearjerking book. Know what I mean?

Once again Krugman is the master synthesizer:

[If disinformation] were all there is to it, Social Security should be safe, because this particular disinformation campaign isn't going at all well. In fact, there's a sense of wonderment among defenders of Social Security about the other side's lack of preparation. The Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation have spent decades campaigning for privatization. Yet they weren't ready to answer even the most obvious questions about how it would work - like how benefits could be maintained for older Americans without a dangerous increase in debt.

Privatizers are even having a hard time pretending that they want to strengthen Social Security, not dismantle it. At one of Senator Rick Santorum's recent town-hall meetings promoting privatization, college Republicans began chanting, "Hey hey, ho ho, Social Security's got to go."

Silly boys. Letting the cat out of the bag!

But before the anti-privatization forces assume that winning the rational arguments is enough, they need to read Mr. Frank's [book, What's the matter with Kansas].

The message of Mr. Frank's book is that the right has been able to win elections, despite the fact that its economic policies hurt workers, by portraying itself as the defender of mainstream values against a malevolent cultural elite. The right "mobilizes voters with explosive social issues, summoning public outrage ... which it then marries to pro-business economic policies. Cultural anger is marshaled to achieve economic ends."

And this week we saw Mr. Frank's thesis acted out so crudely that it was as if someone had deliberately staged it. The right wants to dismantle Social Security, a successful program that is a pillar of stability for working Americans. AARP stands in the way. So without a moment's hesitation, the usual suspects declared that this organization of staid seniors is actually an anti-soldier, pro-gay-marriage leftist front.

It's tempting to dismiss this as an exceptional case in which right-wingers, unable to come up with a real cultural grievance to exploit, fabricated one out of thin air. But such fabrications are the rule, not the exception.

So it doesn't matter that Social Security is a pro-family program that was created by and for America's greatest generation - and that it is especially crucial in poor but conservative states like Alabama and Arkansas, where it's the only thing keeping a majority of seniors above the poverty line. Right-wingers will still find ways to claim that anyone who opposes privatization supports terrorists and hates family values.

Their first attack may have missed the mark, but it's the shape of smears to come
(via NY Times)

Gov. Matt Blunt said Thursday he is delaying $100 million in monthly payments to Missouri's major universities to try to ease state cash flow troubles.

Democrats accused the Republican governor of breaking his campaign pledge not to withhold money from public education - a charge Blunt denied.

...

Missouri's colleges and universities have suffered repeated funding cuts as governors and legislators have struggled to balance the state budget in recent years.

Most recently, Democratic Gov. Bob Holden withheld $210 million from K-12 and higher education in July 2003, then gradually released the full amount by April 2004 as state revenues came in better than he had expected.

While campaigning for governor, Blunt often criticized Holden's budget withholdings. In his written campaign platform, Blunt that if he were elected, "money that has been approved for our public schools will NEVER be withheld."

Blunt, who took office last month, said Thursday that his campaign pledge applied only to K-12 education.

"I've never said we won't withhold money from higher education," said Blunt, adding that regardless, "this isn't a withholding. It's a deferred payment."
(via Jefferson City News-Tribune)

Oh, please Matt, give me a damned break.

They pilloried Democratic former governor Bob Holden for doing this -- and Blunt's withholding is much larger than Holden's withholdings from the state university system ever were.

And, I might add, Holden gave the universities all plenty of warning so that they could plan accordingly. Apparently, Blunt just dropped this bomb on Wednesday with little or no warning.

Let me repeat this for you: My STATE UNIVERSITY is about to have to BORROW several million dollars from a bank to keep meeting payroll for something Republican Governor Blunt said during the campaign he'd never do and criticized his Democratic predecessor incessantly for doing.

Pathetic.

We've moved Tresy's beautiful essay, to make sure everyone has a chance to read it.

In addition, here are some additional links. Orion magazine, a wonderful publication more people should be aware of, has a galaerie of photographs of the Arctic Refuge taken by "Photographer Subhankar Banerjee -- a thirty-something computer scientist from India turned artist and conservationist -- has honed his artistic proficiency from the seat of a kayak, a Cessna, and even an iceberg, documenting the wonders of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge over a two-year period." As the editors comment, these stunning photographs "vividly debunk Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton's characterization of ANWR as "flat, white nothingness." His exhibition at the Smithsonian was moved from the Rotunda Gallery to a hallway leading to a loading dock, without explanation." Getting angry? Good.

The magazine features top of the line writers like Peter Matthiessen, Wendell Berry, Terry Temptest Williams, Jane Godall, Rick Bass, Barry Lopez; it offers audio readings, and a video of Mattheissen you should look at - all kinds of good stuff about a different way to look at our post 9/11 world. Here's its archive page - explore at your leisure. Don't miss this related article about Dick Cheney's energy policy, "Looking For Oil In All The Wrong Places," which has a particularly interesting graphic.

The League of Conservation Voters is also on the case:

Stop the Sneak Attack on the Arctic Refuge Keep Arctic drilling OUT of federal budget legislation

Right now President Bush and his pro-drilling allies in Congress are plotting a sneak attack on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. In the next two weeks, oil-friendly members of the House and Senate will try a sneaky backdoor trick to pass their unpopular proposal to drill for oil in the pristine Arctic Refuge by inserting it into the must-pass federal budget bill. It's up to us to put a stop to this sneak attack by raising a ruckus.

So we have our marching orders - make a ruckus. LCV can make it easier for you, click here to find out how. There's nothing like phone calls direct to members of congress. It doesn't have to be today. Early next week would be good, too. Call ten of your friends and ask them to do the same thing, and ask them to notify ten of their friends, and check for duplicate calls. Call your own representative and senators first. Then call key Democrats, especially in the leadership. Insist on talking to a staff person. Sometimes after they start getting calls on a specific subject, the receptionist starts keeping track of the totals, in which case, stating a brief message to her (still always her, yes?) is okay.

Guys, this is important. You don't get wilderness like this back once it falls under the development bulldozer. Now then, read Tresy below, or read it again; it'll inspire you.

Last night we took a break from house hunting in our soon-to-be-adoptive country to watch the documentary, "Being Caribou," with several hundred other residents of Nelson, BC. The film chronicles a Canadian couple's 6-month trek through the northwest Yukon and into the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, following the annual migration of 125,000 caribou to their calving grounds on a narrow strip of shoreline above the Arctic Circle. The film is impressive on several levels, not least of which is the inspirational idealism of the couple, Leanne Allison and Karsten Heuer, who set out on this quest with a single camera, a 6-week course in documentary filmmaking, and a singleminded determination to show the world what is at stake if the Refuge is opened up to oil drilling.

Speaking for myself at least, it's one thing to read about the magnificence of this place, which the oil industry wants to defile, but entirely another to see it, listen to it, and vicariously feel it. This is not a romantic portrait of Nature as maternal Gaia; the weather is often brutal, the ordeal the caribou endure to complete their cycle of life grim. When not being picked off by grizzly bears, the caribou face having their calves literally plucked from them by golden eagles, losing them by accident (a calf separated from its mother is doomed; at one point one such lost calf approaches Heuer in the tragic hope that he might be his), or in a final indignity, literally being bitten to death by mosquitoes and botflies.

Yet the drama of this millennia-old story and the backdrop against which it takes place still takes one's breath away. That we would yet again be poised to pawn yet another piece of our patrimony for 6-months' worth of driving to Wal-Mart is profoundly depressing; watching "Being Caribou" evokes the photos of Native Americans by the Asahel Curtis, in that both are really elegies for a life on the verge of vanishing forever.

There is still room for action. The Canadian government has already passed legislation protecting the caribou migration, but without protection of their calving grounds in Alaska, the caribou are dangerously at risk. Bush is apparently backing us into drilling in the ANWR by putting a revenue line item in this year's budget that will, if passed, create leverage for formalizing drilling there. Activists are trying to build grassroots opposition to this move through community meetings and organized letter writing culminating March 12, when a vote is expected. You can read more here. Copies of "Being Caribou" are also available here.

Early on the film shows a clip of Bush hypocritically encouraging "folks" to go to the Refuge and "see it for themselves", counting on citizens to open up another beer and watch "Friends" instead. Two idealistic activists, however, called his bluff. Although few of us have the determination or the means to do what Allison and Karsten did, we can still call his bluff too.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

I understand the TV weather people are all excited—wearing their sweaters and all.

The numbers tell the story on Bush's charm offensive:

In a show of unity after bitter disputes, all 26 countries in NATO pledged money, equipment or personnel to train Iraqi security forces, though many of the pledges were modest.

Estonia said it would send one staff officer to Iraq, and $65,000. France offered one officer to help mission coordination at NATO headquarters, and said it would train 1,500 Iraqi military police in Qatar outside NATO's mission.
(via AP)

Yep, Bush broke it and bought it, alright.

"Sovereignty" now means doing that the United States wants:

Canada's apparent decison to stay out of a North American missile-defence system has dumbfounded Americans as an unnecessary giveaway of sovereignty, Washington's envoy to Ottawa said Wednesday.

"We don't get it," Paul Celluci said in Toronto.

"If there's a missile heading toward Canada, you are going to leave it up to the United States to determine what to do about that missile. We don't think that is in Canada's sovereign interest." (via the Nelson Daily News)

I'm having trouble deciding who Celluci reminds me of. Tony Soprano? ("Ya know, I tink it would be a very very bad ting if some bad elements might try to burn down your store and we wuz, you know, on the outs wid one another. Cuz I like ya, I really do, but I have my own intrests t' tink about, ya know? And well, ya know, I might have more pressing things on my mind at the time and not be able to help you out, if you get my drift."

Or maybe Crazy Celluci the Used Car Salesman ("Friend, you would be insane NOT to buy the armorplated undercarriage with rust inhibitor. Sure, it costs a few bucks more, but think about the kids! What if you ran over an Improvised Explosive Device one day and little Ian was in the backseat. Thse things happen, believe me. You'd never forgive yourself! Friend, it would be irresponsible not to spend the extra $14.2B. Ask yourself: what price can you put on peace of mind?"

Any other scumbags come to mind?

OK, two-column bigots advocates—

Can you live with a layout like this one? Does it have the right zooming behavior?

Dante Zappala, writing at PixelPress about her brother, Sherwood Baker, a Philadelphia native, killed in iWaq:

…For most of America today, the "War in Iraq" has been dumbed down to nothing more than a political football. We've got two teams trying to pick up a fumble and run with it. We've wrangled now for years over the existence of WMD. But in our obsession with that process, we neglect soldiers like Sherwood – and Iraqi civilians -- whose lives were sacrificed to find those weapons. As it turns out, to not find those weapons.

Sherwood didn't die in vain. But the war in Iraq is still being fought in vain. We have acquiesced to an agenda that has killed our brothers and sisters, raided our Treasury and fractured our moral standing in the world. The legacy of Sherwood's service will only be honored when we all demand truth in our politicians, demand that they too serve with honor and integrity.
Demanding that, I believe, is the best way that we can honor a dead soldier.

So let’s demand. United for Peace and Justice (United For Peace) is organizing…

Not so fast, say anti-war activists like Plummer, who is helping to organise a mass protest rally near the base in Fayetteville, North Carolina on Mar. 19 to coincide with the second anniversary of the U.S. invasion. ''The message is not 'bring them home after they fix stuff', it's 'bring them home now','' said Plummer, an active member of the national peace group Military Families Speak Out. ''

Organising in Fayetteville requires sensitivity that you wouldn't need to have in a non-military town,'' he added. ''You have to respect people who oppose the war but are afraid to go public because they have a spouse in the military and could lose their benefits.'' Even so, he says that interest in his group -- which represents 2,000 military families -- and in the March anti-war events has been ''overwhelming''. The Fayetteville rally is being conceived and planned by veterans and relatives of soldiers, with delegations coming from as far away as the Pacific island state of Hawaii…

…The Fayetteville rally is just one of many taking place around the United States next month, with New York City hosting a Central Park gathering expected to attract up to a quarter million people. The international peace movement has become increasingly sophisticated in coordinating events across the globe: in February 2003, more than ten million people marched simultaneously in 60 countries against the imminent U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

This year, anti-war actions are also planned in Britain, Greece, Italy, France, Iceland, Germany, Denmark and other European cities, as well as in Brazil, Korea, Japan, South Africa, Bangladesh and Australia.

In Sydney, the main focus will be on opposing the presence of foreign troops, but also specifically to condemn the Australian government's decision this week to send another 450 soldiers to Iraq, activists say. Mar. 20 falls on Palm Sunday this year, the traditional day on which Australians have held peace rallies. Anti-war actions will take place across the country… via Inter Press Service

And, hell, maybe organize something locally to coincide. We can usually get 30 or 40 people even here in the sticks.

Via My Net Roots:

Apparently "Jeff Gannon" Doesn't Translate into German - This is how Bush spreads the beacon light of freedom:

During his trip to Germany on Wednesday, the main highlight of George W. Bush's trip was meant to be a "town hall"-style meeting with average Germans. But with the German government unwilling to permit a scripted event with questions approved in advance, the White House has quietly put the event on ice. Was Bush afraid the event might focus on prickly questions about Iraq and Iran rather than the rosy future he's been touting in Europe this week?

Ooops! Tinfoil Hat Boy reminds me in comments that Lambert has already posted on this item above back HERE, yesterday.

In that case I'm working on something called NTodd Watch.
He's up to something over here: NTodd now with Red and Blue magazine. Mustang Bobby and the LA Times have been tracking his movements.

So, best stay alert especially if you live in Buels Gore, Vermont.

NTodd has been sighted in the vicinity of Buels Gore and could be right outside your window or sneaking around behind your barn right now this very minute. He may be traveling with a female accomplice named Otterson. If that is in fact her real name.

*

I would like to point to our current poll, directly to your right. Our polls are the work of The Farmer, which will come as no surprise to any of our regular readers. I happen to think that this particular one is perhaps his finest and funniest thus far.

However, I am saddened to note that the correct answer is only in second place. Yes, from my viewpoint there is a single correct answer, though I realize that arguments can be made on behalf of any of the proffered choices.

I can only assume the failure of so many to select that correct answer, which happens to be # 9, "The Rove Strumpet Swan" is due to a general lack of knowledge as to the true nature of swans. Most of you probably view them as benign creatures of great beauty, those wondrous entities into which ugly ducklings grow. Surely, they are beautiful. But just as surely their preening display of their own beauty is less than attractive, and an excellent avian equivalent of Jeff/Jim Gannon/Guckert's advertisements for his own display of nudity.

Most of you probably view your average swan as having a serene temperament. I don't blame you for that. I suspect that most of you have never had a close encounter with a swan. I have.

At the age of four, at a farm of a friend of the family where we sometimes spent the weekend, I became entranced by the beauty of the swans our friends kept in a pond, and waded in to pet one of them. Within a nanosecond, I was pinned under the gigantic wing of one of the swans, who commenced slapping me silly with the other wing, punctuated by occasional jabs of its beak and kicks of its webed feet. I was rescued before I sustained any permanent damage, but it took two grown men to free me, and one of them sustained two broken bones in the effort.

No one blamed the swan, nor do I. But I am here to tell you that swans are preternaturally strong beyond ordinary imagination, clannish, quick to anger, domineering, and that they posses a decided mean streak. I think it was grannyinsanity in comments who pointed to certain features of Gannon/Guckhert's physique that might indicate a predilection for dominance and the meting out of punishment. Are not the correlations between Rove Strumpet Swans and Jeff JD Gannon Guckert all too obvious? I will leave the discussion at that, except to observe that any of you who think that Leda had anything remotely like fun should think again, or re-read Yeats on the subject:

Vote your conscience, of course, but on no account ever try and pet a swan.

Here

A local socialite, who wishes to remain anonymous, has teamed up with this site to offer a $10,000 reward to anyone that can provide hard proof (photos, phone pictures, locks of hair, DNA on a suit) that Jeff Gannon had ANY sexual -- or romantic -- relationship with any top-ranking officials here in Washington.

This IS important! Over at American Politics Journal Steve Young says what needs to be said. And has a few questions that need to be asked:

Leave Jeff Gannon Alone!, He Gives Ne'erdowells Hope

QUESTIONS JEFF GANNON NEVER GOT TO ASK:

"There are rumblings that Hillary Clinton may run for President in 2008. Will your administration bring out the fact that she slept with the entire membership of every Harvard fraternity AND sorority? And is there room in the budget to resurrect the Whitewater scandal to find out why she killed Vince Foster? I mean, if she did. Could you also comment on the size of her calves?"

"Liberals believe that murdering innocent unborn children is cool. Does that have anything to do with the good your Social Security reform will do?"

"Democrats hate religion and urinate on God. Do you have any idea why?"

"In the early 1940's, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and turncoat Jim Jeffries murdered six million Jews and untold numbers of homosexuals. How do [you] work with these obviously insane assassins to pass laws that will only help the American people? And could you also address why misguided Jews, Negroes and Gays blindly support the Democratic party."

Hmmm. I think some "liberals" have some explaining to do! More excellent probing questions that need to be asked... see APJ link above.

Meanwhile; The GOPUSA/Talon News "new journalism" chop shop was apparently taking liberties with the vehicles parked in the Associated Press lot. Until someone discovers that the door panels on Leslie Wetzel's car look an awful lot like the door panels that used to be on David Kravetz's car and...well, just go see for yourself.

Via Why Are We Back

Another Talon News Plagiarist
Calling David Kravetz of the Associated Press. Have you ever heard of a Leslie Wetzel from Texas? On June 2, 2004 Leslie Wetzel was seen in the vicinity of GOPUSA with what appears to be your words. Are you or the Associated Press going to do something about that? We're all waiting to see.

Finally, in summation, I'd like to take a moment to second Steve Young's praise for Jeff Gannon and to personally (well, maybe not personally...but you know what i mean) thank the White House, GOPUSA, Talon News, Jeff Jim Gannon Guckert himself, (the greatest freelancer - cowboy - bronco buster - hubcap thief - pioneer action hero manwhore "new" journalist working America today) for his contributions to mapping a new way West for all of us little nitwit nobodies out here who can't even get a word in edgewise at a deli counter. Jeff Gannon is our new Lewis and Clark. Who - not many people know this - were the same guy. Aka: Meriwether. And they (or him) or whatever, were gay too. And secretly dating Abraham Lincoln for a short while. Until that big fight about that business in New Salem involving the stud bull. And then there were other problems... nevermind.

*

Instapundit proposes, with much glee, a link to Tom Maguire, who, with equal glee, disposes, with a post he calls Gannon/Guckhert for Dummies, of the entire issue named therein, or so he thinks.

Appropriately on the case, the ever invaluable World 'o Crap in a long post every word of which is a must-read.

I suppose one should read the original, but to be frank, I didn't. I had my fill of said Maguire while working on an analysis of the rhetorical tropes used by the right in lieu of sustained, reasoned argument, in support of the attack on John Kerry by those Swiftboat Vets who hate John Kerry. You can make up your own mind what to do in this regard; s.z. provides all necessary links, but you'll get a fair idea of what Maguire had to say from her text as well. I offer no quotes because I'm serious about that "must-read" rating.

Please, read the comments thread, too; in this case it becomes an extension of the original post. Mr. Maguire shows up, less to argue, more to exhibit attitude and the rhetorical gymnastics that the right is actually proud of, amazingly. Actually, it's not that amazing, since, for the most part, their analysis is always in attack mode, and despite their frequent allusions to the paranoid style of the left, ( more or less a given that does not require proof), their own world view is essentially that of a besieged minority, everywhere surrounded by a liberal elite, which is, by definition, incapable of any semblance of truth.

"s.z." returns in the thread to answer with both style and truth, as do a notable contingent of intelligent and stylish readers. Here, I will give a few examples, the better to entice you;

Just so we're all clear on this: Outing a fake White House reporter as a gay prostitute: Gross Miscarriage of Justice. Outing a covert CIA operative for petty political revenge: Bitch Had it Coming.
Sour Kraut

Okay, Tom, in case you're still hanging around, you interrupted my tangential wisecrack about your "linky richness" and the distinction between larding a tenderloin and cutting a slit in a pork chop and inflating it with Crisco. Four links to Froomkin, three to yourself, two to show that yet another hastily-called presidential press conference was hastily called, even one to demonstrate that JimJoeJeff was operating on a day pass? I mean, I happen to love footnotes, but I need at least five hours sleep a night.

Really, now, in all honesty: if this were a Democratic administration would you mutatis mutandis care a rat's ass about the Brady room? About what was on the front page of the Times? Would it still be a matter of invading someone's private sexuality or a question of gay prostitutes with mysterious access to a post-9/11 White House?
Doghouse Riley

Where are your manners, young lady? Tom is offering to have an online pissing match with you about this and pump up his traffic numbers and you can't even set a simple trackback ping for him. Tsk, SZ. Tsk.
Julia

That "pissing match" reference by Julia, yes she of the Sisyphean shrug, will make more sense when you've read the thread.

Only two trolls show up to post a single time each, not counting Maguire himself, both displaying the same attitude as he does - that mix of sarcasm, derision, tendentious misdirection, and a smugness, as to their own rightness, stylishness, and humor, so thorough one begins to suspect that deep down they don't believe it either. Here's a sample from Jeff G. of Protein Wisdom.

I am a TWIT! A TWIT! Because of the HYPOCRISY! Now quick. SAVE THE REPUBLIC BY POSTING MORE PICS OF JEFF GANNON COCK! THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE!

As I say, a certified laff riot.

On his own blog, Mr. Goldstein pays passing attention to this little dustup of z.s. taking on Maguire, under the title:

BREAKING: GANNON IMPLICATED IN KENNEDY ASSASSINATION COVER-UP; BRIT HUME "VERY LIKELY 'THE BEAST'," CRITICS SAY

Clever, no? Actually no, because this exercise in satiric exaggeration is so bereft of any connection to what "critics" say, or what any humans left or right are saying, that it can only work as a rhetorical shout-out to other members of the already converted congregation. Even so, you should read both the post and the comments.

Why, you ask? Because the habits of mind and argument employed with such regularity by the inhabitants of Wingnuttia are seeping into the mainstream, through talk radio, Fox News, and right wing bloggers, who are as uncritically appraised by the SCLM as is the Bush administration itself. We need to understand how their rhetoric is put together, what are its inner workings and favorite tropes, if we are to successfully counter it.

Yes, we must not become obsessed with it; in part, the constant attacks, the tendentious assertion of facts that aren't facts, is part of an attempt to get us to do just that. To wit:

Sometimes I let my four-year-old play in the kitchen unsupervised for a while. He makes a mess but it’s child-proofed in there and I can go about the business of running a household while he’s making a lot of noise with the pots and pans.

Same with the Dems. Let them make sound and fury. We know where they are and we can go about some serious business. Let them distract the moonbats. Better that they should be mindlessly occupied until such a time as they get their first paycheck and become Libertarians.

We, on the other hand, should be focusing on the top ten spiked stories of 2004. That’s where the real trouble lies.

But, Ana, I looked at the top ten spiked stories, and none of them seems to involve GAY PROSTITUTE HOMOSEXUAL MAN-COCK. Nor do any of those stories deal with the threat that QUEER, QUEER, GAY, MAN-ON-MAN PROSTITUTE MAN-COCK having access to a press conference poses to the safety of the Republic. Besides, none of them seems to even touch on THE HYPOCRICY.

Exactly. I’m not suggesting that we stop laughing like crazed hyenas on nitrous oxide about it all. That would be wrong.

On the other hand, simply ignoring this unfortunate reality is neither an option nor a strategy.

John Nichols over at The Nation takes me back in his piece on HST’s legacy:

Thompson ran on what he and his backers dubbed the "Freak Power" ticket, declaring in an advertisement in the Aspen Times that, "(In) 1970 Amerika a lot of people are beginning to understand that to be a freak is an honorable way to go. This is the real point: that we are not really freaks at all—not in the literal sense—but the twisted realities of the world we are trying to live in have somehow combined to make us feel like freaks. We argue, we protest, we petition—but nothing changes. So now, with the rest of the nation erupting in a firestorm of bombings and political killings, a handful of "freaks" are running a final, perhaps atavistic experiment with the idea of forcing change by voting..."

…He wanted to combine "Woodstock vibrations, New Left activism, and basic Jeffersonian Democracy with strong echoes of the Boston Tea Party ethic" into what the writer-candidate referred to as "a blueprint for stomping the (conservative Vice President Spiro) Agnew mentality by its own rules—with the vote, instead of the bomb; by seizing the power machinery and using it, instead of merely destroying it."

Yeah, nothing changes. And now, thirty-five years later, how far have we come? The bad people have taken over. Yeeesh. Yet, the struggle goes on…Freak Power! We are the machinery, and the monkey wrench.

I still loves me them local columnists. This Charlie Madigan fella, via the Chicago Tribune, does a lovely job of packaging just about every important point of this story into one little column. I'd love to run the whole thing but in the interest of that nasty reality known as copyright law will whittle a bit around the edges:

CHICAGO -- What did the White House know and when did it know it on the question of the kinky bald guy with the stinky Web sites who got to pose as a "daily pass" reporter in the White House press corps?

He got to help the White House wiggle out of unpleasant moments by asking questions worthy of a doofus, which drew the attention of the blogosphere, which shifted into "high proctology" mode in a recent hot pursuit of the caper.

Bingo, another media incident explodes.

Well, good for the bloggers.

But there's one problem left, and that is the big question: Did the White House knowingly plant this lap doof in the press corps or, as indicated in many White House comments, was it just something that happened over time despite lots of scrutiny that led them to conclude he was legit, sort of? [snip]

But I don't care about any of that.

It's a free country and if you want to be a doof and play journalist, more power to you. There are lots of us doing that all over the world and there always have been.

The question is what the White House knew and when?

Based on my own experience with the Bush people, I have some discomfort about what I have heard so far, lots of little comments about things being checked out and how confusing it is to keep the media straight (whoops! my Freudian slip) in these hectic days of websites and blogging.

Why the doubts?

Because I have dealt with these people.

They are the most diligent people on earth when it comes to finding out where genuine reporters are and what they are doing.

Here is my story about that.

During the campaign last year, I made an attempt to get a ticket as a normal person, not as a reporter writing the Gleaner, to a Bush rally in Holland, Mich. I made exactly one call to an old guy at the local Republican committee to cop a ticket.

Before you knew it, local Republicans, regional Republicans and National Republicans were all over me. No! You can't go as a normal person. You must go as a reporter and sit where the reporters sit.

[Snip of very humorous account of the same story we've heard from dozens of other reporters being "handled" at BushCo events. Go read if interested, but here's the grand finale:]

Think about it this way. The Bush people were so efficient and focused they could reach all the way out to Holland, Mich. and try to put a choke collar on an innocent Rambling Gleaner.

Given that, can there be any doubt about what they knew about the ringer sitting in the middle of the press room for the briefings just about every day?

I don't think so.

Time to come clean.

Did you put him there?

Heh. Yeah. What that Madigan guy said.

Remember, GuckertGate is old news to us, but this is the first that a lotta people in Chicago and environs ever heard of it. And the whole BushCo campaign style as well.

I still loves me them local columnists. This Charlie Madigan fella, via the Chicago Tribune, does a lovely job of packaging just about every important point of this story into one little column. I'd love to run the whole thing but in the interest of that nasty reality known as copyright law will whittle a bit around the edges:

CHICAGO -- What did the White House know and when did it know it on the question of the kinky bald guy with the stinky Web sites who got to pose as a "daily pass" reporter in the White House press corps?

He got to help the White House wiggle out of unpleasant moments by asking questions worthy of a doofus, which drew the attention of the blogosphere, which shifted into "high proctology" mode in a recent hot pursuit of the caper.

Bingo, another media incident explodes.

Well, good for the bloggers.

But there's one problem left, and that is the big question: Did the White House knowingly plant this lap doof in the press corps or, as indicated in many White House comments, was it just something that happened over time despite lots of scrutiny that led them to conclude he was legit, sort of? [snip]

But I don't care about any of that.

It's a free country and if you want to be a doof and play journalist, more power to you. There are lots of us doing that all over the world and there always have been.

The question is what the White House knew and when?

Based on my own experience with the Bush people, I have some discomfort about what I have heard so far, lots of little comments about things being checked out and how confusing it is to keep the media straight (whoops! my Freudian slip) in these hectic days of websites and blogging.

Why the doubts?

Because I have dealt with these people.

They are the most diligent people on earth when it comes to finding out where genuine reporters are and what they are doing.

Here is my story about that.

During the campaign last year, I made an attempt to get a ticket as a normal person, not as a reporter writing the Gleaner, to a Bush rally in Holland, Mich. I made exactly one call to an old guy at the local Republican committee to cop a ticket.

Before you knew it, local Republicans, regional Republicans and National Republicans were all over me. No! You can't go as a normal person. You must go as a reporter and sit where the reporters sit.

You may not ramble around.

Well, what fun is that?

I made a half-hearted attempt to follow the rules, got my credentials and went to the event outside of Holland. Once I cleared security, I dashed off to freedom to ask a guy in a funny hat what he was up to.

It took less than two minutes for a woman in a nice blue suit to rush up to me with some "security" in tow and announce I couldn't do that, that I had to sit in the press section and stay there.

Since the "press" wasn't even going to arrive for another two hours, I thought that would be kind of limiting, so I respectfully said, "No @#$%#$ way in hell."

They held a meeting and affixed a tour guide to my side, a nice young woman who turned out to be a good interview because of the details of her life and why they made her think like a Republican.

Soon, she was withdrawn, probably for being too communicative, and was replaced by a fat guy who spent the entire event following me around and asking me if I was "getting what I needed."

That, I thought, was a very personal question.

Think about it this way. The Bush people were so efficient and focused they could reach all the way out to Holland, Mich. and try to put a choke collar on an innocent Rambling Gleaner.

Given that, can there be any doubt about what they knew about the ringer sitting in the middle of the press room for the briefings just about every day?

I don't think so.

Time to come clean.

Did you put him there?

Heh. Yeah. What that Madigan guy said.

Remember, GuckertGate is old news to us, but this is the first that a lotta people in Chicago and environs ever heard of it. And the whole BushCo campaign style as well.

Scott Ritter writes that

The Bush administration has come face to face with the reality of the failure of its policies. Rather than curtailing the proliferation of nuclear weapons, the administration's crusade against global tyranny has served as an accelerant in placing the most dangerous weapons known to man in the hands of xenophobic regimes that have been backed into a corner…
"Freedom is on the march," Mr. Bush has said. Unfortunately for the United States, North Korea and Iran don't see it that way. And if America keeps marching, it could very well be in the direction of a nuclear apocalypse.

What a happy thought. Problem is, the administration has NOT “come face to face with the reality of the failure of its policies.” They deny that there is any reality other than what they want to see. And this is exactly what makes the doomsday clock tick. In fact, the timetable of events around 9/11 makes it clear that some of these loonies think a nuclear war is winnable, that government could continue, business could continue, in the event of nuclear war.

One loonie, Cresson H. Kearny, even has the temerity to say that

Those who hold exaggerated beliefs about the dangers from nuclear weapons must first be convinced that nuclear war would not inevitably be the end of them and everything worthwhile. Only after they have begun to question the truth of these myths do they become interested, under normal peacetime conditions, in acquiring nuclear war survival skills...

This sort of thinking has a long tradition in GOPiana. For example, Richard Pipes—a Reagan advisor—said in 1982 that, "The probability of nuclear war is 40 percent...and our strategy is winnable nuclear war." Maybe the new thinking is that the Rapture will take care of everything. One thing you can bet is that these Nixon and Reagan retreads have not changed their ideology.

Anyone who thinks “the end of the cold war” means the end of the threat of nuclear war is as delusional as the ones who think such a war is winnable, or that there are such things as “tactical nukes.” I used to think—back in the days of the test ban treaty and then the nuclear freeze movement—that no-nukes was one position everybody could agree on. But that isn’t indicated by the current silence.

The United States in 2002 had around 10,600 warheads. Nobody knows how many others there are stashed around the globe.

Where’s the outrage? I should warn everyone now that as August 6th approaches this topic will become more and more shrill, at least from my pen...

The most concise moral justification for Social Security I've ever seen comes from a letter in this morning's amNewYork (February 23, 2004, p. 10):

It is not accurate to refer to Social Security as a "massive entitlement" program as it was stated in the Associated Press article on Greenspan's remarks about this program. Framing the issue in this way is dishonest and manipulative.

Social Security is rather an insurance program—the gem of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal Programs. It is based on paying it forward [like the movie]. People who are presently working are paying the benefits of those who have retired.

When they retire, their benefits will be paid by those who are working. It is not an entitlement when we have paid into the system.

Of course, "paying it forward" is against everything the Republicans stand for (looting, lying, lawnbreaking). And that is why the Repubublicans want to phase out Social Security. "Social Security must go," as the College Republicans chanted yesterday, letting the cat out of the bag.

Via The Amazin' Froomkin:

Bush was originally scheduled to hold a town-hall meeting with regular German citizens today in Mainz. But when the German government couldn't guarantee friendly questions, that became a small, carefully-screened roundtable discussion with young Germans who have visited the U.S. on exchange programs.

And only part of it was even made public.
(via WaPo)

What's Bush afraid of? German radio waves are metric, so his earpiece might get jammed?

Question: Why are any of these staged events being treated as news?

From actual reporting in the LA Times:

The Iraq war helped bring record earnings to St. Louis-based defense contractor Engineered Support Systems Inc., and new financial data show that the firm's war-related profits have trickled down to a familiar family name — Bush.

William H.T. "Bucky" Bush, uncle of the president and youngest brother of former President George H.W. Bush, cashed in ESSI stock options last month with a net value of nearly half a million dollars.

"Uncle Bucky," as he is known to the president, is on the board of the company, which supplies armor and other materials to U.S. troops. The company's stock prices have soared to record heights since before the invasion, benefiting in part from contracts to rapidly refit fleets of military vehicles with extra armor.

The Harkonnens Bush Crime Family really gets you coming and going, eh?

First, lots of our troops die or lose limbs because Bush didn't plan for enough of the vehicles armored for our war of choice in Iraq. Heck, why would we need armor? Them Iraqis are gonna be throwin' roses!

Then, "Uncle Bucky" makes $500,000 (I know, it's not much to him) on a rush job selling the Pentagon the armor Bush didn't plan for—and that we still don't have enough of!

'S beautiful! [Wipes tear from eye]

You know, lots of parents spent their own money to buy body armor for their own children. And lots of Chambers of Commerce raised money to buy armor for vehicles. I'm still waiting for Bush to issue the executive order thanking them for their efforts and reimbursing them.

And the Beltway Dems might exercise their new spines by introducing legislation to remedy Bush's, um, oversight, tomorrow.

What Matt said:

Democrats are winning this fight, and should accept nothing less than surrender. Once the GOP has given up on phasing out the plan, we can either start a serious conversation about finding a balanced approach to Social Security reform, or else move on to addressing more pressing fiscal issues. Until then, trying to compromise with a party that knows no procedural or ethical restraints on its conduct and that's led by a president who's apparently hell-bent on destroying Social Security is a losing deal.
(via Tapped)

I don't know where this Republicans-as-Dad thing comes from, I really don't.

Seems to me like Bush is really the kind of Bad Dad who misses dinner, then reels into the house after having had one too many with his running buddies, then the kids have to wait 'til he passes out on the couch with FOX on really loud before they can tiptoe upstairs.

'Cause if he wakes up, either he'll go all smarmy on you, or start screaming, or demonstrate uber-Dadness by grounding you for stuff that you know he did too, like pot. Even though he lies about it.

Plus, his running buddies are really wierd. There's that one guy in fatigues with the bald head who's always asking if you want to learn how to wrestle...

The obvious solution to blogger's massive suckitude would be to move to a new platform that has features like enabling reliable posting, and who knows what else?

Herewith, some responses to the last comments (for the background, see the below and the associated comments).

Column count Alert reader Tom DC/VA "tolerates" the three-column layout at Atrios, and recommends First Draft and comments:

Let me expand a bit. I'm a wee bit nearsighted (step -5.0 if you're wondering), so the more space for content, the better it is for me. Zoom the text to 150% or 200% in Netscape >7.1 to see how I see things.

I just looked at First Draft; it looks to me like they have a smaller default fontsize than Atrios or Corrente do, so at 150% it looks good, and at %100 much more of the entire layout is visible. First Draft has a lot of functionality in the non-content area of their screen, which is what we will need. If I can use First Drafts basic layout, and get the functionality required, two columns is fine.

Simplicity Alert reader Tinfoil Hat Boy writes "Keep it as simple as possible." However, as Einstein said: "As simple as possible, and no simpler. Right now, Corrente is shrinking relative to the expanding blogosphere. So, to keep the influence we—and you—want us to have, Corrente has to change. We have to remodel The Mighty Corrente bulding. Alert reader Beth wants to K.I.S.S by eliminating the news feed ([8]) and the latest links to Corrente ([9]), while noting the omission of the blogroll. As far as the news feed ([8]), perhaps it could go at the bottom. It would help me as a blogger, to. Also, I really like the idea of combining a "Christian" news feed and Buzzflash. As far as the blogroll: Ours is huge, compared (say) to First Draft's. I had thought that a combination of the reciprocal links ([9]) and a separate links page (maybe even with feeds from the linked-to blogs) wouyld be a better use of the real estate.

Note also that one of my design goals for the remodelling is to make it possible to build a bigger group. (Corrente has always promoted from within, and we need a bigger within). That's why teasers at [5] instead of complete posts.

So moving the group blog more in the direction of a community.

Not—I repeat not—a humongous thing like Kos. More like South Street in Philly&mdashllots of funky little bars and shops, each one with it's own character.

---

Herewith a wireframe of one design for the main page.

The basic concept is that The Mighty Corrente Building has one Great Hall, which is where readers enter. This diagram is of The Great Hall. There are also "wings," like the wings in a museum, that are connected to The Great Hall.



Here are the comments that go with the numbered callouts (e.g., "[1]") in the diagram:

[NOTE: Sorry for the accidental post. Family emergency. Now, the real post.]

The detail:

[1] The "Corrente" logo, motto, and masthead.

[2] Alert. Breaking news or imminent event. Conceptually like a CNN crawl, though doesn't have to crawl graphically. Links out to Corrente, or elsewhere, as long as the link is hot, current. Could be tied to location: Philly, the Rez, Tennessee, etc.

[3] Campaign box. "Campaign" as in the campaign to unionize WalMart; the campaign to get that woman who was fired for supporting Kerry her job back. Links out to information for activists about the campaign.

[4] Contributors box. Stacked teasers from each contributor. Links out to the contributor's posts, in that contributor's wing. Currently, Corrente has 7 (seven) contributors ("the blog of seven"), therefore seven wings. One object of this exercise is to create a scaleable platform where more contributors (i.e., promoted alert readers, like all of us) can post.

[5] Teaser. The top post(s) by each contributor. Links out to the post. Structure: Any metadata (subject: "Election Fraud 2004"), the post headline, a "snippet" (likely first para) from the post. Metadata links to all posts with that metadata (i.e., all "Election Fraud 2004" posts).

[6] The tip box. What it says. All tips are plowed back into content generation.

[7] Latest of ongoing series. For example, farmer's posts on Falangism and the malAdministration. Called out here, with link to the latest post in the series.

[8] Latest links. Who linked to Corrente.

[9] Various feeds. For example, Buzzflash headlines. Heck, "Christian" right headlines. Why not?

[10] Explains itself. Yes?

Once again, the model: I'm seeing The Mighty Corrente Building as having a central Great Hall, which is the diagram you see above. Readers enter through the Great Hall.

There are also many wings, as in the wings of a Museum. Each wing is curated/edited/written/managed by a contributor: The Leah Appett Wing of the Mighty Corrente Building; the Lambert Strether Wing, etc. And wouldn't it be great if the wings were endowed....

By having the wings managed by a person, I hope (1) that the content )and tone) of the wings will end up being differentiated by the topics (and rhetoric) that each wing's contributor favors. I also hope (2) to avoid the gaming that goes with rating posts, reputation systems, etc.

What connects the wings? Topical organization (like the map of a museum that tells you which exhibits are where). So, for example, "Bush torture policies" would bring up all the posts on that subject, from all the wings.

That is, topical organization will tell you where to find everything about (for example) "Bush AWOL," whether a farmertoon, a thoughtful post by Leah, an acidulous rant by Lambert, a historical note by Tom... (Yes, I know topics will have to be easy to enter and to use).

Anyhow, these are my first thoughts. I will post a second diagram of the wings in the near future.

Alert readers! Does this make sense to you? How would you improve the ideas? Can you give us links to similar community/group blogs, so we can see what they have done? What are the features you wish you had that blogger can't give?

NOTE: An alert reader (shystee, I thought, but a search of my mail yields no hits) lost a bet to Corrente, which he or she was to contribute to the server fund. Instead, it might be the first tip in the tip box....

Let's forget about trying to figure out whether Bush brings his own glove when it's time to field softballs...

Today's print edition of the Wall Street Journal —which remains a newsgathering organization—has an interesting story (February 22, 2005, p. A1) about Frederick Burks. Frederick Burks is Bush's translator of choice:

When Bush travelled to Bali for a meeting with President Megawati in October 2003, the State Department had another interpreter lined up, but the White House insisted on Mr. Burks.

Deep, deep in the story comes this little nugget:

[Burks] posted allegations on his web site that Bush used a secret listening device in meetings he had attended with President Megawati and most likely had done the same in debate with Senator John Kerry. ... Shortly after that Web posting, he left the State Department's translation service. He says he quit when a new supervisor insisted that he sign a pledge not to divulge any information obtained while intepreting.

So Burks never signed a confidentiality agreement. I went to the Burks site, and here's what I found:

In the recent Bush/Kerry debate, President Bush made a very strange, revealing comment in the middle of one of his turns talking. He had been talking for 60 seconds straight when he slipped in the comment, "let me finish" between his own words. He had been given 90 seconds to respond, and no one was in any way trying to cut him off. What was he referring to? Who was he talking to with this comment? The answer is that it is very possible that Bush was responding to someone who was feeding information to him through a hidden earphone.

Listen to the mp3 of this comment at NYC indymedia, or watch the video on the C-SPAN website at:
rtsp://cspanrm.fplive.net/cspan/project/c04/c04093004_debate1.rm (copy and paste this address to your web browser, then fast forward to 40 min 30 sec).

As a deep insider myself, I have independent confirmation of President Bush using an earpiece to assist him in communicating intelligently with others. I've worked as a contract Indonesian language interpreter with the US State Department for over 18 years. I first started interpreting at the presidential level in 1995 at a White House meeting for President Clinton and President Suharto of Indonesia with their top advisors. ...

On September 19, 2001, just eight days after 9/11, I was in the White House interpreting for an important 90-minute meeting between President Bush and President Megawati Soekarnoputri of Indonesia. This meeting made national news on all the TV networks, as at the time, the administration wanted to show they were supportive of our Muslim friends. Indonesia has the largest population of Muslims in the world. Over 80% of Indonesia's 220 million people are Muslim.

This was my first time interpreting for Bush. The previous day, I had been given the 22 points Bush would be covering in this meeting in order to familiarize myself with the topics to be discussed. About half of these "talking points" had to do with terrorism, which was to be fully expected given what had just happened. The other points, however, involved many details of Indonesian politics which even I would have had a tough time addressing, let alone Bush, who I assumed had limited knowledge of Indonesia.

During those 90 minutes, President Bush not only covered all the points, he covered them quite well and without any notes! Not once during the entire meeting did he look at any notes or receive cues from anyone present in discussing the Indonesian political situation with depth and intelligence. I was astonished! "How could this be?" I asked myself. It was a huge surprise. I concluded either that Bush was much more intelligent than we had been led to believe, or that somehow someone was feeding answers to him through a hidden earpiece. At the time, I really didn't know which of these was true.

Having worked directly with President Bush twice since then, and having additionally talked with many of my fellow interpreters who have worked directly with him, I am now certain that he could not have had that much knowledge of Indonesia. He doesn't even read the daily newspaper to keep up with what's being reported in the press. I am convinced that he must have been using some sort of earpiece through which someone was telling him what to say.

Having interpreted for media guests touring large TV studios, I've seen how the news anchors all have hidden earphones, and how the news producers are feeding them all sorts of information even as they talk live on TV. "20 seconds to a commercial," "15 seconds of filler here," "wrap it up quick " etc... This is standard practice for live TV shows. The "let me finish" comment made by Bush in the debate was only confirmation of something I already knew.

I think, short of Bush's valet coming forth with testimony that he slipped the radio harness onto Bush right before the debate with Kerry, this is all the confirmation we're ever going to get, or need.

NOTE: The WSJ story leads with information about, well, the fact that Mr. Burks does have his quirks—like believing [cough] in US complicity in 9/11 (" 52 (fifty-two) of 105 (one hundred and five) pre-9/11 PDBs mentioned AQ" (back). He also believes in communing with other large-brained mammals like dolphins (fine), and UFOs (not so fine). Probably getting this information on the record was the important point for whichever winger operatives were involved in the story.

How to reconcile those oddities with the fact that (as we've seen) the White House asked for Burks specifically? And the incredible fact that Burks was never made to sign a confidentiality agreement until the very end of his 18 year career?

I'll speculate that we're seeing the "handwriting" of how the Harkonnens Bush Crime Family deals with its retainers. They can't really trust anyone near to them, of course. How could they? So they ensure (1) that they have some sort of hold over their retainers, and (2) can discredit them when needed. Remember Cheney's doctor—who turned out to be a drug addict? The doctor could always have been forced to give Cheney a clean bill of health, if need be. Same idea here. If Burks ever told what he knew, he could be discredited. It may well be that in L'Affaire Gannon, we're seeing the same handwriting—except that in that case it blew up on them.

Highlights of Richard Perle at the “debate” with Dr. Dean last Thursday, just in case ya missed it:

Perle said the war in Iraq was justified based on the intelligence available at the time. "Sometimes the things we have to do are objectionable to others," he said.

Yeah, torture, razing cities, and killing innocent civilians is pretty goshdarned objectionable, all right. But, y’know, they “have to do” them, because, well, we just have to, dadgummit, ya lousy liberals, always harping about “facts” and “evidence.”

"I'd be a fool not to recognize that it did not happen on the schedule I had in mind," Perle said, adding that he did not deny that the administration had made mistakes in Iraq.

But, Perle added, "I will be surprised, yet again, if we do not see a square in Baghdad named after this president." He did not specify a time.

Perle also indicated his impending surprise if aWol did not also singlehandedly defeat the aliens he believes will invade earth sometime in 2008, thus leading to his coronation as President for Life of the entire world. Okay, I made that last bit up.

Maybe the square will be named “War Crimes Junction.” And maybe they’ll name a prison after Rumsfeld—say, The Rumsfeld Torture and Juvenile Retraining Center.

I see a real battle for naming rights, here. The McClellan Memorial Center for Ethics in Journalism. (This will be a part of the Ministry of Lies, which itself will be named for Condi.)

Please note also that, while he admits many in Bushco are fools (several did in fact, deny there was a schedule problem), the Perle of Great Price does not admit the admin made mistakes in iWaq, he just “did not deny” it. Same old symptoms. Hey, freedom’s untidy. Oopsie. Sorry about all those dead folks, er, I mean, "collateral damage."

I was going to suggest this myself, based on Josh Marshall's reading of a certain squishiness in Joe Lieberman's position on SS reform which, if you haven't read it, you can and should by clicking here. But Blogger wouldn't let me do it when I was ready to, on the weekend.

I couldn't be happier that Atrios got the same idea - to call the Senator, and let someone on his staff know that Democratic voters won't stand for anyone undermining the unity of the Democrats on this one. Atrios has a huge number of readers, of course, including probably a lot of our readers. This is the kind of taking action I've been trying to talk about.

Do insist on talking to a staff member. Be prepared to quickly knock down the offending memes, i.e., there's a crises, and to insist on the facts, i.e., even the President isn't claiming that private accounts will solve the problem of the baby boomers retiring, remember to mention that we've been paying an excess into SS for twenty years, which Bush has spent givine the top one % of Americans a tax cut. Let him know we're watching, and if it means a grassroots effort to find someone to oppose him in a Democratic primary, we're up for that. Most of all, no private accounts as a carve-out from SS, only as an optional add-on, primariy for low-income earners.

All the numbers you info and numbers you need you can find at Eschaton, here and here. Also in the comments, Oleary, who made the call, has some good advice.

If you can't call today, do so tomorrow. Get your friends and family to call. And be polite, firm, and knowledgeable.

It might be worth remembering that on this date in 1943, a young lady named Sophie Scholl was murdered (“executed”) by the Nazis. Sophie, a student at the University of Munich, and her brother Hans, along with some other enlightened and very brave folks, began, of course, the group known as The White Rose— Die Weiße Rose. They dedicated themselves to resisting the Nazis.

They printed leaflets back then. If they were around today, they’d probably be bloggers. This quote comes from the first leaflet they published, knowing full well it could mean death to do so:

"Nothing is so unworthy of a civilized nation as allowing itself to be ruled without opposition by an irresponsible clique that has yielded to its basest instincts. Certainly today, every honest German is ashamed of his government. Who among us has any concept of the dimensions of shame that will befall us and our children when one day the veil has fallen from our eyes and the most horrible of crimes, crimes that infinitely outdistance every human measure, reach the light of day?"

They painted anti-Nazi slogans on walls. They were finally arrested after several more leaflets, and on this date Sophie, Hans and Christoph Probst were executed by guillotine after only days in prison.

Sophie Scholl was 21 years old when she was killed. The wingers would love to use her as an example of an anti-appeasement poster child. I say no. You will notice she didn’t use violence, but particularly advocated non-violent resistance. Resistance to a government that controlled every part of society, invaded countries without provocation, used and advocated torture while agitating for “decency,” and hated leftists. Oh, and Sophie was a Christian—the kind that used to be held up as examples of the faith.

Que Viva!

This morning, Krugman warns us:

The campaign against Social Security is going so badly that longtime critics of President Bush, accustomed to seeing their efforts to point out flaws in administration initiatives brushed aside, are pinching themselves. But they shouldn't relax: if the past is any guide, the Bush administration will soon change the subject back to national security.
(via NY Times)

This afternoon, the story breaks:

A Virginian who had been detained in Saudi Arabia as a suspected terrorist was charged Tuesday with conspiring to assassinate President Bush and with supporting the al-Qaida terrorist network.
(via AP)

Is Krugman good, or what? When do the domestic roundups begin?

Of course, I'm sure the Saudis didn't torture the Virginian. And I'm also sure that the US didn't send the Virginian (a US citizen?) to Saudi Arabia to be tortured under extraordinary rendition procedures. I mean, that would mean that Bush was willing to torture people to gain a smidgeon more political capital. Which is clearly tinfoil hat territory.

So, we can forget all that. I'm sure that this latest terror alert is, like all the others, extremely non-political. Phew! My faith in His Godliness was shaken there for a minute!

NOTE Now we know the answer to the question of why Bush endorses anti-Semitic Saudi conferences. You scratch my back...

UPDATE Yes, according to Reuters, the Virginian is a US citizen.

How odd, then, that he was picked up by the Saudis and held in Saudi since 2003. I wonder why that would be?

The prosecutor is Paul McNulty. Presumably he's been tasked, on the 4th circuit's "Rocket Docket," with establishing a precedent for extracting testimony under torture. (Not, of course, that Bush would ever use such testimony for a bump in the polls.)

I don't envy McNulty his job, since testimony extracted using cruel and unusual punishment is useless. Then again, I guess that just means they'll have to try the guy in the press instead of the courts.

If it sounds like that title is an intentional innuendo, it isn't. Every other configuration, like say, Hertzberg on Gannon/Guckert seemed as innuendo-bound, but then isn't it true that Gannon/Guckert's life as we've come to know it is as rippling with innuendo as it is with muscles of all varieties.

Anyway, The New Yoker has it here, so give yourself a treat and go read. I sometimes wish that Hendrick would let more of his emotions show, but he's a wonderful writer who mainly gets the politics right. Okay, I could have written "correct," but the right wing has manged to make it into an even dirtier word than right wing.

Sometimes I wish Hertzberg's pieces were longer, but he manages to be pithy and say what needs saying; I especially like that he picks up what Al Franken has been delighting in - that the famous new conference question one sees played endlessly, about what crazy Harry and crazy Hillary said about the economy was actually a quote never uttered by either Senator, but made-up by Rush Limbaugh, who was delighted to claim authorship of the phony quote. How many degrees of irony is that? I lose count so easily.

I'm reading Hertzberg's new book, "Politics, Observations and Arguments 1966-2004," and it's terrific. You younger readers should have it on your bookshelf. I lived through those years as an adult, and I'm still enjoying it...Holy Moly, has it really been that long that I've been reading, you, Rick?

The president's European trip will be just that, an excellent adventure; we know that in advance, don't we. Because that excellence has nothing to do with how effective the trip is in achieving its vaguely stated goal. The adventure will be excellent, because the president will strut his stuff, play a bit at diplomacy, give flight to a bit of his speechwriters' soaring rhetoric here and there, and come home a conquering hero, at least as seen from the vantage point of his base.

Despite all the talk of fence-mending, we know that George W., so adept at wearing his cowboy hat and boots and clearing brush, is incapable of mending anything, especially if he's the one who broke it. To mend what one has broken could be seen as an admission that one is responsible for what got broke. And President Bush doesn't do "responsibility." He likes to talk a lot about getting "results," but the truth is this president doesn't do "results," either, except in the highly limited sense of being able to achieve narrowly defined goals when he controls all the levers of power, as in the case of his massive tax cuts for the wealthy, or his befuddled prescription drug benefit that benefits primarily the drug companies that helped finance his campaigns. Any result that requires leadership you can forget about. George Bush can't persuade those who don't already agree with him, because he finds the act of doing so demeaning.

But his base is feeling good about his trip to Europe. Yesterday on Fox News, William Kristol and Charles Krauthamer were sure that the President's vision of a world freed from its chains, liberated and democratic, would prove impossible for Europeans to sneer at. If not the leaders, then the people of Europe couldn't help but be moved. Such sentiments were echoed through-out the SCLM. I don't know why it's so difficult for media types to understand that for most people around the world, there is a relationship between words and deeds, or at least it's thought that there should be, and when there isn't, people get skeptical about the words.

What are European attitudes at the start of the president's adventure? Lucky us, the AP did a poll.
Check it out and then tell me, how many minds do you think he might change? (Not counting leaders; apparently, they still feel the need to do a little dance when an American president whistles a jig.)

In other news from our far-flung world-wide committments, various NGOs, Care, OxFam, Women's Edge Coalition, are urging the US to revise its anti-drug strategy in Afghanistan. Apparently, we have one now. A bit late, and all that, but it appears we intend to go after those poppy fields.

Because farmers can make as much as ten times the income of other crops, opium has not only become the country's biggest export, the opium trade now accounts for almost 40 percent of Afghanistan's total economy.

According to the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), the amount of land under poppy cultivation increased by nearly 240 percent and opium production by 73 percent from 2003 to 2004.

As a result, the nearly 20,000 U.S. military troops and the 7,000 members of the International Support Assistance Force (ISAF) are being pressed to add counter-drug operations to their security and counter-insurgency efforts.

The Bush administration allocated US$780 million to that end for 2005, about two thirds of which is to be spent on eradication.

Oy. Not such a good idea, say those who are working most directly with Afghans. I'll bet you can guess why without me, or Jim Lobe telling you. But read the article anyway. Remember the president talking about a Marshall Plan for Afghanistan, back in the summer of '03? Another result not achieved. But non-results have their own kind of results - in Afghanistan, it's all those acres and acres of poppys.

Remember Bush's recent inaugural address, the one where he committed America to standing tall next to and on behalf of the oppressed more or less everywhere? Well, turns out what he meant was that we'd do so as long as doing so didn't conflict with any of the American right wing's profound beliefs about the way the world should be organized.

Initially, you'll remember, the Bush administration displayed genuine concern for what was happening to the black Sudanese of Darfur. Colin Powell proclaimed what was happening there to be genocide. The UN completed its own investigation and decided a finding of genocide might not be the best way to go about getting something done for the people currently suffering. The UN wants to send criminal referrals to the ICC, the International Criminal Court, not a favored institution on the right. Jim Lobe tells you about the growing pressure on the Bush administration to agree, in spite of the AEI, or the Heritage Foudation.

I'm not smart enough to know who is right here. But Samantha Powers came down on the side of the UN in this oped in the NYTimes. Randy Paul endorsed her points here, and Eugene Oregon at Demogogue raises some questions about the Powers piece here and here. All of it well worth your time and attention, because all those people, those beautiful mothers and children and fathers and grandparents, (I'm not being sentimental, I don't know what it is about Northern Africa, but it produces some of the most handsome humans to have ever walked the earth), standing together, staring out at our cameras, in the empty sprawl of those camps, already traumatised, unable to go back to their homes, and with nowhere else to go, they're still there, without sufficient water, shelter, and food, waiting for the world to care enough to settle on a plan of action.

UPDATE: Excellent adventure for George and Condi, but for no one else if this report in the Independent is correct, although even I, as skeptical as they come about this administration, have trouble believing this one.

As the leader of the free world George Bush is known to be a busy man. There have also been question-marks in the past over his attention span and dislike of protracted debate, but, even by the standards of the Bush White House, the assembled heads of Europe will be given short shrift tomorrow when they gather to address the President of the United States.

President Bush arrived in Brussels last night for his week-long tour of Europe. When 25 elected heads of state assemble tomorrow in the Justus Lipsius building, which houses the Council of Ministers, eleven of them have been chosen to address the US President on an international matter of importance, they will be allocated a minimal amount of time ­ the betting is five minutes each.

Read the rest; I leave it to you whether to laugh or to weep.

Nur-al-Cubicle left this link in the comments which will take you to this uh, telling photo of George and Condi having their maybe not all that excellent adventure.

Too tired to look at the blueprints pinned up on the wall. Sorry!

On the one hand, if Street actually manages to wire the city, and it isn't some kind of thinly veiled extortion scheme where they cave into Comcast at the last possible minute for some cash and a player to be named later, he can be Mayor for life, in my book.

On the other hand, the pay to play stuff stinks, and stinks all the worse because its so petty.

And how come they can clean City Hall for the eyes, but the stink of urine and disinfectant wafting up from the City Hall subway station still assaults my nose?

Our new motto: Philly! WTF!

Here's a chilling little item about vigilantes—oh, I'm sorry, independent watchdogs"—on the border:

Intent on securing the vulnerable Arizona border from illegal immigrant crossings, U.S. officials are bracing for what they call a potential new threat this spring: the Minutemen.

Nearly 500 volunteers have already joined the Minuteman Project, anointing themselves civilian border patrol ... [Organizers] believe the Minuteman Project is the largest of its kind on the southern border.

It may also prove to be a magnet for what Glenn Spencer, president of the private American Border Patrol, described as camouflage-wearing, weapons-toting hard-liners who might get a little carried away with their assignments.

Carried away?! Heck, they're just working toward der Fuhrer. They know what He really wants, so they do that without waiting for orders....

"How are they going to keep the nutcases out of there? They can't control that," said [Glenn] Spencer, whose 40-volunteer group, based in Hereford, Ariz., has used unmanned aerial vehicles and other high-tech equipment to track and report the number of border crossings for more than two years.
(via AP)

The answer: They aren't going to keep the nutcases out, and they don't want to.

But the beauty part? AP is quoting Glenn Spencer as if he weren't an MBF, which he is. Orcinus, as usual, has the goods. A classic case of wingers injecting fascist memes into the mainstream.

Honestly, look here (Kos), or here (Atrios). It's reminiscent of nothing so much as a Goebbels poster from the '30s—that crude, that vile, that militaristic, and that demented.

Yes, the VWRC is cranking up the noise machine to do its level best to make American gayfrei.

Digby has a wonderful remembrance of the Gonzo man, himself., that "brilliant goddamned beast," Hunter S. Thompson. It will indeed be a lonelier world without him, but Digby helps to make the loss a little less so. Go read.

In addition, take a look at this post, wherein Digby links to a mind-numbingly dumb op ed by Tony Blankely, and don't we know that some demon or other arranged for this clown to have that name the better to tempt us into bad punning, in which Tony, he of the always striped shirts, writes of Larry David, the actual character as opposed to its creator, the actor-comic-writer also called Larry David, who is responsible for that splendid HBO series, "Curb Your Enthusiasm." Seems Tony finds the Larry David character entirely admirable, and entirely conservative/rightwing. Notice how the right is always trying to co-opt the creativity of the left? Know why? Go ahead guess.

Now that The Poor Man has become accustomed to his new diggs, he's as funny and as trenchent as ever. A recent personal favorite that you might have missed, if your first response to the new look of the blog was temporary avoidance, is this one:

Falling Reenlistment Rates Among Right Wing Pundits Threaten War On Terror

BLOGOSPHERE (Reuters) - Declining rates of reenlistment among right-wing pundits are forcing units on the home front in the War on Terror to operate at partial strength, limiting their effectiveness, say media sources. Factors such as long tours of duty, fierce and costly battles against a ruthless and evil enemy, and carpal tunnel syndrome have taken a severe mental and physical toll on the conservative punditry, and many pundits are opting not to enlist for second or third tours. There are rumors that a draft may be necessary to ensure that cable news, talk radio and the blogosphere have sufficient manpower to defeat the terrorists and their liberal allies.

Col. William Safire is retiring after a thirty year career in the media trenches. “A soldier’s got to know when his time is up, when it’s time to return to civilian life. My time has come. I’ve been in battle my whole life, from the Battle of Bert Lance to the War of Lewinski, I’ve fought whenever and wherever my handlers needed me. But it’s time for me to go. It’s like the saying says: old pundits never die, they just fade away …”

But retirement is not the only problem. Staff Sgt. Andrew Sullivan, recuperating at the Provincetown Home for Exhausted Critics, had very different reasons for leaving the battlefield.

Read the rest to find out Andrew's reasons, as well as Jonah Goldberg on active duty, and perhaps most delicious of all, The Editors" interview with "Wretchard," identified as "chief strategist at the New Media Center for Strategic Studies, run by Glenn Reynolds, Grand Field Marshall of All Blogospheric Forces." Well, what are waiting for?

John McKay over at Archy has a wonderful post on Vexillological meditation. No, I didn't know what it meant either. Suffice to get you over there to read it to say that he's working off a student's letter filed at David Horowitz's complaint line for wounded conservative students. While there, don't miss this wonderfully interesting essay on possible approaches to writing a history of environmentalism.

Another "you daren't miss" belongs to Fafnir of Fafblog. With the through-the-looking-glass brilliance we've come to associate with Fafblog, Fafnir unthreads the bloody knot of liberal treason, the better for all of us to stop committing it. I can only tell you that I read of my own patriotic failures with increasing horror, and a determination to serve my country better. You can and should find it here.

And finally, Michael Berube has revealed his own votes for the various categories of the Koufax Awards, and for all of us at Corrente, there was a thrilling surprise. I hesitate to say more since my own admiration for Professor Berube, which predates his blogging career by a numberof years, is always in danger of descending into fandom. Let's leave it at there were squeals of delight to be heard through-out the mighty Corrente building. As always when you pay a visit to Michael's blog, don't fail to read the comments thread, they are among the best anywhere, and completely worthy of the maestro.

UPDATE: As often happens with an international blog, posts can pass one another unseen, as ships in the night, which is what happened while I was there but hadn't quite got back again, with Tresy's wonderful piece, directly below on Hunter Thompson. Please do not miss it.

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.


Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

--Dylan Thomas

But of course, Doctor Gonzo's words did fork lightning, though perhaps few of our readers remember that era when, more than perhaps any of the other enfants terribles--Capote, Mailer, Wolfe--Thompson blew apart the staid conventions of journalism like Hendrix dynamited the blues. Reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in real time, with its ink-splattered illustrations by Ralph Steadman mirroring HST's psychotic, yet transcendental odyssey through the fascist underbelly of the American Dream, was the closest I think I ever came to the fabled "contact high" that psychedelic evangelists believed could open up the doors of perception for everyone. Completely uniniterested in the line between fact and fiction, journalist and participant, sanity and insanity, the deadly serious and the utterly profane, FLLV knocked the stuffing out of a profession that, in a world coming apart at the seams, desperately needed it. At the time, everything seemed possible. And lest we misremember him as a heartless misanthrope, there was always his famous endorsement-that-wasn't-an-endorsement of Jimmy Carter, "Jimmy Carter and the Great Leap of Faith." Inside the bitterest cynic is always a hopeless idealist.

Whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad, but because Hunter beat them to it, they made him a celebrity instead. From Hells Angel outlaw to Doonesbury cartoon character is probably more of an indignity than any of us could take, though Thompson gave it his best shot. Then, of course, there were the drugs, which ceased to be a literary asset circa 1978. Finally, there was simply Reality's ability to concoct, in the procession of political charlatans and pigfuckers that we've been saddled with since Nixon, a bad trip even Thompson couldn't transmute into psychedelic gold.

"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." Now we know what the pros do when the going doesn't even have weirdness to recommend it any more. At least he didn't end up a literary organ grinder monkey, like Tom Wolfe.

Lambert has more.

I'm sure he will. RIP. He led a worthy Quaker life, and produced a wonderful daughter, who, like her father, was a great artist and a great citizen.

It's easy to lose track of what a big star Raitt was. He created Billy Bigelow in Carousel on Broadway; there was no bigger musical leading man except Alfred Drake. I can remember, as a very little girl, seeing John Raitt in the touring company of "The Pajama Game." (Our parents believed in taking their kids to the theatre, lucky us) It's saying something to observe that John Raitt singing "Hey There," stayed as vivid a memory as did the sensational Fosse-choreographed number, "Steam Heat," with the equally sensational Carol Haney.

Then Bonnie grew up and started singing. She was always a personal favorite of mine, even before she became, after many years of being an artist, a genuine star. Because John Raitt had struck me as so all-American, I'd assumed that Bonnie, with her lefty leanings and sympathies, had fallen a bit aways from the tree. I learned something about my own prejudices when I learned what an all-American lefty John had always been. The generosity between daughter and father was a delight to behold.

Even in his late eighties, John Raitt was so vigorous, still singing, still supporting his daughter's support of all the good causes, it's a shock to realize he's left us. But his is also a wonderful life to contemplate; John Raitt maintained his chops, as a singer, a muscian, a father, and a citizen, right to the end.

Remember that Bush has a budget for 200 media whores "Pair Policy Advocates" like Guckert, and so far we only know about a few them ("PR stands for Paying Republicans," (back). Frank Rich summed up the state of play nicely yesterday:

By my count, "Jeff Gannon" is now at least the sixth "journalist" (four of whom have been unmasked so far this year) to have been a propagandist on the payroll of either the Bush administration or a barely arms-length ally like Talon News while simultaneously appearing in print or broadcast forums that purport to be real news. Of these six, two have been syndicated newspaper columnists paid by the Department of Health and Human Services to promote the administration's "marriage" initiatives. The other four have played real newsmen on TV. Before Mr. Guckert and Armstrong Williams, the talking head paid $240,000 by the Department of Education, there were Karen Ryan and Alberto Garcia. Let us not forget these pioneers - the Woodward and Bernstein of fake news. They starred in bogus reports ("In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting," went the script) pretending to "sort through the details" of the administration's Medicare prescription-drug plan in 2004. Such "reports," some of which found their way into news packages distributed to local stations by CNN, appeared in more than 50 news broadcasts around the country and have now been deemed illegal "covert propaganda" by the Government Accountability Office.
(via WaPo)

Oh, well, what's a little illegality when there's a war on? The war against Those Who Deny Bush Fealty, of course, and the Constitution. Not that Whack thing, or the Gaslight thing. Those are just sideshows. But I digress...

And how about the money trail? Rich continues:

The money that paid for both the Ryan-Garcia news packages and the Armstrong Williams contract was siphoned through the same huge public relations firm, Ketchum Communications, which itself filtered the funds through subcontractors. A new report by Congressional Democrats finds that Ketchum has received $97 million of the administration's total $250 million P.R. kitty, of which the Williams and Ryan-Garcia scams would account for only a fraction. We have yet to learn precisely where the rest of it ended up.

And I'm sure the Republicans in Congress ("It's your money!") will be happy to tell the taxpayers that their dollars were going to fund a covert, domestic disinformation campaign.

You remember Ketchum, of course. The PR firm that wants to "own the blogosphere". Say, I wonder if those paragons of blogging integrity, PowerLine, got any bucks? How about Glenn?

Oh my. Another big scoop from the World's Greatest Newspaper (not!)

Weead himself says:

Ninety percent of the tapes have not been heard.
(via WaPo)

I wonder why?

Probably the parts about Bush torturing small animals as a child were left on the cutting room floor, for example.

But I thought we didn't negotiate with terrorists?

U.S. diplomats and intelligence officers are conducting secret talks with Iraq's Sunni insurgents on ways to end fighting there, Time magazine reported yesterday, citing Pentagon and other sources.
(via WaPo)

Meanwhile Chalabi sticks his oar in:

Controversial Iraqi politician Ahmed Chalabi told ABC's "This Week" yesterday that any deals between insurgents and the U.S. military would not be binding on a new Iraqi government.

What's angle is Chalabi working now? "Let's you and him fight?"

Just asking.

Since even the laziest factcheckers would discover that Atrios, Kos, and Josh Marshall are right there at the top of the list.

So why would NPR ignore them? Change of ownership, maybe?

Gonzo.

The father of us all.

Googling on hooded officer, I find the full text of his masterwork, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Note, in the story, the lede: Who, What, Where, Why, When. Thompson, indeed, had chops.

So we parted company. He accepted a command in the South China Sea, and I became a Doctor of Gonzo Journalism...and many years later, killing time in the Las Vegas airport this terrible morning, I picked up a newspaper and saw where the Captain had fucked up very badly:

Ship Commander Butchered by Natives After “Accidental” Assault on Guam.
(AOP)-Aboard the USS. Crazy Horse: Somewhere in the Pacific (Sept. 25)-The entire 3485-man crew of this newest American aircraft carrier is in violent mourning today, after five crewmen including the Captain were diced up like pineapple meat in a brawl with the Heroin Police at the neutral port of Hong See. Dr. Bloor, the ship's chaplain, presided over tense funeral services at dawn on the flight deck. The 4th Fleet Service Choir sang “Tom Thumb's Blues” . . . and then, while the ship's bells tolled frantically, the remains of the five were set afire in a gourd and hurled into the Pacific by a hooded officer known only as “The Commander.” Shortly after the services ended, the crewmen fell to fighting among themselves and all communications with the ship were severed for an indefinite period. Official spokesmen at 4th Fleet Headquarters on Guam said the Navy had “no comment” on the situation, pending the results of a top-level investigation by a team of civilian specialists headed by former New Orleans district attorney James Garrison.

... Why bother with newspapers, if this is all they offer? Agnew was right. The press is a gang of cruel faggots. Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits- a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage.

Well. Um. Does that sound like Whack, or what? Hooded officers at Abu Ghraib, and all.

Only the young die good...

NOTE The title of Thompson's last book: "Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and The Downward Spiral of Dumbness." I'd say that about sums it up.

As I thumb the last pushpin into the wall of my tiny room under the stairs, and gaze up at the blueprint of the new Great Hall of The Mighty Corrente Building...

Well, two blueprints, actually. I'm just a bit more elevated than I thought I would be, after I threw the first bottle under the bed....

And speaking of blogger's massive and continuing suckitude, leah, farmer, Tom, Tresy, Xan, and RDF, could you please check your mail? I'm reminding you only because I never check my mail.... Thanks.

More US troops to Afghanistan. And, apparently, Dana Rohrabacher's buddies are laying low for the time being. Associated Press:

U.S. Doubles Number of Troops Inside Afghan Army; Taliban Official Says Harsh Winter Curtailing Attacks

Spain and the EU. Spain votes on EU charter and General Francisco Franco's old ostentiferous left behind legionaires of Christ aren't too happy about it. Via the The Observer (UK) :

Franco followers and bishops urge a boycott of EU vote

In a last stand by traditionalists and erstwhile supporters of General Franco's dictatorship, Roman Catholics in Spain are being urged to boycott today's referendum on a European constitution as a way of censuring the socialist government for advocating gay marriage and wider access to abortion.

[...]

Last month, after the Cardinal of Madrid, Antonio Rouco Varela, led a delegation to the Vatican, Pope John Paul II expressed support for the bishops' position, saying he was 'concerned to see a mentality creeping into Spain that is inspired by secularism and which progressively leads to restrictions in religious freedom'.

The Pope listed his objections to socialist Prime Minister José Luis Zapatero's policies on sexuality, embryo research and increased abortion rights. He also criticised the socialist government for considering withdrawing compulsory religious education, as introduced by former conservative Prime Minister José Maria Aznar.

Sounds familiar doesn't it? I hope William Donohue is taking notes.

Meanwhile, in the land of Jacob and jeremiads:

Israel backs Gaza settlement plan | Sun Feb 20, 2005 (Reuters UK)

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel's government has approved the first evacuation of settlers from occupied land Palestinians want for a state, ratifying a divisive Gaza pullout plan seen as a possible springboard to peace talks.

[...]

Sharon's "unity" cabinet voted 17-5 to ratify his "disengagement" plan, effectively giving settlers five months' notice to get out. But further ministerial votes will be needed for each of the four phases of the evacuation process.

"The evacuation of settlements is a difficult step, a very difficult one," Sharon, once considered the godfather of the settler movement, said as he convened his cabinet. "But it is a crucial step for the future of the state of Israel."

Sharon has fought for over a year to get his withdrawal plan past far-rightists, including some within his own Likud party, who are loath to cede an inch of occupied land.

Polls show most Israelis welcome a withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, but ultranationalists say it would be a "reward for Palestinian terrorism" and many settlers believe the land is theirs by biblical birthright.

The settlers, reasonable mild mannered god fearin' prairie folk that they are, have expressed a growing dissatisfaction over the resettlement proposals and have taken to registering their objections with the authorities that be:

February 14, 2005. Via the Cleveland Jewish News and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency:

(JTA) - Sharon: Cabinet members threatened
Ariel Sharon said extremists opposed to his Gaza withdrawal plan were threatening Cabinet members. "There are pressures and threats against ministers and members of the faction, both from within the Likud and by outside groups such as Kach and Yesha" settlers council, the Israeli prime minister told Likud Party faithful in Tel Aviv on Thursday.

(JTA) - Politicians under fire
Dozens of Israeli officials are under protection for fear they could be targeted by Jewish extremists. Security sources said Sunday that as many as 80 civil servants, including Cabinet members, are receiving Shin Bet protection following a spate of death threats attributed to Israelis opposed to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip. "Wake up before it is too late," Dalia Rabin, the daughter of assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, wrote in Yediot Achronot. "If we do not do enough now to stop the deterioration, we will again witnesses the horrible sight of a another prime minister's murder." According to the daily, Transportation Minister Meir Sheetrit had received a letter threatening the lives of his wife and children.

February 15, 2005

(JTA) - Sharon aide speaks out
An aide to Ariel Sharon urged Israelis to stop anti-government incitement. "I feel as though I am in an earthquake," Marit Danon, who has served under several Israeli leaders, including the assassinated Yitzhak Rabin, told Yediot Achronot on Tuesday. "If, God forbid, another prime minister is murdered, I will not be able to continue living here. I cannot understand the public's indifference, the complete lack of action by the authorities responsible for dealing with these things." Danon spoke out as death threats mounted against members of the government by right-wing extremists opposed to Sharon's plan to withdraw soldiers and civilians from the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank this summer. According to Israeli media, Sharon has requested protection for the grave of his wife Lily, fearing it could be vandalized.

Right Wing Refuseniks:

(JTA) As withdrawal date nears, prospect of army refusal

As the scheduled start of Israel's Gaza withdrawal approaches, settler leaders are raising the specter of mass refusal by religious soldiers to carry out orders and are warning of disastrous consequences for the Israeli army and society as a whole.

[...]

The refusal controversy has sparked a national debate, at the heart of which is the issue of state sovereignty versus rabbinical authority. The debate raises worrying questions: If there is widespread civil disobedience and refusal to carry out army orders, will Israeli society be dangerously divided? Could such a rift scuttle the withdrawal?

There have been cases of left-wingers advocating refusal to serve in the West Bank and Gaza Strip or to carry out missions in populated areas, but those calls for disobedience never approached critical mass. On Sunday, however, settler leaders called a meeting with IDF chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Moshe Ya'alon, to warn of an impending crisis.

[...]

National religious Jews, who make up most of the settler population, serve in the army, and take strong right-wing positions, face the most acute dilemma: On the one hand, they see settling the land of Israel as a necessary step toward the coming of the Messiah, and they accept rabbinical rulings; on the other, they're loyal to the state of Israel and its institutions.

All hell should break loose sometime early Monday morning. I predict Jesus Christ will be rolling into Trenton, New Jersey by late afternoon so have your Rapture-ready fanny packs ready to airlift outta here round 5:30 or sixish. Anyone refused passage will be left behind and subject to the mercy of Dana Rohrabacher, the Taliban, retro-fascist Catholics, and the right wing prairie folk from the land of Nod. And frivolous lawsuits from JD Love Guckert. Good luck, see ya all later at the Fluffy Cloud & Harp for cocktails.

*

OK, one quick thing before I head out to the truck and seek solitude and solace in the mountain snows with a sack of beans and a bottle of whiskey.

NPR. All things considered. Yesterday evening. A long segment by Andrea Seabrook about the effects and influence of political blogging.

And every last minute of it was about conservative blogs crowing about their success in bringing people down: Eason Jordan, the aWol memos…

Not. One. Lefty. Blog. Mentioned. Just a big GOP hatefest celebration of their blog success at spreading lies.

Fuck NPR.

Don’t believe it? Go listen: Republicans Turn to Blogs to Deliver a Message

See y’all Monday, if I come back.

Important news reaches The Bubble:

Shocker on Capitol Hill: We're creating enemies? Do tell. IN A SCENE that could have come straight from a 21st century remake of Duck Soup, CIA Director Porter Goss and military nabobs told Congress on Wednesday that the U.S. occupation of Iraq is fueling a growing insurgency and creating fresh enemies throughout an increasingly resentful and angry Arab world.

No shit. Too bad the Democrats didn't think of that argument before the 2004 election. - The Bush Beat by Ward Harkavy (Village Voice)

*

So much for fair and balanced and the wonders of the "free" marketplace of ideas. Some snitty public relations pinwheel at Fox Noise gets all hoity-toity with Jarrett Murphy of the Village Voice...

Via Press Clips Extra (The Village Voice)

For Fox, Money Isn't Everything

You'd think Rupert Murdoch would laugh all the way to the bank if the liberal magazine The Nation cut a check to conservative Fox News. But the "fair and balanced" ad staff at FNC have rejected a TV spot that The Nation says Bravo, CNN, MSNBC, and TBS/TNT have accepted.

The ad goes like this: read on...

FOX responds:

February 18, 2005 - Fox Fumes At Press Clips Sin

In a posting yesterday about Fox News Channel refusing to run a TV commercial for The Nation magazine, I wrote: "Fox did not return phone calls."

Wrong!

A Fox spokeswoman now tells me that I called the wrong part of Fox, and reached a spokesperson who only handles press inquiries for individual Fox television stations, not for Fox News Channel. The spokeswoman derided my work as lazy and typical of the shoddy work many journalists practice. She scorned my piece as an old story that The New York Times reported last summer.

She demanded a correction.

On the story itself: Asked why Fox rejected The Nation's ad, Fox News Channel spokeswoman Irena Briganti answered, "I guess we're more selective than others."

Ouch.

Hmmm. Maybe she didn't get her hot loofah bath that morning? So, in honor of typical shoddy work practices, and stuff like that, I'd like to revisit a celebrated FOXNews Channel international geographic moment: with special thanks to globe trotting celebrity dandy Bill "falafel oil" O'Reilly.



A regular ambassador of good will, ain't he? (Briganti, that's Italian isn't it?)

*

WaPo:

Despite the battering he has taken, Gannon [sic] hasn't abandoned plans to work in journalism and hopes to generate sympathy by speaking out.

"People criticize me for being a Christian and having some of these questionable things in my past," he said. "I believe in a God of forgiveness."
(via WaPo)

"Gannon" is gay. So? "Gannon" is an escort. So?

I cared because I thought the wingers cared. I mean, gays are second class citizens, right? And if you think about it, escorts aren't exactly reinforcing the sanctimony of marriage, are they?

But apparently, it's good to be gay.

It's good to be a gay escort.

It's plusgood to be a gay escort, funded by the Republicans, posing as a journalist.

And it's doubleplusgood to be a gay escort, funded by the Republicans, posing as a journalist who gets to ask Bush questions at His very infrequent news conferences!

It's all good! So, can gays marry now?

Move along people, move along! There's no story here!

Incidentally, one very good way for "Gannon" to show he knows he's been forgiven would be to demonstrate repentance. Somehow, I don't think going on a PR offensive is the way to do that, but what do I know?

From the Editor and Publisher transcript.

No time to look at this deeply right now; read it for yourselves. Just a few extracts to put on the record:

COOPER: There are those who have said that the reason perhaps you are using a different name is that there is stuff from your past that you did not want people to know about or find out about.

GANNON: How I'll address that is that I have made mistakes in my past. And these are all of a very personal and private nature that have been -- that have been all brought to the surface by people who disagreed with the question I asked at the presidential press conference several weeks ago. And is -- the effect of this has been that we seem to have established a new standard for journalists in this country, where if someone disagrees with you, then your personal life, your private life, and anything you have ever done in the past is going to be brought up for public inspection.

Am I alone in reading this as a blackmail threat, by "Gannon," against other members of the press?

Move along people, move along! If there's a story here, there shouldn't be!

Talk about defining deviancy down! Suppose "Gannon"'s private life included, um, man-on-dog sex. How would Senator-but-not-for-long Santorum react to that?

Anyhow, the issue isn't that "Gannon" is gay.

The issue is not that Gannon is a gay escort (although that's illegal in most states, and certainly opens the door to massive blackmail potential).

The issue is not whether "Gannon" is getting a free pass—hmmm, nice alliteration with freeper, but let that go—because he's a Republican, though surely if he were a Democrat, and this was the Clinton White House, this would be headline material for the next year.

The issue is not even the usual Republican hypocrisy, sanctimony, and doublethink. Apparently, it's now entirely OK to be gay; that's part of "private life." OK, then why can't Gannon get married?

The issue is who made the decision to give "Gannon" the daily passes, day after day after day, when (a) using one name on a driver's license, and another name on the pass, had to be a red flag, (b) Congress wouldn't give him a pass, since he couldn't prove he was a journlist, yet (c) the White House is famously organized? Could it have been the newly annointed Czar of All Policy Unka Karl Himself?

I mean, ordinary citizens can't get into Bush rallies, because the Partei keeps a blacklist!

And we are expected to believe that "Gannon" got into the White House press room, and asked Bush questions, and nobody knew who (and what) he was?! I don't think so.

More:

COOPER: Let me give you a chance just to respond to what you want to respond to. You had previously stated that you had registered a number of pornographic Web sites for a private client. That's what you had said publicly. You said the sites were never activated. A man now has talked to The Washington Post, who said that you had essentially paid him to create some Web sites for an escort service, and you are yourself offering yourself as an escort.

GANNON: Well, like I said, there's a lot of things being said about me out there. A lot of things that have nothing to do with the reporting I have done for the last two years.

"Said," forsooth. Americablog has the invoices and the screendumps. Too bad that didn't form the substance of Cooper's next question.

More:

COOPER: This liberal group, Media Matters, which I'm sure you know well about. They have been very critical about you, really looked into this probably closer than just about anybody. They say that essentially, you are not a real reporter. And it's not even a question of being an advocate, that you have directly lifted large segments of your reports directly from White House press releases.

GANNON: All my stories were usually titled "White House Says," "President Bush Wants," and I relied on transcripts from the briefings, I relied on press releases that were sent to the press for the purpose of accurately portraying what the White House believed or wanted.

COOPER: But using the term "reporting" implies some sort of vetting, some sort of research, some sort of -- I mean, that's called faxing or Xeroxing, if you are just lifting transcripts and putting them into an article.

GANNON: If I am communicating to my readers exactly what the White House believes on any certain issue, that's reporting to them an unvarnished, unfiltered version of what they believe.

Beyond words. "Gannon" seems to think that a press release is the same thing as a news story. Of course, he's in good company. That's what the wingers actually think. It's even what Judith "Kneepads" Miller thinks (back)

More:

GANNON: Well, I don't see it that way. But what was -- what's been done to me is far in excess of what has ever been done to any other journalist that I could remember. My life has been turned inside out and upside down. And, again, it makes us all wonder that if someone disagrees with you, that is now your personal life fair game? And I'm hoping that fair-minded people will stand up and say that what's been done to me is wrong, and that -- that people's personal lives have no impact on their ability to be a journalist, you know. Why should my past prevent me from having a future?

It doesn't. Think of David Brock; after being "blinded by the right," he started Media Matters. So, Brock made himself a future out of his past.

"Gannon" can do exactly the same thing. He can take a serious look at his actions, come clean about his dirty tricks past, and his paymasters. Instead, he goes on a PR offensive.

C'mon, Jeff. Confession is good for the soul!

NOTE It would be very interesting to know if blackmail—it wouldn't have to be very explicit—had anything to do with the mystery of Gannon's continued access. Personnaly, I'd think that a closeted married man would be the most vulnerable...

Generally, the salutation to business correspondence terminates with a colon, not a comma, but I digress.

Anyhow, this insouciant little splatter of Santa Clara corporate-speak is what I got back from blogger's [cough] support bot after I sent them a short note bringing their continuing massive suckitude service issues to their attention:

Hi there,

Errors like this are generally due to temporary problems with our servers, and if you wait a little while before trying again, Blogger should work normally. If you continue to have trouble with it, please try clearing your browser's cache and cookies before logging in again. We apologize for the inconvenience, and we are constantly working on making our servers more reliable.

Thanks for using Blogger!

Sincerely,
Blogger Support

Morans. Clear the cookies? I fuckin' tossed 'em, and blogger still didn't work!

Blogger: The US Airways of the blogosphere.

I certainly hope Google's stock is tanking. Any company of Google's capitalization that can't manage to run a server farm successfully has serious internal management problems.

And what can be more "evil" than keeping people away from the medium that gives them a voice? Even free software should work! (As if I'd ever upgrade...)

Remember when all the wingnut wunderkinds and the Sunday gasbags and conventinal wisdom wowsers were rolling their eyes and smirking into the bright lights telling us all about how it would never even get off the ground?

Madison Magazine March 2005

The Liberal Media - One network set out a year ago this month to make the mtyh a reality.

The network went on the air in just a half-dozen cities one year ago this month...

A year on, listeners still hear Bush-bashing of the first order. Christy Harvey of the Center for American Progress and conservative-cum-liberal writer David Brock are near-daily guests on Franken's show, as is Franken's college roommate (and die-hard Republican) Mark Luther. Luther is Franken's "Resident Ditto-head," charged with defending Rush Limbaugh sound bites that may or may not contain half-truths and fibs. Callers can play Franken's game show, "Wait, Wait, Don't Lie To Me," in which they must identify quotes from the news as truth, lie, or "weasel words." Morning listeners hear "Ambrosia Sings the News," in which sultry jazz vocalist Ambrosia Parsley renders her three-verse version of the day's events. Guests and callers make a full-contact sport of trying to get a word in edgewise on The Randi Rhodes Show, and evening host Mike Malloy routinely refers to the president's kin as "the Bush crime family."

In a world where big corporations own most of the radio stations in the country, that kind of thing couldn't possibly survive, could it? No radio stations would sign on as affiliates to that, would they? After all, big corporations are all in bed with the NeoCons, aren't they?

Whether they are or they aren't, it turns out that their first priority is their own bottom line. Media conglomerates surprised more than a few people by letting local stations sign on for some or all of Air America's lineup, tolerating the potshots at the corporate-friendly right wing, as long as those local stations delivered audience and the resulting ad sales. And deliver they did - a test run in Portland took a station from the cellar to number three in three months, and the station now sits at number two in the market. That meager handful of stations at the start has grown to 50 in just a year, in addition to two channels on satellite radio. It's back on the air in LA and recently landed in Bush's backyard - Corpus Christi, Texas. By the time Bush was inaugurated for his second term, AAR had 40 percent of the nation's airwaves covered (projected to approach 50 percent by the time this article goes to press) and millions more sets of ears listening online. It has been the fastest launch in radio network history.

*

Why aren't more people livid that Alan Greenspan, in his testimony before congress, endorsed private accounts? Okay, it was a tepid endorsement. Yes, he admitted that private accounts wouldn't necessarily solve the so-called crises of SS, and he expressed concerns about the transitional costs, although he radically understated what they would be. The hard fact remains that Alan Greenspan has no business, ethically speaking, taking any position but that SS should be kept as it was originally designed to be, a universal Federal insurance program that guarantees workers won't live in dire poverty after retirement, and that survivors of workers who die during their productive years will be taken care of, and that any tweaking required to get SS past the retirement of the baby boomers should do nothing to change the essential nature of the program. Where does Alan Greenspan get off endorsing a plan that is meant to dismantle that system, and please, let us face this, that is what this President is talking about, difficult as it is to tellt, because of his penchent for talking similtaneously out of both sides of his mouth and various other of his bodily orifices.

Alan Greenspan promised Americans that the stunning rise in payroll taxes that was inacted in 1983 was sufficient to deal with the coming problem of the retirement of the baby boomers. All of us have been paying more into the SS Trust Fund than has been going out ever since, but the Fund is still in trouble. And the reason has nothing to do with the ratio of workers to retirees compared with the ratio in 1935, nothing to do with anything except the fact that the last three Republican presidents, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and George W. Bush have spent this country into penury. Bill Clinton got a handle on the problem, but the surpluses which Gore would have used to make sure SS got "fixed," is gone, up in the smoke and mirror of the Bush tax cuts.

Was Alan Greenspan lying in 1983. Did he make a mistake? Is he lying now? Or is he still just making a mistake? And why is he getting away with not having to confront any of these questions?

Please, don't leave a lot of comments blaming the Democrats. They share in some of the blame. But we're to blame too. There has never been a time when the Democratic Party feels more of a need to be responsive to its grassroots than it does now. Why can't we get sufficiently organized to generate phone calls, emails and letters to our various representatives and to the party apparatus to make sure that they are as knowledgeble about SS as we've become. Note please that many of our Senators and Representatives are knowledgable. And none of them are as dumb as most of the people in the mainstream press, who seem incapable of discussing SS for more than two minutes without making the most bizarre misstatements.

Why, when Atrios can generate comment threads three or four hundred comments long, Kevin Drum, ones almost as long, and it isn't that unusual to see fifty and sixty coments on posts all over the place in blogtopia, can we not use that strength to get ideas into the mainstream media, either directly, or through the Democratic Party? If half of those people would make a call a day, and get ten other people they know to do the same, then we'd see some action.

I know this has become a hobby horse, and that I'm in danger of becoming an old-fashioned bore on this subject, but we knew Greenspan would be testifying this week, why weren't we prepared to contact Democrats who would be questioning him to insist that they ask him about 1983, and about why that grand compromise to save Social Security, which all of us still pay for every paycheck, didn't seem to work out?

Why has the whole question of whether or not Bush is really talking about the US government defaulting on the debt in Treasury Bonds held by the SS Trust Fund, as implied in his constant citation of 2018 as a crucial year when SS bill be broke not made its way into mainstream media? When I break the news to those of my friends who don't read blogs, they can scarce believe what Josh Marshall and Matthew Yglesias are telling them. Yeah, it'll be broke all right, because Bush and Co will have managed to break it by then.

Where is MoveOn when we need them, and their member lists? They were great at getting people to call congress in the runup to the Iraq invasion. I understand that it's easier when there is a vote pending, but damn, are we not going to do any organizing around saving Social Security until there's a pending vote on a plan. Because that's going to be way too late.

It is such an outrage that Greenspan can turn his back on a fix he trumpeted, that all of us have been paying for these last twenty plus years, and nothing gets said, no one even seems to notice. Hey, if anyone is allowed to divert their SS contribution into a private account, then I want all the extra money I've been paying into SS back, damnit, with that three percent interest, too.

One person who notices everything about this debate is Bob Somerby, Mr. Daily Howler. Take a look at what he's been working on the last two weeks, or the last two months, and you'll see some of the problem. Now can we start a discussion about what we do about it? Click here, and then go to Bob's archives for 2005 and keep on clicking. Truly, no one understand the political ins and outs of the SS debate as well as Mr. Somerby. Keep on reading until you get angry enough to help all of us figure out what to do about all the bull that's being spread around, prepratory to burying SS as we've come to know and love it.

Over at the Online Journal, there’s a very interesting followup analysis by Linda Heard to the idea that there is a deal between the Shiites and the oil companies for a division of power. It’s probably just me, and everyone else has already thought of this, but in case you haven’t, here’s the bit that struck me:

Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein may not have possessed the fabled nasty weapons and neither was he buddy-buddy with Osama. What he actually did was far worse in the eyes of the Bush clan.

In 2000 he decided to give the petrodollar the elbow and trade, instead, in euros. In the four proceeding years, the euro has gained 20 per cent against the American currency.
Of course, the export of Iraqi oil was swiftly relinked to the greenback after the Americans rode into town.

OPEC was expected to be duly shocked and awed by the Iraq debacle and if its member countries had any ideas of switching to euros, which after all would make good financial sense in light of the dollar's weakness and the fact Europe buys more oil from OPEC than the United States, it was hoped they would think again.

Iraq's neighbour, Iran, is now on the brink of going one step further. It not only wants to see euros taking the place of the ailing dollar on the international energy markets, it plans to set-up its own oil bourse in direct competition with London and New York that are both owned by US-led consortiums.

If this takes off in 2006, as planned, it could be good news for the European Union, which may in part explain why Europe is so keen to forge a diplomatic route out of the current Iran-US impasse.

To the Bush administration, the Iranian government is loathsome but the other big kids on the block the EU, Russia and China do not share this view.

Germany's Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has entreated America to back the EU's Iran policy.
Russia may sign a contract with Iran at the end of February for the supply of atomic fuel with spent rods being returned to Russia for safe storage. This move would be anathema to the White House.

China's newly strengthened alliance with Iran could provide a further stumbling block to the more hawkish members of the US administration. This, especially since China's burgeoning economy is becoming increasingly dependent on Iranian oil and gas.

Keeping China firmly in its place by controlling the oil-rich Gulf is thought to be another reason the United States has staked its claim in the region so markedly.

Thus, even if America managed to haul Iran before the United Nations Security Council as it did with Iraq in 2002, any consequent proposed US military action might end up being vetoed before it got off the ground.

So it’s all about the euros and petrodollars, eh? And even if iWaq’s oil was in fact privatized, what’s to stop the continuing slide of the dollar, if Iran and the other major producers tie themselves to the euro? How in the hell could private companies, especially American, secure themselves in that environment? Not even the specter of peak oil could make that palatable without raising the specter of more wars, perhaps even global ones. (And Heard also speculates that Iran already has nukes—can we tie that to Rumsfeld’s wish to resurrect “tactical” nukes, and the missile defense shield?)

I swear, none of this makes any sense. Not even the lies make any sense. There has to be more to this. Maybe someone smarter than me can figger it out. Me, I'm going way out in the mountains tomorrow, without anything to connect me to the rest of the world, and stay for a day or two at least. What with the unholy trinity of Gonzales, Chertoff and Negroponte handling justice, I think it's best to clear my head. The whole Heard thing’s at
Oil and the American policy in the Middle East if anyone wants to tie it together...

More than a few commenters have noted the unhappy length of my Eason Jordan post.

I understand completely.

I would point out, though, that much of what makes the post so long are less my comments than the use I decided to make of lengthy quotes, since this was an attempt, in part, at textual analysis. The use of texts within a text is a more acute dilemma in blogging than in any other of my writing experiences. Blogging is primarily a form of commentary, and as an internet phenomenon, largely a matter of creating a structure of links. Should the blogger assume that readers will have the patiance to go and read the linked texts as they arrive in the analysis, or should said blogger attempt to provide some form of the gist of what is being commented upon within the post?

I apologize for any pinwheeling of eyeballs the post may have provoked. The problem is more acute in Blogger, which does not have an easily available option of continuing longer posts on a separate page, away from the main page of the blog, and in addition, Blogger this week has been operating as if possessed by a satanic demon, as I believe may have been mentioned by Lambert.

Final irony, I ended up dumping that huge post right on top of a post that was meant to point to the good work being done by others on the net worthy of your attention. Talk about upstaging yourself. If you missed this version of a blogaround, "There And Back Again" you can take a glance by clicking here.

Journalists. And no, this has nothing to do with global warming or previously extremely warm places freezing over.

We need a free press, in every permutation you can think of for that word "free." Free to be...you and me, and most of all, itself. We need a press free not merely of government constraints, but also establishment constraints, and free of the most fatal of constraints, those of conventional wisdom. The tricky part of all this is that the voices of the American right would probably insist that they believe exactly the same thing, and would locate conventional wisdom way way over on that center left axis where sit all those old radical Democrats and their voters.

Here's the difference between the two political sides; the American right is deeply committed to a two-prong strategy; deepen the mistrust of ordinary Americans in the press, encourage skepticism about even the possibility of a genuinly free, and independent press, and in the ensuing vacumn, set up an alternate Rube Goldenboy contraption, a Potemkin Village faux media to take the place of a free press. That, of course, is the most important aspect of the L'affaire Gannon/Guckhert.

Since it can be a despairing task to find oneself defending someone as powerful, and as consistently disappointing as Dan Rather, or the war coverage of CNN, which could hardly have been less critical of Bush policy, or more credulous about the Iraq invasion and subsequent occupation if they'd been...well, trying very hard to be credulous, I wanted to make sure that everyone had the opportunity to read a real journalist at work.

Cursor brings our attention to an amazing transcript that David Holiday had the moxie to notice and assemble for publication on his blog, "Central America and beyond;" it's a transcript of Rod Norland, a Newsweek correspondant in Baghdad, handling a live session of readers' questions. Norland is funny, knowledgable, wise and startingly honest. Even before I read this, I thought that he and Christopher Dickey were doing important work getting the story of Iraq back to us. But when you read a transcript like this, you remember that journalism is both a profession and a craft, that journalists do something real and important, that has its differences from what a blogger, or a citizen journalist might do.

We lefties want more free press, not less. Let's never forget that.

You can find Holiday's post about Norland here.

Gannon-Guckert, male pedophile prostitution, and the GOP.

Well, we all know how fond of Asian prostitutes W's brother is:

The Neil v. Sharon Bush divorce papers provide the most titillating bedtable reading since the footnotes of the Starr Report. For example, the divorce depositions detail Neil's dalliances with prostitutes in Asia. While Neil was doing Interlink business in Thailand and Hong Kong, he enjoyed the exotic experience of hearing an urgent knocking on his hotel room door. Upon opening the door, Neil was confronted by a beautiful young woman who said she wanted to have sex with him. On at least three difference occasions, Neil accepted the hospitality of his hosts. He admitted to the sexual encounters in his bizarre deposition during his divorce proceedings. - Counterpunch/April 2004

I'm not even sure where to begin at this point, or what to make of all of this below, because I haven't had a chance to wade through it all myself. And, these stories track-back several years, and revisit the bottom of the pond where a lot of slimy things that never see the light of day (including dead bodies) have sunk deep into the muck and mud. There are a lot of forking paths here so go take a look for yourself. Via Wayne Madsen at Online Journal.

"Gannongate," which is only now being mentioned by the mainstream news media, threatens to expose a potentially damaging GOP pedophile and male prostitution ring dating back to the 1980s and the administration of George H. W.

[...]

Gannongate is reminiscent of a huge political scandal that surfaced in Nebraska in 1989 when it was learned that Lawrence King, the head of Franklin Community Credit Union in Omaha and a rising African American star in the GOP (he sang the national anthem at George H. W. Bush's 1988 nominating convention in New Orleans), was a kingpin—along with top Republicans in Nebraska and Washington, DC, including George H. W. Bush—in a child prostitution and pedophilia scandal. King was later convicted and jailed for fraud but pedophile and prostitution charges were never brought against him and other Nebraska Republican businessmen and politicians.

The scandal, investigated by Nebraska State Senator Loran Schmit, his assistant John DeCamp (a former GOP state senator), State Senate Committee investigator Gary Caradori, and former CIA Director William Colby, reached the very top echelons of the George H. W. Bush administration and GOP. Child prostitutes from Boys Town and other orphanages in Nebraska as well as children procured from China were reportedly flown to Washington for sexcapades with Republican politicians. GOP lobbyist Craig Spence and a number of GOP officials in the administration and Congress were implicated in the scandal, including Labor Secretary Elizabeth Dole's liaison to the White House. ~ Read full story: "Gannongate threatens to expose a huge GOP pedophile and male prostitution ring", By Wayne Madsen, Online Journal Contributing Writer

For more on this pedophile/prostitution ring backstory you can find a large backlog of specific citations and info and article references via the Randi Rhodes radio show from June 2004:

More details via Randi Rhodes Show, June 2004:

LoFi Text Version

Full Version: Homosexual Child Prostitution Ring; Bush SR

*

From the Chicago Tribune (lost the link, sorry):

Nice article that gives us a whiff of the model plan for Social Security as it was done in Texas. Apparently some counties in Texas have already done the experiment. A great success, according to the portfolio managers and wealthy participants, but not for the poor and working class. My bet is you’ll be hearing more about this great experiment:

"What we can learn from the Galveston experience is who will win and who will lose if we move toward this privatization plan," Kingson added. "People who work long and hard at relatively low wages get a proportionately higher benefit from Social Security, and that's because its purpose is to provide a basic set of protections for Americans."

The bottom line for many Galveston County retirees is the size of their check every month. And some say they have been bitterly disappointed.

"I get around $460 per month now, but under Social Security, I would have gotten $1,000," said Joyce Longcoy, who retired in 1998 after 23 years working for Galveston County. "They are putting this up to be a model for the rest of the country. Some model."

And according to the AP’s Deb Reichmann, Rove has put on his short pants and taken up the megaphone and pompom of a cheerleader. (Sorry for that image.)

Karl Rove, President Bush's top political strategist, on Thursday pronounced conservatism the "dominant political creed in America" and coached fellow conservatives on how to support his boss.

"The next time one of your smarty-pants liberal friends says to you, `Well, he didn't have a mandate', you tell him of this delicious fact: This president got a higher percentage of the vote than any Democratic candidate for president since 1964," Rove said.

Yeah, smarty pants. Trying to confuse me with relevant facts and your use of brain. Take that! Personally, I think I'd try to help him find a man date. Any ideas where to look?

Negroponte in an interview stored at GWU archives, discussing the invasion of Grenada:

I wasn't involved, I was not involved and I don't remember much, but I remember one thing very vividly which was that I, I basically learned about the invasion of Grenada from the President of Honduras, who called me up to say "Do you know what's going on?" and I said, "Well I have an idea, but I don't know for sure." And he said "well you're invading Grenada" and he said "please tell the troops that when they're finished there to just keep on coming to Nicaragua." So it had that effect on the leadership of Honduras and I'll never forget that phone call from the President of Honduras.

He goes on to deny that there was ever any intent to invade anybody else in Central America, but of course there were troops in Honduras all along (over 12,000 I hear), supporting torture and murder. And King George I had other ideas with Panama. Interesting that he says he’ll “never forget that phone call.” I wonder why? Imperialism has to cover its tracks, keep its plans hidden? Especially when the “president” in question is a U.S. puppet? You can bet Negroponte knows that the CIA supplied torture equipment to “Battalion 316,” a Honduran army unit that kidnapped, and then tortured and killed hundreds of people using electric shock and suffocation. The battalion was trained by American and Argentinian advisors, and their victims included anybody deemed to be anti-American, interested in social change in Latin America, or supporters of the Sandanistas. The director of the battalion, General Gustavo Alvares Martinez told Negroponte that he wanted to use Argentinian methods of eliminating his enemies. In 1983 Reagan awarded Martinez the Legion of Merit "for encouraging the success of the democratic process in Honduras.” Read more here: Torture was taught by CIA; Declassified manual details the methods used in Honduras; Agency denials refuted and here: In These Times 25/09 -- In From the Cold War

The Times reported in 1988 that: "American diplomats exercise more control over domestic politics in Honduras than in any other country in the hemisphere..."

What strikes me is that Negroponte has made a real career of supporting terror tactics, torture and “regime change,” then covering his tracks and denying knowledge of anything. Now he’s in charge of intelligence nationwide? Oy. Wonder if he still supports “Argentinian methods”? Of course not. Neither does Gonzales. Why? Because they said so. Duh.

Cointelpro and McCarthy never sounded so innocent. Frogs in the pan, getting warmer and warmer.

No word yet on when the new torturers will get their medals…

The real power in the blogosphere, located firmly on the right, has another scalp to dangle from its warrior belt in its relentless battle to remove from international media any signs of aspostasy from their perception of what is appropriately American media behavior. (Not all apostasy is considered a negative; apostasy by liberals turning away from their previously held nasty mindsets are to be admired. see M. Kaus. Come to think of it, if you start out as an apostate liberal, were you ever a liberal?)

I speak of Eason Jordan, of course, formerly one of the top news executives of CNN. Until Friday, when he resigned. Mr. Jordan had said something about the extraordinarily high number of journalists who have perished while reporting in Iraq, often under fire from insurgents, but also, in some cases, from American fire. His comments were made while Mr. Jordan was participating in a panel discussion about media and democracy held at Davos as part of the International Economic Forum. Said something. About that there is general agreement. And then immediately, in real time, began to disavow the extreme interpretation of what he said that his accusers continue to insist he meant to say and continues to mean. Everyone, more or less, seems to agree upon that point, as well.

The first mention of this moment, which, please remember, came in an unscripted forum discussion, occurred in a post to the Forum's blog, by someone who is very open about not being a journalist. The post was dated January 28th. Friday was Feb 11th. Didn't take long, did it?

Since I was taking a breather from righwing blogovia, I remained unaware that this contretemp was even going on until I happened on it last week at Jay Rosen's "PressThink," by which time there was already a rightwing EasonGate blog active on the case, not to mention an excited blog swarm being led by Hugh Hewitt, Michele Malkin, Powerline, all the regulars. Mr. Rosen, a journalism professor at NYU had been covering the coverage, doing some actual journalism himself in an effort to ascertain with more precision what had happened at Davos, and his comment threads had become a forum for a variety of points of view, although the predominant one remained bloggers and commentators who insisted on believing that a single sentence uttered by Eason Jordan crossed a professional line, that he meant to say what he said, backtracking be damned, did so for the most unsavory reasons, and most infuriating of all, that the MSM, as they like to refer to big media, was steadfastly refusing to cover their allegations for all the usual suspect reasons. For his part, Mr. Rosen was attempting to withhold judgment about the exact nature of Eason Jordan's transgression, if indeed any such had transpired, until more facts were known about what he'd actually said, and what he'd said about what he meant, both during and after the fact.

What follows is an attempt to walk a reader, who, like me, was late to discover all this, through the basic texts of the "controversy," as they were developed and embraced by the rightwing blogosphere, with the help of certain well-placed media professionals, and the extraordinary passivity of the SCLM in the face of an attack that was clearly meant to limit discourse, even while the bloggers behind thie attack were extolling their own virtues as warriors in service to an expansion of discourse and media transparency. I know that many on the liberal/left axis become impatient with this kind of analysis, I become impatient with it, myself, and doing this post made me positively twitchy, but there is a pattern to be discerned here that recalls the success of the SwiftBoat Vets for their version of truth, and the success of the rightwing in slimming Joe Wilson as a liar, and Richard Clarke as a bitter ex-employee, and the obligteration of the Bush National Guard story as worthy of concern, which was the real point of the Dan Rather dustup. (Don't take this as a defense of Rather or CBS, it isn't)

The basic text regarding what happened at Davos used by everyone who has commented on this scandale was provided by Rony Abovitz, an attendee at Davos, who was in the audience at the panel discussion. I think it's fair to say that his report, in the Forum's blog, is very far from being recognizable as a news story. What seems clear is that Mr. Jordan used the unfortunate term "targeted," when discussing the high number of journalists that have been killed in Iraq in reference to both insurgents and members of the American military.

I'm willing to concede that is a highly provocative statement. And it appears to have provoked a response - some in the audience applauding the subject being brought up, Barney Franks, a panalist and David Gergen, the panel's moderator, registering shock and dismay. Abovitz is also clear that Jordan immediately backpedaled from the most extreme interpretation of that statement. What is missing from Abovitz's description is any sense of how the discussion developed, any sense of what actually got said, except for those key words that he memorializes in his title to his post, "Do US Troops Target Journalists in Iraq?"

During one of the discussions about the number of journalists killed in the Iraq War, Eason Jordan asserted that he knew of 12 journalists who had not only been killed by US troops in Iraq, but they had in fact been targeted. He repeated the assertion a few times, which seemed to win favor in parts of the audience (the anti-US crowd) and cause great strain on others. Due to the nature of the forum, I was able to directly challenge Eason, asking if he had any objective and clear evidence to backup these claims, because if what he said was true, it would make Abu Ghraib look like a walk in the park. David Gergen was also clearly disturbed and shocked by the allegation that the U.S. would target journalists, foreign or U.S. He had always seen the U.S. military as the providers of safety and rescue for all reporters

Eason seemed to backpedal quickly, but his initial statements were backed by other members of the audience (one in particular who represented a worldwide journalist group). The ensuing debate was (for lack of better words) a real "sh--storm". What intensified the problem was the fact that the session was a public forum being taped on camera, in front of an international crowd. The other looming shadow on what was going on was the presence of a U.S. Congressman and a U.S. Senator in the middle of some very serious accusations about the U.S. military.

To be fair (and balanced), Eason did backpedal and make a number of statements claiming that he really did not know if what he said was true, and that he did not himself believe it. But when pressed by others, he seemed to waver back and forth between what might have been his beliefs and the realization that he had created a kind of public mess. His statements, his reaction, and the reaction of all in attendance left me perplexed and confused. Many in the crowd, especially those from Arab nations, applauded what he said and called him a "very brave man" for speaking up against the U.S. in a public way amongst a crowd ready to hear anti-US sentiments. I am quite sure that somewhere in the Middle East, right now, his remarks are being printed up in Arab language newspapers as proof that the U.S. is an evil and corrupt nation. That is a real nightmare, because the Arab world is taking something said by a credible leader of the media (CNN!) as the gospel, or koranic truth. What is worse is that I am not really sure what Eason really meant to communicate to us, but I do know that he was quite passionate about it. Members of the audience took away what they wanted to hear, and now they will use it in every vile and twisted way imaginable.

As you can see, there is a strong admixture of undocumented assumptions and speculations in this description., and no actual quotes. Understand, I'm not being critical of Abovitz. I don't doubt that he's being honest, and is also attempting to be fair to Eason Jordan. But Abovitz doesn't even tell us what was Jordan's answer to Abovitz's fairly direct question. There is also a clear bias, a set of assumptions about the "Arab world" and about the role of journalism as a representative of American policy that are unhidden in Abovitz's summary of what happened.

If what Eason originally said was true, exactly what happened and why needs to become known to the American public and world at large. If it is not, it is an example of how "news" is created by the heat of the moment, without any bearing to reality. If it is true, we need to know if it was official or if it was just some random disgruntled soldiers. The dark scenario, what the rest of the world would love to believe, is that the U.S. is sinister and evil and this is just another example of Darth Bush. Is this the same U.S. that I know and love, or was this just someone accidentally becoming swept up in the anti-U.S. feeling that is all pervasive in Davos (but they love us too, especially Clinton).

Heaven knows that we on the left have our own arguments with Big MacMedia, but when you read a mishmash of facts, assertions, and speculations like Mr. Abovitz's summary of the incident, (which if you haven't taken advantage of the link above to read all of, you should and can by clicking here), it reminds you of the value of a good news story. Again, this isn't a knock against Abovitz, who makes no journalistic claims, other than as a citizen observer. Fair enough.

But take a look at this exchange between Hugh Hewitt and Rebecca MacKinnon, journalist turned blogger, a former associate of Mr. Jordan at CNN, who was also at Davos, and who covered the incident on her own blog, and had agreed to answer Hewitt's questions about the incident.

Q:First, was Rony's account "accurate" in the sense that it would have been a responsible filing from any journalist working for, say, a big paper?

A: A news report by a newspaper or news agency would have included verbatim quotes, ideally double-checked from a digital or tape recording made by the journalist. A TV or radio report would have included the actual "soundbite." Rony's account is detailed, and was clearly written soon after the panel discussion ended. As I've said before, his account of what transpired is consistent with my recollection of the event. However, since nobody has verbatim quotes, all we have are Jordan's clarifications after-the-fact, in which he admits to have mis-spoken.

edit (it's a big edit, you can and should read her whole answer here, along with the rest of her answers to the rest of Hewett's questions.)

So to answer your question: yes, Rony's initial blog post was "accurate" in the sense that several of us in the room have corroborated his account. He has a great memory for detail. But would any news editor have relied on his or anybody else's memory for a news story? No.

Is it just me or is something about that answer highly unsatisfying? Does Ms. MacKinnon mean that she is corroborating that Eason Jordan "seemed to waver back and forth between what might have been his beliefs and the realization that he had created a kind of public mess." Does she even understand what that means? Because I don't. Is she corroborating that "Members of the audience took away what they wanted to hear, and now they will use it in every vile and twisted way imaginable. " To be frank, I don't see any "great memory for detail" anywhere in Abovitz's original description. And what of Hewett's question? Although by training a lawyer, Hugh Hewett more or less plays a journalist on talk radio, on his own blog, in a syndicated newspaper column, and he has been seen often on KCET, our local PBS station. Was Hugh Hewett serious when he asked if Abovitz's summary was publishable as a news story? Does he think so? Or was he merely getting a point of view about that question "on the record," as a lawyer might do in building a case?

Despite later charges that Jordan was part of a coverup and refused to admit to saying what he said, it turns out that he readily responded to questions from bloggers when asked to clarify what he meant. The first such response was received by Ms. MacKinnon and posted in her blog. If you're interested in following this story further you need to take a moment and read Eason Jordan's explanation of what he was trying to say.

You'll notice that he says several times that he does not believe that the US military is deliberately targeting journalists, that he was not trying to say that they did at Davos, and that he was using "targeted" in a highly limited way, to differentiate the fate of so many journalists in Iraq from the category of "collatoral damage," in which Barney Frank had just placed them during a discussion of the huge number of journalists who have died in Iraq since the American invasion. Note that this is consistent with one thing Abovitz says, i.e., that Jordan's remarks were in the context of a discussion on exactly that subject already in progress. Note, also, that the date of this post is February 2nd. Let's see, that means that Eason Jordan "stonewalled" for all of three or four days.

Another blogger got a similar reply from Eason Jordan. Carol Platt Liebou was less inclined than Ms. MacKinnon to take Jordan's words at face value.

Our friend, formerly of CNN, passed along this statement from Eason Jordan. It seems that he is making a semantic argument, i.e., that when he said that the journalists had been "targeted", he didn't mean to imply that the U.S. military realized that they were journalists. (That is, soldiers intended to shoot the people who were killed -- they just didn't know they were journalists.) Perhaps that's true. Perhaps. But why wouldn't he have made the point about mistaken identity clear in the original remarks?

Interesting question. I have one for Ms. Liebou: what makes you think that Eason Jordan didn't do that? Or at the very least, didn't try and do that? There is a lot in Ronnie Abovitz original summary to suggest that Jordan did, isn't there? And is it really only a "semantic" difference to insist that the term "collatoral damage" is not an accurate one to describe the deaths of journalists who have died from American fire aimed at them, however innocently? Remember also that the international organizations whose task it is to protect journalists in war zones, as well as Eason Jordan along with other heads of other international news organizations have been working with the American government and military to find ways to make the work of international journalists safer. For them this is not an academic subject.

Ms Liebou's commentators were even less inclined than she to take Eason Jordan's integrity at face value, and if you want a sense of what emotions and what habits of mind and argument fueled what had now become a self-described "blog swarm," you can't do better than to read the comments to a post that featured these words from Eason Jordan himself:

"To be clear, I do not believe the U.S. military is trying to kill journalists in Iraq. I said so during the forum panel discussion. But, nonetheless, the U.S. military has killed several journalists in Iraq in cases of mistaken identity. The reason the word "targeted" came up at all is because I was responding to a comment by Congressman Franks, who said he believed the 63 journalists killed in Iraq were the victims of "collateral damage." Since three of my CNN colleagues and many other journalists have been killed on purpose in Iraq, I disputed the "collateral damage" statement, saying, unfortunately, many journalists -- not all -- killed in Iraq were indeed targeted. When someone aims a gun at someone and pulls the trigger and then learns later the person fired at was actually a journalist, an apology is ppropriate and is accepted, and I believe those apologies to be genuine. But such a killing is a tragic case of mistaken identity, not a case of "collateral damage." That is the distinction I was trying to make even if I did not make it clearly at the time."

And here are a few of the responses to that statement:

Can you believe this guy Jordan? Semantical gymnastics. He should be very sore indeed.

Nobody's buying this. Jordan said what he said and meant it: journalists are being targeted. The implication was that United States soldiers were specifically going after journalists. Now he wants to backtrack and parse "collateral damage" and mistaken identity? Sorry. Too many fact-checkers on this case. The blog swarm has descended...

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Great scoop, Carol. This sounds like more of the same spin we received from CNN - that his remarks were taken out of context, he didn't say what he meant, he didn't mean what he said, etc. (pick your favorite excuse).

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Thanks for putting this up, but it does sound like Jordan's trying to lie his way out of the hole he dug with his own mouth.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

This man has been involved with journalism for years. Does he really expect us to believe that he doesn't know the meaning of the words he is using? Are we to understand that he wasn't aware of the nature of those to whom he was speaking?

If the journalists he is speaking of were "targeted" in the military sense, what were they doing standing opposite American forces during a fire fight? Were they acting like the stringers who just happen to be around for events such as the murder of election officials on Haifa Street?

While I have sympathy for those innocently caught in a cross-fire, I have none for those who give voice to, and act as a propaganda tool for, the enemy. Such people get our people killed. I'm not saying that this is the case here, but there are enough reporters over there that fit the bill, that I have to ask the question.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

So according to Jordan, Pat Tillman's death was NOT collateral damage, rather he was "targeted" by his fellow Rangers. Both reinterpretations of existing terms are absurd. Jordan must have stayed up all night looking for a way out of his bold-faced lies.

Of course Pat Tillman's death truly was not collateral damage, and yes, he was "targeted" by his fellow Rangers who thought he was the enemy. That is the very definition of "friendly fire." Such is one of the more tragic aspects of war, a horror all soldiers fear, whether as targeted or targeter.

Comments like these, which seemed unable to fathom as straighforward an assertion as Jordan's declaration that he doesn't believe American troops were deliberately targeting journalists as a matter of policy and had said so at Devos, branding it immediately a lie, a coverup, coupled with callous expessions of hostility to journalists who get in the way of American troops, were repeated again and again, with some variations, on all the blogs that were happy to consider themselves part of the swarm, as well as at PressThink.

One of the characteristics of the Eason Jordan blogswarm was the apparent attempts on the part of many of its members to do some actual journalism. As, for instance, the previously mentioned questions Hugh Hewitt emailed to Rebecca MacKinnon. The date of her own post answering those questioins was February 7th. The questions themselves seem fairly straightfoward. On one of the key issues, was Eason Jordan responding to something that Barney Franks said about dead journalists being collatoral damage, Ms. MacKimmon doesn't remember it that way, although she reminds Hewitt that she, like apparently everyone else in attendance at Davos, didn't take any written notes. That would leave that issue fairly open, would it not? But the real queestion is this; were her answers of any real interest to Hewitt? Were his questions an honest attempt to find out what happened?

You can supply your own answer by taking at look at Hewitt's postings on the subject to his own blog for February 2nd, five days earlier, here and here.

CNN's Eason Jordan slandered the American military as journalist killers, and MSM doesn't care.

"Are bloggers journalists?" That's the headline on a Christian Science Monitor piece that mentions Powewrline's John Hinderaker and TalkingpointsMemo's Joshua Micah Marshall. (Marshall "leans to the left" and John is "firmly in the conservative camp.")

The paper ought to have asked is Eason Jordan a journalist? I doubt very much that any blogger who speculated that the American military had targeted and murdered a dozen journalists would keep his or her readership or at least their reputation. When Kos slandered the American contractors dead in Fallujah as mercenaries, the blowback was immediate. Jordan slams the U.S. military as killers, and he gets a pass.

Here is the key quote from a first-person account of Jordan's remarks at the World Economic Forum in Davos:

"During one of the discussions about the number of journalists killed in the Iraq War, Eason Jordan asserted that he knew of 12 journalists who had not only been killed by US troops in Iraq, but they had in fact been targeted. He repeated the assertion a few times, which seemed to win favor in parts of the audience (the anti-US crowd) and cause great strain on others."

A few bloggers have noted this report, and Instapundit provided a terse summary of the reaction last night: "HAVING KEPT HIS MOUTH SHUT on things he knew were true, it would behoove Eason Jordan not to blather about things that he doesn't know are true. Really." Powerline also focused on the story, and Mickey Kaus on the Powerline post.

But I searched the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post this morning, and came up with nothing on Jordan's blood slander.

That is remarkable. One of the most senior news execs in the world tells a crowd of dignitaries from around the globe that the U.S. military targeted a dozen journalists for death, and there is no MSM coverage of that?

edit

So where's the accountability within CNN or Time-Warner? Where are the press ethicists at Poynter? What does Howard Kurtz or Jay Rosen have to say about this?

Or is it ok for an American news executive to feed anti-American propaganda machines the most incendiary of fuels for the benefit of a crowd's applause and approval?

I hope Rush devotes some time to this today. I certainly will, as I have heard from members of the military too often about the American media slagging them like this and walking away back to the green room for cupcakes and coffee.

You might want to let CNN know what you think. CNN posts this at its "Contact Us" page:

"Staffed 24 hours, seven days a week in CNN's world headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, CNN.com relies heavily on CNN's global newsgathering team of almost 4,000 professionals. And we want to hear what you think. If you have a comment, suggestion or have spotted a mistake, please select one of the links on this page"

If you post on this subject, send me the link with "Eason Jordan" in the subject line. I will post them here.

We could learn something about the way to coordinate an attack from these folks. But remember this irony; they have many more allies in the MSM they so revile than we do. Who can be surprised that Mickey Kaus would respond to CNN blood in the water; CNN has been identified as the "liberal" cable news network, what else would Kaus need to know to join the attack? Precisely nothing. Glenn Reynolds is published at MSNBC. And then there's Fox News, of course, whose bias slants in the, uh, right direction, so no problem.

Here's more Hewitt, later in the day for that same date, February 2nd, that goes directly to the issue of Eason Jordan's claim that he was responding to Barney Frank's collatoral damage formulation:

Updated at 1:30 PM, Pacific

As the list of blogs focusing attention on Eason Jordan's blood slander on the U.S. military grows, CNN begins a coverup. TKS reprints a CNN e-mail response to a critic:

"Many blogs have taken Mr. Jordan's remarks out of context. Eason Jordan does not believe the U.S. military is trying to kill journalists. Mr. Jordan simply pointed out the facts: While the majority of journalists killed in Iraq have been slain at the hands of insurgents, the Pentagon has also noted that the U.S. military on occasion has killed people who turned out to be journalists. The Pentagon has apologized for those actions.
Mr. Jordan was responding to an assertion by Cong. Frank that all 63 journalist victims had been the result of "collateral damage.""

This statement directly contradicts the account of Rony Abovitz whose post on the Jordan remarks began the controversy.

here's Mr. Abovtz's bio:
Rony Abovitz, M.S., Chief Technology Officer & Vice-President Mr. Abovitz has twelve years medical device development experience in the area of orthopedic, neurological, and cardiovascular surgery. Prior to co-founding Z-KAT, Mr. Abovitz worked on projects such as the development and testing of nitinol AAA stent-graft implants (acquired by Medtronic AVE) and the development and testing of orthopedic implants (joints and trauma). Mr. Abovitz led ZKAT.s development and acquisition of technology portfolio which includes MAKO's more than 120 patents worldwide. He has a B.S. in mechanical engineering and an M.S. in biomedical engineering from the University of Miami. Mr. Abovitz is also a member of the University of Miami Advisory Panel for Biomedical Engineering and has been a guest lecturer on computerassisted surgery.

Does that sound like a guy who would get it that wrong?

CNN should release a transcript and video of the Davos session and oblige Mr. Jordan to answer questions in front of a camera concerning his outrageous accusation.

Do these musings, assertions, digs, insults, whatever else you want to call them, by any stretch of the imagination add up to journalism? On Feb. 2nd, Hugh Hewitt already had all the answers he needed to assert that Eason Jordan was lying about what prompted his own assertions, and CNN was participating in a coverup on his behalf, even though Abovitz's summary doesn't in any substantive way actually contradict Jordan's or CNN's emailed response. It simply doesn't speak to the issue of the relationship of what Barney Franks said to what Jordan said, no matter how impressive Hugh Hewitt finds Abovitz's bio. (I haven't seen anything quite as amusing since John Stossel introduced his interview with Michael Crichton denigrating the whole notion of global warming by stressing that Crichton had shown himself to be way ahead of the crowd in such books as "The Andromeda Stain" and "Jurassic Park." Great minds and all that.)

By Feb 2nd, that rightwing powerhouse, Captain's Quarters had unearthed another pieceof damning evidence against Eason Jordan, and following that blog's framing of the evidence, Hugh Hewitt refers to it as "A second instance of Eason Jordan slandering the American military and doing so abroad." The evidence, which is referred to again and again through-out the various blog posts and comments that constitute the Eason Jordan blog swarm, is an unremarkable Guardian article from November 2004.

Independent journalists operating in Iraq face arrest and even torture at the hands of the US military and the authorities are failing to act on promises to do more to protect them, news organisations have warned.

Eason Jordan, chief news executive at CNN, said there had been only a "limited amount of progress", despite repeated meetings between news organisations and the US authorities.

"Actions speak louder than words. The reality is that at least 10 journalists have been killed by the US military, and according to reports I believe to be true journalists have been arrested and tortured by US forces," Mr Jordan told an audience of news executives at the News Xchange conference in Portugal.

Mr Jordan highlighted the case of al-Arabiya journalist Abdel Kader al-Saadi, who was arrested in Falluja last week by US forces and remains in their custody even though no reason has yet been given for his detention.
"These actions and the fact that no one has been reprimanded would indicate that no one is taking responsibility. We hear good words but not the actions to back them up," he added.

David Schlesinger, global managing editor for Reuters, said there was no indication the US government's own recommendations on journalists' safety had been understood or carried out by American military commanders in Iraq, or that there had been any progress.

Three Reuters cameramen - Taras Protsyuk, Dhia Najem and Mazen Dana - have been killed while working in Iraq.
"We have had three deaths and they were all non-embedded, non-coalition nationals and they were all at the hands of the US military, and the reaction of the US authorities in each case was that they were somehow justified," Mr Schlesinger said.
"What is the US's position on non-embeds? Are non-embedded journalists fair game?" he added.

The rest of the article is mainly an answer from a US government official, who was also at the conference. I take this as damning evidence only of Eason Jordan's on-going concern for the safety of all sorts of jounalists trying to cover what was going on in Iraq, as well as damning evidence of the rightwing's hostility to the very notion of a free press.

This is getting so long, I'm going to break it into two or three parts. Herewith ends the first part.

In the second part, you can look forward to Michelle Malkin caught in the act of doing journalism, Ronnie Abovitz having second thoughts, until he finds himself interviewed by Joe Scarborough, Jay Rosen in an act of real journalism, successfully solicits another first person viewpoint of what happened at Davos by one of the participants on the panel, three erstwhile lefties show up at PressThink to do battle with conventional wisdom, and the possibility of a tape of the session in question is promised and than denied. Stay tuned. (I anticipate posting the rest tonight or tomorrow, depending on how cranky Blogger is feeling)

(I should like to thank Jay Rosen, whose copious links form the foundation of my analysis)

Jeanne at Body & Soul had an excellent post that focuses attention on the specific jourrnalistic deaths in question, which you can and should read here. (read the comments, too)

Looks like torturer Alberto Gonzales has another soulmate in the cabinet! Besides Bush, I mean:

President Bush on Thursday named John Negroponte, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and currently the administration's top representative in Iraq, to be America's first national intelligence director.
(via AP)

Of course, since Daschle's Dems caved when Negroponte was nominated for as Ambasssador to Whack, it's that much harder to resist Negroponte now. Unless he knows something about those sacks of cash the mercenaries loaded up on, of course...

Herein, some recommended readings you may have missed.

Steve Gilliard has a wonderful post about the funeral for the magnificent Ossie Davis that was held at the magnificent Riverside Cathedral in New York. Steve rightly and brilliantly calls it Harlem's State Funeral, and after a long quote from the NYTimes coverage of the event, explains why it was exactly that. A few highlights from the Times:

Mr. Clinton arrived about midway through the service and was seated in the front.

"I asked to sit in the back," he said. "I would proudly ride on the back of Ossie Davis's bus any day."

The crowd applauded wildly and did so again when he said of Mr. Davis, "He would have been a very good president of the United States."

Ms. Angelou compared Mr. Davis's death to a great tree falling and all of nature recoiling. She said that when Mr. Davis died, "the heaviest door in the universe slammed shut, and there are no knobs."

Mr. Alda said Mr. Davis taught him how to eat sweet potato pie. "Ossie was my hero, and he still is," he said. "He spoke of black princes; he was one."

Mr. Reynolds (Burt) said he came from the same part of Georgia as Mr. Davis. "He took a bad part of the South out of me," he said. "My heroes were a lot of John Waynes. I know what a man is because of Ossie."

Go read the whole thing, especially Steve's own comments. Don't miss his pictures and discussion of Chinese New Years here. In fact, if you haven't visited there recently, just go ahead and read all the new stuff.. There is no more original voice than Steve's.

BIG NEWS: Lisa English has resummed blogging at her own invaluable blog, "Ruminate This," and is there a wittier blog name anywhere? Or a better looking blog? She has been a much-missed voice. We trust that all is well with her family. And thanks to Jack K. for keeping the franchise going. Lisa explains that she hopes that he will be continuing to contribute. We do, too. But it is wonderful to have her back. Pay a visit and say hello.

We all know that John Aravosis at Americablog has done yeoman work on unthreading the "Jeff Gannon isn't his name, journalism isn't really his game" story. Could there be a better time to support his blog with a small contribution? Remember, it doesn't need to be anything extravagant if enough of us do it. John has made a huge step forward for our side of the blogisphere, not only getting himself invited onto CNN, but doing an outstanding job. If you haven't been following John's work, take a moment to scroll back to last week and read foward.

Rob of the same blog has a terrific piece up about what the story means for blogtopia (skippy's coinage, let us not forget). And the reverberations are still reverberating. As soon as I get this post up, I'm going over to make a contribution to say "thanks, and by all means keep up the good works."

Don't forget Wampum needs us too; I contributed last night, but if you haven't had a chance, see back here. As Digby remarked, their hosting of the Koufax Awards is the least of what makes Dwight and MB such admirable and important people.

Scott Rosenberg, journalist turned blogger, has a complex and interesting take on the differences between the Eason Jordan and Jeff Gannon stories that has a lot to say about what the left side of the blogisphere is up against. For Rosenberg, the issue isn't which was the bigger and better scalp to have taken. It's the way that a "savvy political establishment" has moved to take advantage of public mistrust of the media to create a Potemkin Village faux media of its own. Go read it.

Avedon Carol "The Sideshow" is one of my favorite blogs, no doubt one of yours, too. There is no one more generous; she seems to read everything, and then provides links in such a way that they provide a kind of commentary through juxtaposition; she often creates an essay just through her placement of a series of links. Every now and then she gives us the pleasure of a longer piece and we're reminded again what a fine writer she herself is, how good at making passionate, moral arguments. She takes on the Eason Jordan debacle, and you should go and read it asap. Jeanne of Body & Soul calls it the last word on the subject; actually, I hope not, because I'm hoping to post an analysis later today of how the right created their own blog swarm on the subject, so check back if that interests you. But don't miss Avedon's take, which you can find here.

Someone who early on figured out that the right was gonig for another media scalp was Jude Nagurney Camwell at "Iddybud;" she'll be making an appearance in my own post, but she has all kinds of good stuff up about Eason and Jordan and lots else, so if you haven't made the trip to her blog, or you missed her posts at The American Street, do yourself a favor and pay her a visit.

Another of my favorite bloggers is Jerome Doolittle, the founding spirit behind "Bad Attitudes." There is always so much there to link to, but I'll pick out a particularly interesting post Jerry has up about rural angst. He also recommends one of my favorite writers, Russell Banks, whose novel "Affliction," deals with the same subject. (Quite a good movie was made from it; I agree with Jerry both are worth your attention, but keep your Zoloft handy) One of the things I love about Banks, he writes about working folks. If you've never read "Continental Drift," put it on your "to read" list.

If you missed last night's "The Daily Show," commence kicking yourself, or try and find it online. Steven Colbert did bloggers vs the media, and neither will ever be the same again.

Well, now that should keep you busy, while I continue my struggles with the dreaded Blogger.

Many more of them, live next door. And the band, begins to play...

Frank Rich (login not required):

When the Bush administration isn't using taxpayers' money to buy its own fake news, it does everything it can to shut out and pillory real reporters who might tell Americans what is happening in what is, at least in theory, their own government. Paul Farhi of The Washington Post discovered that even at an inaugural ball he was assigned "minders" - attractive women who wouldn't give him their full names - to let the revelers know that Big Brother was watching should they be tempted to say anything remotely off message.

The inability of real journalists to penetrate this White House is not all the White House's fault. The errors of real news organizations have played perfectly into the administration's insidious efforts to blur the boundaries between the fake and the real and thereby demolish the whole notion that there could possibly be an objective and accurate free press. Conservatives, who supposedly deplore post-modernism, are now welcoming in a brave new world in which it's a given that there can be no empirical reality in news, only the reality you want to hear (or they want you to hear). The frequent fecklessness of the Beltway gang does little to penetrate this Washington smokescreen.

*

Then again, I suppose if Jesus can sit down to dinner with prostitutes, Bush can field questions from one. So what's the issue here? Of course, Jesus sat down to dinner with tax collectors, too, and that's a whole other thing, but, like the man said, that was a long time ago, and we'll hope it wasn't true.

Interesting story in (again, of all places) MSNBC:

Ed Schultz comes from Bush country and looks like it. At 6 feet 2 and 250 pounds, his idea of the good life is eating wings, fishing for walleye and watching football on TV. He passionately defends his right to own a gun, eat a steak and drive a Suburban. He loves his nation, his wife and his son, who plays golf for Texas Christian. He's the kind of guy the president might grab in a rope line, give a fake jab to the gut and call by his nickname, "Big Eddie," just like a friend.

But Schultz doesn't want to be George W. Bush's buddy. For three hours every day he rails against Bush on his nationally syndicated radio show from Fargo, N.D., calling the administration "government by the rich, for the rich" and Bush's policies an "axis of bankruptcy." The White House is listening. When Bush came to Fargo this month, Schultz's producer was barred from attending the event (the White House blamed local officials). "Is this what the president thinks of us folks in the heartland?" Schultz asked his listeners. "He's afraid!"

Damn straight.

Schultz isn't interested in just preaching to the converted. He wants to do something even more ambitious: save souls behind conservative lines. So far, he's had tremendous success. He's been sitting behind a mike in Fargo for 20 years, but during the past 12 months he's gone national in a big way. Schultz has the fastest growing radio show since Rush Limbaugh's—81 markets and counting. He can be heard inside Republican fortresses like Waco, Texas, and Phoenix, Ariz. His syndicator, Jones Radio Networks, says he'll be on the air in 150 to 200 markets by the end of this year.

Schultz's secret is to borrow liberally from the Limbaugh playbook of exaggeration and simplification. When Democrats fretted that Bush was secretly plotting against Iran, Schultz pounded away at the White House, breathlessly telling listeners, "This is the kind of stuff that happened back in the 1930s in Germany."

Damn straight. And it's very very interesting that this message is playing well in the heartland. Seems like the Beltway Dems, as so often, are the last to know.

Not in our hearts, of course, but as Scott "Sucka MC" McClellan's lifeline? Here's a letter from one applicant:

Dear Mr. McClellan:

I am writing you in regard to the now-vacant position of White House press corps plant.

To give you an idea of my own abilities, I have put together a few sample press conference questions for your consideration:

Mr. President, at this point in your tenure you have not made a single wrong decision. Do you find it difficult to work with this kind of incredible record, or is perfection something you get used to over time?

Mr. President, now that Iraq has held free elections, your policy has been proven to be correct and democracy is on the march in the Middle East, how do you respond to those who are calling you the greatest American since FDR?

I think this applicant has a bright future in the malAdministration....

Readers, can you help him out with more questions for Scotty?

Here.

What they mean is that a drought ended—Arizona got some rain.

See, for these loons, worse is better: The worse off the world gets, the more likely the End Times are here!

Which explains a lot about the malAdministration, if you think about it...

Lisa Myers over at MSNBC (yeah, I know), tells of more rumblings of discontent:

There are new allegations that heavily armed private security contractors in Iraq are brutalizing Iraqi civilians. In an exclusive interview, four former security contractors told NBC News that they watched as innocent Iraqi civilians were fired upon, and one crushed by a truck. The contractors worked for an American company paid by U.S. taxpayers. The Army is looking into the allegations.

The four men are all retired military veterans: Capt. Bill Craun, Army Rangers; Sgt. Jim Errante, military police; Cpl. Ernest Colling, U.S. Army; and Will Hough, U.S. Marines. All went to Iraq months ago as private security contractors.

"I went there for the money," says Hough.

"I'm a patriot," says Craun.

"You can't turn off being a soldier," says Colling.

They worked for an American company named Custer Battles, hired by the Pentagon to conduct dangerous missions guarding supply convoys. They were so upset by what they saw, three quit after only one or two missions.

"What we saw, I know the American population wouldn't stand for," says Craun.

Or would they? The other day I saw a pickup truck with a handpainted sign on the back bumper, underneath all of the God Bless America and United We Stand and W stickers that said “Annihilation, not Negotiation.” Thankfully, the truck was parked and I didn’t meet the owner and decorator.

Somehow, though, I don’t think most Americans would accept what these mercenaries are doing with their money. And the boulder keeps getting heavier.

Mercs who can’t even stomach what they see our tax dollars doing. And part of the billions that aWol is asking for will pay for more. Is the public willfully blind? What’s next? Peace and justice seem so very far away...

And why is that tune going through my head...

Anyhow, help name Sean Hannity's new puppy here!

My suggestion would be "Rick," but that might not be fair to the puppy...

Inerrant Boy must be getting desperate. He's actually opening the door to progressive taxation:

President Bush is not ruling out raising taxes on people who earn more than $90,000 as a way to help fix Social Security's finances.
(via AP)

Splendid. And deep down in the story we read:

If Congress did nothing but lift the cap entirely and therefore subjected all wages to the tax, Social Security would be financially balanced for 75 years, though the system would again face trouble after that, according to one economic analysis.

So, that's that, eh?

However, it's important that the Dems give Bush nothing on this issue. Since the only "responsible" course is to get these guys out of power as soon as possible.

But wait a minute. Since THERE IS NO SOCIAL SECURITY PROBLEM TO "FIX", why not put progressive taxation back in place for other purposes? As Dean advocated during the primaries, we could fix the deficit and move toward universal health insurance. What's not to like?

The "Jeff Gannon" fiasco must be getting to them. So they've turned to The Department of Changing The Subject for guidance:

Speaking with one voice....

Surprise!

... President Bush's top intelligence and military officials said Wednesday that terrorists are regrouping for possible new strikes against the United States.

Grim at times, the appraisals on threats to the United States indicated the second Bush term would remain fraught with warnings but often short on specifics shared with the public.

During the presidential campaign last year, the Bush-Cheney team often warned vaguely of terror threats.

But "it isn't over. It's going to take a while," Rumsfeld said. "It is a very serious business we're in."
(via AP)

Right. Hauling of bricks of greenbacks in paper sacks is certainly serious. I mean, it would be serious to me?

Incidentally, this is as close as I've seen routine reporting calling bullshit on the extremely non-political terror alerts. More like this, please.

UPDATE Our friend Howie the Whore has this to say:

White House spokesman Scott McClellan told the trade publication Editor & Publisher that he didn't know Gannon was using a pseudonym until recent weeks and that he was cleared into the White House on a daily basis using his real name. "People use aliases all the time in life, from journalists to actors," McClellan said. He said he has discussed the Gannon matter only "briefly" with [Bush]
(via WaPo)

Well, I'm sure a brief discussion was all that was needed...

Summing things up:

	"Jeff Gannon"	Monica
White House pass	Yes	Yes
Republican "Paid Policy Advocate"	Yes	No
Contact with President	Public	Private
Used real name	No	Yes
Softball questions	Yes	Probably
Funded by Texas Republicans	Yes	No
Access to classified documents	Yes	No
$27,000 owed in back taxes	Yes	No
Professional escort	Yes	No
Wore thong	Not yet known	Yes
Wall-to-wall media coverage	No	Yes
Length of time family's privacy invaded	One day	Two years
It's not the sex, it's the lying	Not yet known	Oh, please
President's Party	Republican	Democratic

Just to be helpful, I've highlighted the part that the wingers, and the LRWM, just don't seem to want to talk about.

I wonder why? I mean, it couldn't be that Gannon has something on someone in the White House, would it? Something about one of his clients from his life as an escort?

Something that reflects very badly on the party that's upholding the sanctity of (not gay) marriage?

I'd say it's Gannon winning easily, but what do I know?

Winger Projection Syndrome. The tendency, shared by all wingers, to project their own thoughts, motivations, desires, and feelings, which they cannot admit to themselves, onto others. In psychology, a defense mechanism. Anticipated in the Christian Gospel: "And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?" (Matthew 7:3 KJV)Originated here here.

Usage example: "Sean Hannity titled his book Deliver Us From Evil. That's a fine example of WPS in action."

NOTE Alert readers, how's this one?

Noun. A winger's interpretation of facts or events. Distinguished from spin by intensity, focus, and uncannily simultaneous appearance in multiple media outlets. Introduced here.

Usage examples: "Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer on torque radio." "Bill O'Reilly is a torque-ing head."

NOTE Alert readers: How's this?

Wow! A post!

A new trick! In the dashboard, click the name of the blog to log into very fast, very often. That seems to get their attention.

OK, off to look for the names of some Google executives. Got any, alert readers?

Right after I push the [cough] "Publish Post" button. And wait, and wait, and wait...

Further background and details on Custer Battles (see earlier HERE or scroll down a couple of posts)

Chris Floyd, writing for the The Moscow Times, has more on Scott and Mikes "plucky" Iraqi adventures and, as they say, compelling life stories:

Global Eye | Dream Team
By Chris Floyd
Published: October 15, 2004

It's another story of the American Dream come true, the kind you see every day in George Bush's blessed realm. All the usual inspiring elements are there: a couple of plucky kids starting a business with nothing but hustle and a whole lotta heart; a few lucky breaks crowned with big-time success; a duffel bag stuffed with millions in cash from a war-zone slush fund; a father and son held hostage at gunpoint to block a corruption probe, then dumped in hostile territory with no papers, no money, no protection.

Yes, it's the story of Custer Battles LLC., a mercenary firm run by two former covert operators and Bushist Party bagmen who sharked up more than $40 million in the usual no-bid conquistador contracts from the rape of Iraq – and may have skimmed an extra $50 million in fraudulent cream, the Los Angeles Times reports.

[...]

Could it be our plucky lads were actually playing with loaded dice? That merit and moxie aren't all you need to make it big in Bushland and its various vassal states? No doubt everything will be made clear when Mike finally finishes the book he's been touting on the company website – a title that captures the very pith and marrow of the whole Bushist enterprise: Blood in the Streets: Seizing Opportunity in Crises.

Yeah. Right. Leave no bloody opportunity unseized.

Article also mirrored via Information Clearinghouse
See: Bushist Party bagmen...

Chris Floyd is a contributor to The Nation and Counterpunch, among others, and the author of: Empire Burlesque: The Secret History of the Bush Regime See: www.globaleyefloyd.com or click here.

More on Custer Battles can be found here: See - "Iraq Contractor Claims Immunity From Fraud Laws - Seized Oil Assets Paid For Offshore Overbilling" - by David Phinney, Special to CorpWatch, December 23rd, 2004 ~ CorpWatch.org

*

So I fire off a scorched earth email to Blogger [cough] support, wherein I list the simple steps I take to actually post to blogger:

1. Clear the cookies
2. Flush the cache
3. Repair the connection (under Windoze)

and if need be:

4. Reboot

Then, if I'm lucky, I get past the dashboard and actually post. Then repeat the cycle.

Snarl. Enough is enough. I'm off to draw up the plans for renovating The Mighty Corrente Building.

Oh, and the problem cleared up right after I posted at Atrios's morning thread wondering if anyone else was having the problem. But I'm sure that's just coincidence.

Custer Battles of McLean Virginia: Founders Scott Custer (former Army Ranger, defense consultant) and Michael Battles (former CIA and Republican congressional candidate, Rhode Island, 2002).

U.S. contractors in Iraq allege abuses - Four men say they witnessed shooting of unarmed civilians: MSNBC

There are new allegations that heavily armed private security contractors in Iraq are brutalizing Iraqi civilians. In an exclusive interview, four former security contractors told NBC News that they watched as innocent Iraqi civilians were fired upon, and one crushed by a truck. The contractors worked for an American company paid by U.S. taxpayers.

[...]

They worked for an American company named Custer Battles, hired by the Pentagon to conduct dangerous missions guarding supply convoys. They were so upset by what they saw, three quit after only one or two missions.

"What we saw, I know the American population wouldn't stand for," says Craun.

They claim heavily armed security operators on Custer Battles' missions — among them poorly trained young Kurds, who have historical resentments against other Iraqis — terrorized civilians, shooting indiscriminately as they ran for cover, smashing into and shooting up cars.

On a mission on Nov. 8, escorting ammunition and equipment for the Iraqi army, they claim a Kurd guarding the convoy allegedly shot into a passenger car to clear a traffic jam.

"[He] sighted down his AK-47 and started firing," says Colling. "It went through the window. As far as I could see, it hit a passenger. And they didn't even know we were there."

Later, the convoy came upon two teenagers by the road. One allegedly was gunned down.

"The rear gunner in my vehicle shot him," says Colling. "Unarmed, walking kids."

[...]

Custer Battles claims all these men are "disgruntled" former employees, who believe the company still owes them money. It says Hough was fired and that Craun once confided to a colleague that he knew the company didn't really kill any children.

So why are these men going public with these allegations now? They say because they care about American soldiers and about winning the war.

"If we continue to let this happen, those people will hate us even more than they already do," says Craun.

And they say that only makes Iraq more dangerous for American soldiers.

And, speaking of fake journalism, Battles is also a Fox News commentator. See Contractor accused of fraud in Iraq (LA Times article via Seattle Times)

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*

Bernard Weiner reveals the contents of national planning documents unearthed during an archeological excavation in Washington DC in 2063. As I sit here now, on a warm sandy white beach, reading the Party Directive Daily under the rustling palms, on the shores of Lake Huron, with my animatronic CableNews anchor fuck-doll covenant wife (with mandatory reproductive capabilities fully enabled as required by clerical law) and my private GOP trained secuity personel guarding our privleged perimeter, I think back to those good old early days of blogging and political warfare and the throngs of orphans, homosexuals, small family farmers, Howard Dean Green Mountain Militias, public school teachers, former middle class Americans, treehuggers, post mortem hippies, Duncan Black Panthers, snookered senior citizens, "liberals" (et al) and so forth, and so forth, and so forth... who would ultimately perish in the blackened oily lake-sea before me in an attempt to escape across the waters to socialist tyranny in what used to be called Canada. Or whatever it was called.

Years before Canada, or whatever it was called, was assimilated into the ConFederated National Security State Complex of Private Corporate Military Industrail Nations and Affiliated ReConstructed Christian Religious Institutions (CFNSSCPCMINARCRI). Too bad about Canada, or whatever it was called. Heh. Indeed. Sigh. Anyway, Bernard Weiner has posted some interesting "historical" trivia related to that period which you might be interested in reading. I posted an excerpt below. Me, I'm glad I finally grew up and started behaving like an adult, or whatever you want to call it. Anyway, I don't really want to think back on those days. Yech. But you might want to.

Honey, smoochie, hey!, stupid! Want to sneak back to the fully leveraged ownership bungalow and do that thing with the loofah - Honey? heh heh heh... [pre-programmed robotic affirmation] --- Well, anyway, Honey's not to dangerously resouceful, but she knows a good time when her intuitive capablities are fully enabled as restricted by clerical law. Heh, Indeed. Sigh. Whatever.

Oh yeah...from Bernard Weiner at Crisis Papers:

RETAKING THE PLEDGE
We therefore need to re-pledge our fealty, and a large portion of our financial assets and energies, to the following goals:

1. Consolidating our control of the mass media.

2. Increasing our control of the Congress.

3. Making more inroads into controlling the Courts.

4. Keeping control of the White House.

5. Rolling back the socialist programs from the FDR and LBJ days.

6. Tightening up our education reforms.

7. Strengthening our electoral base.

8. Increasing our redistribution of wealth upwards.

9. Further weakening of, and ultimately destroying, the Democrat party.

You can read the rest of these "historical" documents via Crisis Papers. If you have time: See Secret Rightwing Agenda Unearthed

Honey! Honey! Damnit. The Bozells will be here for FOXTV-dinner any minute. Please change your batteries, slip into something conservative, and stop fussing with your internal i-Pod!

*

Alert reader Julia informs us, via email:

I just talked to MB - they didn't get enough to cover server costs and
their ISP pulled the plug.

Sure enough, they're down.

I don't even have their address, to direct some turkee their way. Readers?

And now we hear that the “supplemental” war budget request includes items Bushco didn’t want to put in the overall defense budget. Why? Duh. So it would seem that military spending is less than it really is. According to the Chicago Tribune,

But the White House attached its extra spending request to a measure that is labeled "Funding for the War on Terror." Among the extras is $5.3 billion to pay for a restructuring of the Army and, to a lesser degree, the Marine Corps. The administration chose to not include those items in the $419.3 billion defense budget for 2006 that Bush submitted to Congress last week.

That omission has raised bipartisan concerns among members of Congress, who criticized the president for using the supplemental request to further bolster an already escalating defense budget, and to fund programs that are unrelated to military operations.

You’ll be glad to hear that Kerry backs this spending. Why would he? Well, he says “we’re in a different situation” than the last time he voted against war spending. No “bipartisan concerns” from JFK, nope. And just when I thought he was spining up.

We gotta build this party from the ground up, folks… or I am I being unreasonable, here?

Impact Press’ Chris Hartman did a very good job on Alpo Accounts back in ‘02. It’s dated, but this taste will show you why it’s still good:

…To satisfy their shareholders, companies must make bigger and bigger profits each year. One way companies do that is to take customers away from their competitors. For companies in the retirement account business, their biggest competitor by far is Social Security. If Social Security were dismantled, mutual fund firms could collect management fees on 300 million individual retirement accounts, a massive boost to market share and a staggering profit potential. So it makes sense that the Fidelitys, Prudentials, and Morgan Stanleys of the world would be working overtime to take customers away from Social Security.

But there's a problem. Social Security is not optional. Potential customers couldn't take their Social Security taxes and give them to Wall Street firms, even if they wanted to. Before the bankers and brokers can convince Social Security's customers to make a consumer choice -- to pick their mutual fund -- they have to get them to make a political choice. They have to get those customers, millions of Americans, to agree to the abolition of Social Security.

But that will require some persuasion. So the Wall Street firms are relying on an advertising concept called the Unique Selling Proposition, that special something that makes a given product unique or better than all the alternatives: Gillette Mach III razors provide the closest shave; Michelin tires provide the safest ride for cars carrying small infants; the best part of waking up is Folger's in your cup….

The whole thing’s at: IMPACT Press: Article: "Four Lies About Social Security" -- Feb.-Mar. '02

This is of course, the whole soft-sell approach now being used. Oh, heavens no. We aren’t going to abolish Social Security. My goodness, no. We’re going to SAVE it. Sillies.

We knew this was coming. So let’s not act surprised, eh? Why didn’t it come in ’03? Well, duh. Because of ’04. Hope you 51% is mighty satisfied.

The economists are at it again:

The U.S. economy grew at a brisk 4.4% clip last year, but it was not until last month that the number of jobs recovered to the levels of early 2001. The Labor Department pegs the unemployment rate at 5.2%, the lowest in four years, but the share of people who have stopped hunting for work is the largest it has been since 1988. Today's job growth is more than twice as slow as it was after the 1990-91 recession, and slower than during any recovery since World War II, analysts say.

The discrepancy is fueling a growing debate about whether such low employment growth is a harbinger of a world in which businesses can rake in increasing profits without much of it trickling down to workers.
(via LA Times)

So, does it really matter to me if "the economy" is doing well, when I can't find a job? "The economy" doesn't pay my rent!

The LA Times puts this astonishing figure in context:

The warnings provided by intelligence agencies to the FAA were far clearer and more specific than suggested by Condoleezza Rice's testimony before the 9/11 commission when she reluctantly conceded the existence of a presidential briefing that warned of impending Al Qaeda attacks. Rice had dismissed those warnings as "historical," but according to the newly released section of the 9/11 report, an astonishing 52 of the 105 daily intelligence briefings received by the FAA — and available to Rice — before the Sept. 11 attacks made specific reference to Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.
(via LA Times)

And Clarke couldn't even get a meeting with Condi for a solid year.

You know, people generally get promoted because they do what the boss wants.

And Condi just got promoted.

I'm starting to come round to the conclusion—tinfoil hat territory though it may be—that Bush knew something like 9/11 was bound to happen, and let it happen. It's the old rule: Never give Bush the benefit of the doubt, because the reality is always much worse than you could possibly imagine.

After all, cui bono?

Uh...Why do wealthy Beltway corporate media shills tend to under perform in journalistic settings even when those Beltway corporate media shills come from affluent elitist Beltway cocktail party settings?

Case study: Jeff Greenfield, your daily wanker specimen -- via Atrios

Somewhere there must be a study that examines the question of why pasty faced shrivel-dicked late middle aged cable television "news" wankers with bad toupees and stuffed with shrimp cocktails are most likely to succede as media gasbags. One would think.

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Boo-hoo. Poor put-upon Duane just can't get no respect:

Donor Was Promised Ambassadorship

By SHARON THEIMER, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - A big Republican donor goes to his governor and senator, saying he was told by President Bush's chief fund-raiser he'd be getting a plum ambassadorial appointment but it wasn't delivered. The senator takes his case right to the top of the White House.

Nothing happens for two years.

The donor then helps stage a fund-raiser for Bush. A week later, the donor lands an appointment as the chairman of the federal board overseeing billions of dollars of student loans.

The aggressive job campaign of businessman Duane Acklie — detailed in the Nebraska gubernatorial files of new Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns — provides a rare window into donors, their access and their rewards.

And there's a twist.

Acklie named names — including chief fund-raiser Jack Oliver — and committed to writing one of the unwritten rules of politics: Presidents for years have rewarded big donors with plum ambassadorships.

"My only interest, if I am going to serve, would be in serving as an ambassador or in a position involving trade," Acklie wrote in a May 2001 "Dear Mike" letter to then-Gov. Johanns. The letter was contained in the official gubernatorial correspondence obtained by The Associated Press under Nebraska's open records law.

"Jack Oliver told me several weeks ago that he was informed that I would not receive one of the eight major ambassadorships but would be receiving an ambassadorship," Acklie wrote.

The owner of Crete Carrier Corp., a major trucking company, even wondered aloud why he hadn't yet landed an ambassadorship when other Republicans who helped elect Bush in 2000 had already gotten theirs.

"Most of the appointments have been made. That is perfectly OK, and if others have done more work for the party, are better qualified or have helped the Bush team more, I certainly understand," Acklie wrote. "I don't understand why I haven't heard a single thing after Jack Oliver's comment to me."

Acklie and Oliver both declined to be interviewed for this story.

Johanns' office said the new agriculture secretary may have tried to help Acklie with the White House but couldn't recall for sure. Johanns considers Acklie a "fine person" and would have no problem endorsing him, Agriculture Department spokeswoman Alisa Harrison said.

Oh my, bootlicking Partei patronage just ain't the goosestep cakewalk it's dolled up to be. What will we tell the children at the Heritage Foundation!

*

Nooooo, not really.

Virginia Woman Sentenced to Two Days in Jail in Dog-on-Dog Cannibalism Case - Associated Press

Although I'm sure Rick Santorum and Dinesh D'Souza and Joe Scarborough will figure out some way to conflate Howard Dean's DNC chairmanship with this tasty item.

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A little commentary from "Joe in DC" which bears repeating. Via Americablog

A couple more thoughts on Gannon/Guckert

There has been some brilliant writing today on Americablog. Kudos to John for his excellent work. The other bloggers have also laid out key issues. I just wanted to say the things that are on my mind:

First, from talking to friends and family, I get the sense that there is some hesitancy about what appeared here today. Granted, some of the web sites and pictures people are looking at is pretty shocking. But, rest assured, to comment on what Gannon/Gucker has done isn't homophobic. This isn't about the gay issues. So, when you get over the initial shock, focus on the real issues.

Second, this shows the absolute disdain the right wingers have for the allegedly mainstream media. Gannon/Guckert/Talon/GOP USA did this right in front of the White House press corps. Gannon used the media last week to create a sob story...those means bloggers are picking on me. He had no compunction about appearing with Wolf Blitzer and denying anything sordid. He thought there were no ramifications. And Howie Kurtz...could he have had any more misplaced sanctimony?

This guy played the media -- including Wolf and Howie -- for fools. And they let him.

Yup. And that goes for those easily hoodwinked clowns at CNN's Daybreak too.

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Paul Krugman (login not required):

February 15, 2005/NYTimes

The Republicans know the America they want, and they are not afraid to use any means to get there," Howard Dean said in accepting the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee. "But there is something that this administration and the Republican Party are very afraid of. It is that we may actually begin fighting for what we believe."

Those words tell us what the selection of Mr. Dean means. It doesn't represent a turn to the left: Mr. Dean is squarely in the center of his party on issues like health care and national defense. Instead, Mr. Dean's political rejuvenation reflects the new ascendancy within the party of fighting moderates, the Democrats who believe that they must defend their principles aggressively against the right-wing radicals who have taken over Congress and the White House.

And while I'm at it; here's a suggestion for the cloistered prophets at the New York Times: drive Bobolink Brooks over to New Jersey, tie Judith Miller around his neck, and fling em both off a jetty into Sandy Hook Bay. Ok? Good idea? I don't know you, you don't know me, we didn't hear anything about it around here. Just sayin'.

Contribute to Howard Dean and the DNC:
Visit ActBlue - Contributions to ActBlue as of this posting: 2287 donors, $107,758.10

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Poll closed just after midnight Feb 15, 2005.

[Question] Which classic childrens book had the most impact on you as a youngster:
430 total votes cast and counted.

9: Cinderellaism 1% - 5 votes
I know, I'm not sure what Cinderellaism is either. But at least 5 people have some idea. Enjoy the magic pumpkin ride to the dance.

8: Good Night Reverend Moon 3% - 15 votes
Hmmmm.

7: Mr Toads Wild Three County Ride 4% - 18 votes
Not as many of you rode the school bus as I would have guessed.

6: Little House On The Survellience Video 7% - 30 votes
I'd like to thank my friends from redacted for voting.

5: Oh No - Pioneers! (Native American Folklore) 9% - 37 votes
I'd like to thank real Americans everywhere for voting.

4: Charlie And The Restructuring Of The Chocolate Factory 9% - 38 votes
This one surprised me a little. I thought it might do a little better. I guess most of you escaped childhood prior to the wrath of Al Chainsaw Dunlap.

3: The Nancy Drew Book Of Sealed Indictments 10% - 43 votes
Please leave my friends in the survellience video alone.

2: James And The Giant Penis 12% - 52 votes
I'd like to thank James Jeff-Gannon "the White House Porn Cannon" Guckert for visiting Corrente 52 times over the last 3 weeks.

And the winner is ~ Sex and Drugs!
Splitting 192 total votes:

#1- TIE: The Adventures Of Pippi’s Long Sheer Smooth Silky Stockings - 22% - 96 votes

#1- TIE: Meth Lab At Pooh Corner - 22% - 96 votes

What are you people? Bikers? Maybe... lezzbean bikers?

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How ironic is it that the NYT*, which prints an unending stream of bullshit which they misrepresent as "news," is still edited by such a prissy pack of pantywaists that they will not allow the word "bullshit" to be printed in their pristine pages?

This fact forced the reviewer/interviewer, Peter Edidin, to some rather convoluted, not to mention flat out silly, usages to write this piece. Read it anyway, because the distinction made here between "liars" and "bullshitters" is invaluable for our current battle:

Harry G. Frankfurt, 76, is a moral philosopher of international reputation and a professor emeritus at Princeton. He is also the author of a book recently published by the Princeton University Press that is the first in the publishing house's distinguished history to carry a title most newspapers, including this one, would find unfit to print. The work is called "On Bull - - - - ."

The opening paragraph of the 67-page essay is a model of reason and composition, repeatedly disrupted by that single obscenity:

Blah blah blah. See what I mean about convoluted writing? Anyway, here's the money quote:

What is [bull], after all?... Those who produce it certainly aren't honest, but neither are they liars, given that the liar and the honest man are linked in their common, if not identical, regard for the truth.

"It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth," Mr. Frankfurt writes. "A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it."

The bull artist, on the other hand, cares nothing for truth or falsehood. The only thing that matters to him is "getting away with what he says," Mr. Frankfurt writes.

Sound like anybody we know?

An advertiser or a politician or talk show host given to [bull] "does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it," he writes. "He pays no attention to it at all."

And this makes him, Mr. Frankfurt says, potentially more harmful than any liar, because any culture and he means this culture rife with [bull] is one in danger of rejecting "the possibility of knowing how things truly are." It follows that any form of political argument or intellectual analysis or commercial appeal is only as legitimate, and true, as it is persuasive. There is no other court of appeal.

The reader is left to imagine a culture in which institutions, leaders, events, ethics feel improvised and lacking in substance.

Turns out the essay on which this book is based was written in 1986. I'm sure glad it's getting more attention now, but we could have used it these last few years to explain to people why, how, and with what they were Being Had.

*Sorry the link is to the regular site, I keep meaning to ask the farmer to tell me how he does those RSS thingies but keep forgetting. I blame February.

The amazing thing... Well, one of the amazing things about L'Affaire Gannon is that for a long time we called people like O'Reilly or Cokie Roberts media whores. Snarky, but metaphorical.

Then, with Armstrong Williams, we discovered that the media whores really were whores—though only in the media.

And now, with Jeff Gannon, we discover that not only are the media whores media whores, but they're whores.

With White House access.

Of course, the unfortunate thing about Jeff Gannon's chosen profession is that it undermines the sanctity of gay marriage.

That's how I felt about the British comedy, "Love, Actually." Cheap cuteness, facile sentiment, false sensibility, a tepid, tittering comedy that's in love with its own heart of steel and wants to make your flesh quiver with delight at your and its good intentions, and have I mentioned yet the colossal waste of major talents like Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman, Liam Neesam, Laura Linney, Colin Firth.

If you're asking yourself, why on earth is she going on about a year old movie, not only do I understand, I'm not sure I can make clear to anyone else the connection that exists in my own mind between my feelings about the film and my feelings about the on-going discussion on the left of values, morality, religion, passion, narrative, framing, re-centering, defining core beliefs, most of which can be subsummed under the general heading of "what's wrong with liberals, the Democratic Party, and "the left" and why is it continuing to lose so much ground to the right?" (For an entirely worthy example of the genre, see Xan's recent post on Dionne on Edwards HERE)

No, I don't loathe the discussion. Although it feels like it has been going on for decades, alas, it's still a necessary discussion, and I've been meaning to enter the fray. I do loathe some of what's getting said, which I often find confused, confusing, facile, smug, wasteful, bristling with false sentiments, preening with self-righteous moralism, or, often on the other ideological side, with attacks on ideological purity maintained at the expense of winning elections. Let me state my own prejudice immediately. Winning elections, always a good thing to be doing.

At this point, let me make clear that I loathe the right and what it has come to be and stand for to a degree far above any such emotion aimed at fellow progressives. But even aimed at the right, loathe is a heavy word, and as dangerous an emotion as is hatred, so easy is it to become what you loathe or hate, not that the copious employment of both emotions has seemed to put much of a dent in the right's ability to dominate this country's politics. Perhaps that's because the right is less self-critical than the left, and less likely, IRONY OF IRONIES, to engage in soul-searching. I supppose the current rightwing might counter, why should we; our telling political success is sufficient proof of the rightness of our dominion. To which I say, not so fast.

Most modern Americn conservatives, and certainly all neo-cons would have as much difficulty understanding what E.M. Forster meant when he wrote, "the inner life pays," as Mr. Wilson did in "Howard's End." I was a teenager when I first read that novel and those words. I took them to heart. I'll admit I've had occasion, since then, to feel that Forster might have added, "not all that well," but I still believe them and what they imply, not only that the inner life, conscience, self-awareness, compassion, empathy are admirable traits, that they are traits as necessary and as practical to living a human life as is food to maintain the body or a decent living is to maintain a family, and that an inner life must connect with an outer world for either to be meaningful.

Forster was the very essence of the mild-mannered liberal, but for all the apparent delicacy and ubanity of his belief in the primacy of personal relationships, of tolerance, in an "aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate, and the plucky," there is a hard, unyielding tough-mindedness in those last two novels, "Howard's End," and "A Passage To India," in his two but not three cheers for democracy, (because it admits diversity and allows criticism), his refusal of both despair and optimism, his belief that while "the human experiement on earth cannot be dismissed as a failure, it may well be hailed as tragedy," that present-day liberals, progressives, Democrats and leftists could learn from, as they scrape back to find the shape of their core beliefs.

What brought all this on was reading yet another helpful hint for Democrats in the virtual pages of The New Republic, by one Kenneth Baer, who is billed thusly, "former Senior Speechwriter to Vice President Al Gore and author of Reinventing Democrats: The Politics of Liberalism from Reagan to Clinton, runs Baer Communications, a Democratic consulting firm." His title suggests his premise: The Case Against Democratic Unity, United We Fall, argues that all the calls for Democratic unity, now that Dean has been annointed Chairman of the DNC, are wrong-headed; what Democrats need is division, debate, not a papering over of ideological differences. No doubt I'm being unfair to Mr. Baer's arguments, but you know what? I don't give a damn if I am. Although not explictly anti-Dean, implicitely, and from my point of view, inexplicably, it is. But it was a mere throwaway comment that got me seething.

To be fair, there has been some back-and-forth since the election about the party's stances on social issues, from its discomfort with religion to its positions on abortion and gay rights. Jump-started by a dubious reading of exit-poll results that found "moral values" to be voters' top concern, this discussion, though important, ignores the most pressing and glaring deficiency in the Democratic Party today: its lack of a coherent stance on what America's role in the world should be.

I'll admit I may have already been seething before I read that bit, having just listened to Cookie Roberts explain on NPR why Dr. Dean is such a bad idea for the Democratic Party, especially so because so many prominent Democrats are trying to temper the party's position on abortion, which Cookie pronounced as extreme. Oh God, isn't it time for Cookie to retire, or can't we get NPR to offer someone to rebut her predictable slams against Democrats?

See, I talk to God, too. And I'm not the least bit uncomfortable with religion, even though I do not go to synagogue, do not keep kosher, and do not consider myself religiously observant. I have felt completely at home sitting in a Quaker meeting, through a Protestant service, a Catholic one, and one more than a few occasions, Pentecostal services, visting a Mosque, travelling in India with a group of Muslims from Bangladesh who prayed five times a day, and attending a Hindu puja, to mention but a few of my experiences of religion. John Kerry has been a believing, observant Catholic his whole life.I doubt that he's uncomfortable with religion, either. The civil rights movement was suffused with religion, and no one was uncomfortable about it. That, of course, is often cited to accuse the left of hypocrisy, that we welcome religion when it's convenient, reject it when the other side invokes it. Note there is nothing inevitable about that conclusion; why isn't our readiness to accept religious dialogue in the service of ideas in which we believe an indication that we're not uncomfortable with religion, only with religion that seeks a special place for its ideas because they happen to be held by a majority, as in "this is a Christian country?"

I'll tell you why it's never presented in that light. Because branding as anti-religious anyone who believes that the establishment clause in the first amendment means that government should be relatively free of specific religious practice has become a cudgel in the hands of the right wing in this country with which to beat liberal ideas over the head.

Could we get something else straight, please? No one on the left is saying that religion must be banished from the public square. Nor, if you haven't noticed, is it absent from that public square. Is Jerry Fallwell's church not part of the public square? Is Liberty Uniersity not part of the public square? Are the creches many churches display, or individual home owners, for that matter, at Christmas, not part of the public square?

What the rightwing does constantly is to conflate that tiny part of the public square where is located government with the whole of the public square. Judge Moore was free to plaster his car, his home, even himself, with any version of the ten commandments that pleased him. All of those things, his car, his home, he himself, are part of the public square. The only part of the public square that he did not have the right to decide needed a large statute with his favorite version of those ten commandments chiseled into it was a public courthouse where Americans of all religions, or the lack thereof, have a right to expect that they will be treated as equal before the law.

For heaven's sake, would it be all right with Joe Scarborough if a Muslim-American judge decided it would be a good idea to order up a giant invocation of some aspect of the Koran and have it placed in the central rotunda of a state courthouse? Because unless he's willing to sign off on that one, he can't defend Judge Moore. The right loves to remind us that the establishment clause guarantees the free practice of religion. Yes, it does, but it does so for all religions. If it was okay for Judge Moore to decide the courthouse needed the ten commandments displayed centrally, then it would be okay for a practicing Hindu who becomes an American judge to insist that his court join him in a hymn to Krishna. I am uncomfortable with all three of these examples of "the practice thereof." How is it possible for an ex-congressman to be comfortable with only one of these, the one that honors his religion.

Nor does any of this mean that the ten commandments are not part of the public square. They are. They appear on the building that houses the Supreme Court, along with, please note, other examples of law givers. No one I know on the left was uncomfortable when Bill Moyers devoted a full hour and a half to examining the power of the hymn, "Amazing Grace." No one I know was uncomfortable when he produced a series that consisted of discussions by intellectuals and writers from various religious traditions of the Book of Genesis. Ken Burns documentary about The Shakers is among my favorites.

The assumption in so much of this discussion is that if you don't follow a specific religious practice, you are not a believer. Well, I believe in all kinds of things that aren't material. I believe in the promise of America, I believe in the Constitution, I believe in the Bill of Rights, I believe in the Golden Rule, I believe in the human spirit, I believe that evolution is both a theory and a fact, I believe that suffering can be redemptive, but don't believe that that belief is any reason to inflict suffering on anyone. Oh hell, who cares what I believe. Fair enough. Just don't try and tell me what I believe, or how I'm supposed to feel about religion because I'm a Democrat, or a liberal, or Jewish, or believe in the separation of church and state. Why are there so few media voices asking Joe Scarborough, or Pat Buchanan, of Chris Matthews why the hell they don't seem to believe in separation of church and state?

And what, in heaven's name, is wrong with a certain amount of skepticism about belief itself. Are we really sure we want to repeal the entire Enlightment, from whence was born our founding fathers and our constitution? Imagine the fuss if anyone prominent today were to echo what E.M. Forester was unafraid to say when asked by the BBC, along with a lot of other prominent figures, to sketch out their thoughts on a war-time credo for the British people. Under the title, What I Believe, here, from what I am able to remember (can't find my copy of the book) here is at least some of what he said:

I do not believe in Belief. But this is an age of faith, and there are so many militant creeds around that in self-defense one has to formulate a creed of one's own. Tolerance, good temper and sympathy are no longer enough in a world which is rent by by religioius and racial persecution, in a world where ignorance rules, and science, who ought to have ruled, plays the subservient pimp. Tolerance, good temper and sympathy, they are what matter really, but for the time being they are not enough; they want stiffening, even if the process coarsens them. Faith, to my mind, is a stiffening process, a sort of mental starch, which ought to be applied sparingly. I dislike the stuff.. I do not believe in it for its own sake at all. Herein, I probably differ from most peole who do believe in Belief, and are only sorry that they can't swallow more of than they already do. My law-givers are Erasmus and Montaigne, not Moses and St. Paul. My temple stands not on Mount Moriah, but in that Elysian Field where even the immoral are admitted. My motto is: "Lord, I disbelieve, help thou my unbelief."

That was written in late 1939, when war with Germany was understood by anyone as bright as Forester to be inevitable.Despite his innate skepticism about belief, he manages in the rest of the essay to sketch a compelling version of a liberal credo. As I say, what's wrong with a little skepticism, what's wrong with invoking Erasmus or Montaigne? Maybe it won't play in Peroria, but that doesn't make it unAmerican, either. And frankly, I think a lot of the rest of the essay would play quite well in Kansas, if I could but find it to give further examples. What gets in the way of liberals being able to talk with Kansans, is all those liberals telling the good people of Kansas what jerks most liberals are.

You had to know that when the winger replicants all started whining in unison about the politics of personal destruction in L'affaire Gannon (back), that they were trying to change the subject as fast as ever they could.

And now we know why.

Caution: NOT WORK SAFE.

Personally, I have no problems with Mr. Gannon's career choices. Nor, I suspect, would our libertarian friends (the ones, that is, who also recognize the fascist character of the Bush state).

But I suspect even the most see-no-evil member of the base might have some problems. Or not. [TYPICAL BASE MEMBER: Must... stop... cognitive... dissonance...]

The Bush mandate [Caution: NOT WORK SAFE either]. How right, how very right, how righteously right, how even righter than we knew, how utterly maximal schadenfreude-ly right we were....

Once again, things turn out to be so much worse than we ever imagined.

Not that I'm gloating.

UPDATE And what a wonderful valentine for Scott "Sucker MC" McClellan!

The great leap backwards continues...

via Fact-esque:

Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer agreed to pay $135,540 to settle federal charges that it violated child labor laws in Connecticut, Arkansas and New Hampshire. As part of the agreement, revealed yesterday after it was secretly signed in January, the Labor Department agreed "to give Wal-Mart 15 days' notice before the Labor Department investigates any other 'wage and hour' accusations, like failure to pay minimum wage or overtime." ~ LINK

via Jordan Barab:

The violations involved workers under age 18 operating dangerous machinery, including cardboard balers and chain saws. In the agreement, Wal-Mart denied any wrongdoing, although the company agreed to pay the fine. ~ Nathan Newman.org

via Nathan Newman:

The Montana state Senate is debating a bill to fight Wal-Mart's low wages. If passed, the law would impose a tax on gross retail receipts of any retailer doing more than $10 million per year in business. No tax would be owed, however, if they certified that all full-time workers were making at least $22,000 per year. ~ Doing Something About Wal-Mart

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Anyone else feel they're living in a Matrix episode? With winger replicants, like Agent Smith, everywhere?

The "sacrifice" of that Canadian store did its job all right.

(via Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

After a nearly five-year battle just to get a vote, the United Food and Commercial Workers union lost an election to represent 17 employees of the Tire and Lube Express unit of Wal-Mart's store in New Castle, Lawrence County.

The Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer said it was pleased with the outcome and described the workers' rejection of the union as evidence that they didn't "feel that a third party would add anything to Wal-Mart's culture or environment."

The UFCW, however, blamed the outcome on Wal-Mart's decision two days earlier to close a newly unionized Canadian store after failing to reach a contract and on turnover at the New Castle outlet. The planned shutdown of the store in Jonquiere, Quebec -- the first unionized Wal-Mart in North America -- is expected to mean the loss of 190 jobs, according to Bloomberg News.

An election in New Castle originally scheduled in 2000 was canceled after the UFCW's Cleveland-based Local 880 complained to the National Labor Relations Board.

The union said the company had improved conditions for the workers, interrogated them about their union sympathies and moved workers in and out of the tire and lube department to dilute support. That complaint was settled last year in an unpublished ruling.

Last month, when the NLRB scheduled the second election, it was the only representation election pending at any of the 3,064 Wal-Mart stores nationwide.

Since then, another has been scheduled for Feb. 25 at the tire and lube department of a Wal-Mart in Loveland, Colo., a Wal-Mart spokeswoman said.

Is anybody here still buying anything at Mal-Wart that they can conceivably do without, or get elsewhere? I sure hope not, because somewhere, Joe Hill is watching...

The New York Not-in-Times has a big story on their front page about the Industrial Food biz desperately trying to find a new kind of fat to fry things in. They don't have this little item, oddly enough. It's in English, even. And not exactly gossip of dubious provenance; note who wrote the report. But one must have priorities:

(via Deccan (India) Herald)

Pakistan will be a “failed” state by 2015 as it would be affected by civil war, complete Talibanisation and struggle for control of its nuclear weapons, premier US intelligence agencies have said in an assessment report.

Forecasting a “Yugoslavia-like fate” for Pakistan, the US National Intelligence Council (NIC) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in a jointly prepared Global Futures Assessment Report have said “by year 2015 Pakistan would be a failed state, ripe with civil war, bloodshed, inter-provincial rivalries and a struggle for control of its nuclear weapons and complete Talibanisation.”

“Pakistan will not recover easily from decades of political and economic mismanagement, divisive policies, lawlessness, corruption and ethnic friction,” said the report quoted by former Pakistan High Commissioner to United Kingdom Wajid Shamsul Hasan in an article in the South Asia Tribune.

Titled ‘Will Pakistan Army invade Balochistan as per the NIC-CIA Plan,’ the former senior diplomat said “in the context of Balochistan, one would like to refer to the 2015 NIC report. It forecast a Yugoslavia-like fate for Pakistan.

“The military operation that has been put in motion there would further distance the Baloch people from rest of the country. That perhaps is the (NIC-CIA) Plan,” Mr Hasan said. “Nascent democratic reforms will produce little change,” he added.

Papers all over south Asia are carrying this. Here? Not so much...

As we've been saying: Follow the bytes. You remember the famous exchange between Holmes and hapless Inspector Gregory:

Inspector Gregory: "Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"

Holmes: "To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."

Inspector: "The dog did nothing in the night-time."

Holmes: "That was the curious incident."

Today, another "curious incident" at The World's Greatest Newspaper (not!). Raymond Bonner plays the silent watchdog. We'll leave out the details of why a "detainee" would "say" he was "tortured" (kudos to the headline writer for not using the euphemism "abuse"); we already know Bush rationalizes, and practices, the evil of torture. Rather, we'll focus on a few, um, loose ends. The kind of loose ends that, if anyone would tug them, would unravel the Emperor's clothes:

Detainee Says He Was Tortured While in U.S. Custody
[In Gitmo, tortured Australian citizen Mamdouh Habib] also said he was forced to look at photographs of his wife's face superimposed on images of naked women next to Osama bin Laden.
(via the non-barking Times)

PhotoShop work. Where's the server that data was stored on, and who had access to it? Where was the PhotoShop work done, and who did it? Will the LRWM follow the bytes?

Men in black masks came into the room. One had a still camera, the other a video camera. "They make picture of everything in my body," he said.

Where were the videos stored? Will the LRWM follow the bytes?

We already know that 100,000 photographs from Abu Ghraib were stored on a "secret server".

Funny, though. The Army was going to be finished looking through the 100,000 photos in December. You'd think we'd have heard about the results by now. But n-o-o-o-o!

Funny, though. Now the Times have the evidence that the same modus operandi used at Abu Ghraib used at Gitmo ("Handwriting of The Fog Machine") You'd think that the Times would make that connection. But n-o-o-o-o!

And funny, too, about that Bush's executive order OKing torture. You'd think the Times would think to ask whether the torture at Gitmo was (putatively) authorized under it. But n-o-o-o-o!

How curious these incidents are! What could be going on? Will the LRWM follow the bytes?

NOTE The master of the slightly stale conventional wisdom goes to Australia and puzzles over why Bush is not an easy export Down Under. Maybe Bush torturing Australian citizens could have something to do with it?

How soon before "the haters" become "the enemy within"?

I'd give the boys and girls in and behind the Whited Sepulchre House oh, say, a year at the very outside to work this noxious little meme into the mainstream; after all, they'll need it for the mid-terms, whether Whack is down the tubes by then or not. Inerrant Boy before the usual cheering crowd of Those Who Have Sworn Fealty:

(applause)...
(applause)...
(applause)...
(applause)...
[BUSH] Let me tell you some of the lessons I learned as your President, some
of the lessons I learned about September the 11th. Lesson one is that we face an enemy that's cold-blooded, and they are haters. They believe in an ideology of hate. They -- they -- they stand for the exact opposite we stand for in America.
(via White House transcript)

Well, and who would those haters be? Could they possibly be.... Bush's opposition? Could it possibly be that Bush's opposition and the Iraqi insurgents and the terrorists are the same enemy? Of course not. They would never do that. But, oh wait... They already are...

The first signs of change came from the Howard Dean campaign. His campaign manager, Joe Trippi, used the Internet and meetup.com and moveon.org to identify and bring together Bush haters from all over the country and raise far more money than anyone expected.
(Michael Barone Useless news

(It's so typical to the totalizing winger approach to politics that they want to control everything—they even want to mindfuck their opposition by reaching into our minds and deking us into giving our own emotions the wrong name.)

For the record: The emotion that fuels us is not hate ("Top 10 reasons not to hate George Bush), but outrage (back).

But let me remind the Winger Noise Machine of the old saying, so well-remembered by genuine Christians: Hate the sin, not the sinner.

What are the sins I hate?

I hate being lied to. I hate it when lies lead us into a war. I hate the very idea of destroying the Constitution. I hate even more when I see it happening before my eyes. I hate the idea of living in a country without law. I hate even more when I see the rule of law torn up to justify torture and shield torturers from justice. And I hate it when the men who tear the law up and enable torture teach their doctrines in our schools and become Attorney General. I hate it when children don't take care of their aging parents. And I hate it even more when winger idelogoues tell children that abandoning parents is good and right.

And you know what I hate most? I hate the fear. I hate the fear of being arrested if I wear the wrong T-shirt. I hate the fear that I'll lose my job if I vote for the wrong guy. I hate the fear that comes when thugs beat up women, and the President looks on, and by saying nothing says its OK. I hate the fear that the government isn't legitimate because it keeps stealing elections. I hate the fear of the camps. And I hate the fear that we're going to lose a city to a loose nuke.

Fear itself. Above all, I hate the fear.

If this be hate, let us make the most of it.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"The president's priorities are totally nuts." ~ Thomas L. Friedman / The New York Times - February 13, 2005. (no login required)

Uh oh. Tom's clearly escaped from the manor house and is running around on the front lawn like some kind of rogue frondescent sprout gnome! Next thing ya know he'll be stenciling daisies on the door panels of his Lexus or hitchhiking across the country to attend Rainbow Family gatherings in the Umpqua National Forest! Some kind of preemptive strike may be necessary. Perhaps Bill Keller will be compelled to reel him in and ship him off to madame Benador's parlor of neo-conservative charms for a little R&R.

I mean what next? We The Planet Festival workshops with Julia Butterfly Hill!

Judith Miller materializing on Hardball dressed in white go-go boots and sporting dangly peace sign earings! Good God, what will we tell the children at the Heritage Foundation!

*

...and Elliot Abrams dances in the Moon-light

Circa 1998: Elliot Abrams hits the PR trail on behalf of the Unification Church. Via John Gorenfeld:

Finding common cause in supporting the Contra death squads in those days was Reverend Moon, owner of the Washington Times, whose right-hand man cut the $100,000 check that opened Oliver North's "Freedom Fund." [1]

Well, it seems that Moon and Abrams haven't drifted apart since the Contra days. In 1998, Abrams hit the road to speak at a number of Moon's events.

In November, 1998, Moon's Unification Church hosted (through a front group, the "International Coalition For Religious Freedom") a seminar in Brazil. The conference tackled (along with the Scientologist perpsective and others) four "urgent contemporary problems":

1. Reverend Moon still banned from visiting various European countries
2. Parents keep hiring "deprogrammers" to kidnap young people who've left them for the Moon movement, Japanese government not doing squat about it
3. Japan not letting Reverend Moon visit (its Supreme Court having recently convicted his church of a gargantuan campaign to take the elderly for millions)
4. Followers in Moon's "True Family" still being called "cultists"

Read John Gorenfeld's latest on the adventures of Moon and Abrams HERE

Sun Myung Moon, 1987:
"There are three guiding principles for the world to choose among: democracy, communism and Godism…It is clear that democracy as the United States knows and practices it cannot be the model for the world."

Well, that doesn't sound very "patriotic" or freedom loving or democracy spreading does it? Hey?, where did all the Jesus shouting treason police wingnuts go? Where are all the hoots and monkey noises from the Cult of the 'W' Stofstrupp about the death of western civilization and Christianity when this diseased theocratic fascist cult-toad lets one rip? Huh? Where's all the foot stamping outrage! at the fawning exploits of Elliot Abrams. Oh yeah, I forgot. When it comes to guzzling the Moon-shine the right-wing faithful are all lined up at the back porch door; tin cups in hand.

It's a good thing the "True Parent" hadn't suggested that he was a model for some character from Love Story, or some similar horrible deception like that. For surely, had that been the case, the ferocious media sniff-dogs would have been at his heels like hyenas onto the scent of a wounded wildebeest.

[1] - Further note on the Nicaragua Freedom Fund: NFF co-chairs included Michael Novak (American Enterprise Institute, among others) and William Simon (former Olin Foundation president and Nixon administration Treasury Secretary, among others). Arnaud de Borchgrave (Washington Times editor in chief) announced the formation of the NFF in 1985. Oliver North had requested the NFF be established (reportedly with then National Security adviser Bud McFarlane's blessing) to route "humanitarian aid" to the Contra's. Later, Ronald S. Godwin (Moral Majority and Washington Times) would help secure funding for North through the Interamerican Partnership, which, as Common Cause Magazine described it in 1993, was "a fore-runner to North's own Freedom Alliance." (see Intra Contra Wars by Robert Parry)

Ronald S. Godwin? Godwin was former executive director of Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority and became a chief executive officer at The Washington Times following Moon's assisted bailout of Falwell's Libery University in the early 1990's. That's why Jerry Falwell always has that creepy smirk on his face. Moon has his finger so far up Falwell's fat ass it's affecting Jerry's countenance. Jerry Falwell is kind of like a used Moonie finger fuck puppet. And where is Ronald S. Godwin today? Apparently he's slithered back to Liberty University where he will hold sway as the first dean of the "Helms School of Government."

Grover Norquist and the College Republicans circa 1980's Robert Parry writes:

In the 1980s, Norquist was a leader of the College Republicans when they were getting subsidies from the secretive fortune of Sun Myung Moon, a South Korean theocrat whose organization has a long track record of illicit money-laundering. Moon was pumping tens of millions of dollars into American conservative organizations and into the right-wing Washington Times.

Some Republicans raised red flags, citing Moon’s history of brainwashing his disciples and his contempt for American democracy and individuality. In 1983, the GOP’s moderate Ripon Society charged that the New Right had entered “an alliance of expediency” with Moon’s church.

Ripon’s chairman, Rep. Jim Leach of Iowa, released a study which alleged that the College Republican National Committee “solicited and received” money from Moon’s Unification Church in 1981. The study also accused Reed Irvine’s Accuracy in Media of benefiting from low-cost or volunteer workers supplied by Moon.

Leach said the Unification Church has “infiltrated the New Right and the party it wants to control, the Republican Party, and infiltrated the media as well.” Leach’s news conference was disrupted when then-college GOP leader Grover Norquist accused Leach of lying.

For its part, the Washington Times dismissed Leach’s charges as “flummeries” and mocked the Ripon Society as a “discredited and insignificant left-wing offshoot of the Republican Party.” [For details on Moon’s ties to the GOP and the Bush family, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq.]

Over the next two decades, with billions of dollars from the likes of Rev. Moon and media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, the conservative media infrastructure grew exponentially, becoming possibly the most potent force in U.S. politics. - [see following link for source]

So, what kind of monster has the Bush administration and it's satrap movimiento been building in this country for at least the last twenty five years? Parry calls it "managed democracy." Read "Bush & the Rise of 'Managed-Democracy'", by Robert Parry, February 12, 2005.

I think - given it's close relationship to a collective bloc of powerful moneyed theocratic right-wing religious clerics and cultists, elitist corporatist business and media aristocrats, military industrial complex interests, all advancing behind a noisy bulldozer division of neo-fascist/falangelike pseudo-populist frontmen - that the Bush "vision" more resembles something comparable to El Caudillo Generalissimo Francisco Franco's Spain.



In any case, despite my recent interest in Spanish history, Parry asks:

Has the age of "managed-democracy" – and one-party rule – already arrived?

Don't hold your breath expecting our kennel of perfumed media poodles to attempt to answer that. They know who pays for their chew toys and trips to the grooming salon. And you can be sure that come Monday morning these very same media chippies will all be scurrying in front of their cameras and keyboards to remind us all that Howard Dean is the greatest threat to democracy, Christianity, and mother hearth and homeland since Sputnik and the election of the presidium of the Central Executive Committee in 1917.

*****
You can help Howard Dean organize the resistance to the one party rule of El Caudillo Arbusto by donating HERE

Thank you for your generous support of traditional American values and a liberal multi-party representative democracy.

*

(via AP)

And no chimp jokes, please! It's way too easy—and not fair to the chimps!

There's no window for me to look out of, in my tiny room under the stairs in The Mighty Corrente Building.

So I can't tell if the moon is full, or not.

Given the level of bad craziness, though, the moon must be full ...

And, as your lawyer, I advise you: Vote for farmer now!

More like this, please:

A large Midwest brokerage abruptly withdrew from a business coalition that backs President Bush's Social Security proposals after the AFL-CIO staged protests at two of the firm's offices and attacked it on the Internet.

Edward D. Jones & Co., which operates under the trade name Edward Jones, resigned from the Alliance for Worker Retirement Security, a coalition of corporations and trade associations that has long pressed for the creation of private accounts as part of Social Security. The St. Louis company has been a member of the coalition since 1998, the year of its inception.
(via WaPo)

Excellent. Kill the body and the head will die. More like this, please.

I'm starting to think that there is, in fact, a winger purity test (back): It consists of being able to ignore the grossest possible contradictions between their values and their actions. The wingers might be able to do so well on this test because of WPS; or because of be a spiritual condition, called "being a Pharisee" (back); or because of something much more sinister: plain Orwellian doublethink—the mindset that enables totalitarian rule.

Regardless, ordinary people—at least those who've gone to AA or Al-Anon, unlike, alas, Inerrant Boy—have a catchier phrase for doublethink and its discontents: "Talk the talk without walking the walk."

Let's watch Bush's Enabler-in-Chief, Condi-lie-zza Rice, talk the talk:

Here is Condoleezza Rice, the new secretary of state, explaining last month what will guide her policy: "The world should apply what Natan Sharansky calls 'the town square test': if a person cannot walk into the middle of the town square and express his or her views without fear of arrest, imprisonment or physical harm, then that person is living in a fear society, not a free society. We cannot rest until every person living in a fear society has finally won their freedom."
(via Times)

(This is in the context of a Times book review of Natan Sharansky's recent book, "The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror," which apparently everyone in the Blest Wing is reading. It's a measure of the bankruptcy the Times—its absolute inability to connect one news event to another—that they miss the obvious consequences of Condi's remarks: Bush has created a fear society in the United States.

Now, et's watch the Bush administration walk the walk.

Set the wayback machine to October 2004, at a Partei rally in West Virginia. Xan writes (quoting Atlanta-Journal Constitution):

Like many Americans, Jeff and Nicole Rank have an opinion about their president. They wore it on T-shirts they unveiled after entering the West Virginia State Capitol grounds to hear him speak.

The his-and-hers shirts included a photo of the president and the word "Bush" with the international "no" symbol. His shirt also said, "Regime change starts at home." Hers said, "Love America, Hate Bush."

Shortly after the Ranks revealed the shirts, two men they believe worked for the Secret Service or the White House demanded that they remove or cover them. The Ranks refused and were arrested, handcuffed and jailed on trespassing charges.

Welcome to the wacky world of winger delusion: In Paris, quoting a book, being arrested for expressing one's views in "the public square" is a sign of a fear society. But in America, in a presidential campaign, the very same thing happens—and Condi is silent. And, amazingly (or not) the Times doesn't pick up the blatant contradiction.

Walk the walk?!

These guys aren't even trying to walk the walk. They're not even dragging their knuckles and shamelessly calling that walking! They're not even crawling! They don't know what walking the walk means!

NOTE: There are too many links for me to list, that show Bush creating a fear society here; if you want detail on His efforts during Campaign 2004, enter "MBF Watch" into the search box at the top of the page. [It's bad, but it's the best we have.]

OK, another winger circle jerk has come to its sad, and inevitable conclusion, and CNN executive Eason Jordan has resigned. ("First, they came for Dan Rather...."). But get this gem of a quote, at the very end (naturally) of the Times story covering the wank-fest:

Which is here online, edited as follows:

Bret Stephens, a member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board who attended the session in Davos, wrote in Thursday's Journal that Mr. Jordan had "made a defamatory innuendo" but added: "Mr. Jordan deserves some credit for retracting the substance of his remark, and some forgiveness for trying to weasel his way out of a bad situation of his own making." But [Stephens] questioned whether CNNs' news division should be headed by someone "who can't be trusted to sit on a panel and field softball questions."

Golly! That last sentence didn't make it into the online edition! I wonder why? Let's read it again:

[Stephens] questioned whether CNNs' news division should be headed by someone "who can't be trusted to sit on a panel and field softball questions."

Hmmm... That reminds me of something... But what could it be? I have it!

We have a President who wants to "field" only "softball questions"—and whose own press secretary's office has organized, in the person of Jeff "Not His Real Name" Gannon, a ringer to throw exactly that kind of softball question! A ringer funded by the Texas GOP, a ringer who was Unka Karl's channel for smearing Joseph Wilson in the Plame Affair, and a ringer who has evinced an, er, extracurricular interest in gay military porn (way to support the troops there, Karl).

Welcome to the delusional world of the wingers!

The doublethink:

It's OK to hound an executive who can't field softball questions out of his job—unless that executive is the winger chief executive of the United States!

So why did the Times slash that last sentence? Professional courtesy? They got hate mail already? You can ask Danny Boy here. He'll get to the bottom of it! Fer sure.

I hope the taxpayer's aren't funding this, but somehow I have the feeling they are:

In Arkansas, Gov. Mike Huckabee and his wife, Janet, will renew their wedding vows in the presence of hundreds of other couples at a ceremony promoting the state's covenant marriage law - a voluntary system that makes divorce harder to obtain. "The nation will be watching as we take a stand for marriage," the Huckabees' invitation says.

"This fun-filled, romantic evening will encourage and equip you as a couple to go the distance," said the Huckabees' invitation, which promised entertainment from a Grammy-winning gospel singer and inspirational speeches from marriage experts.

The governor, in a telephone interview, said he wants to make more Arkansans aware of covenant marriage - an option in which couples pledge to go through lengthy counseling before any divorce, unless there is a dramatic factor such as physical abuse.

"We're trying to combat the idea that covenant marriage is some kind of holier-than-thou religious act," said Huckabee. "It's an admission on our part that keeping a marriage together is very hard work; it's a commitment that if the marriage hits a crisis, we'll see counselors before we see lawyers - and see if we can work it out."

Arkansas has one of the nation's highest divorce rates. Thus far, few couples have exercised the option of covenant marriage - about 600 in three years out of roughly 40,000 marriages that occur annually in the state.
(via AP)

Doesn't sound like "covenant marriage"—hey, how's that for mixing church and state?—is doing too well. To the wingers, of course, that's just a sign that they should redouble their efforts...

Yep, what we need is, um, "national renewal"—followed, naturally, by "cleansing" of impure....

But the question that remains is this:

How do the wingers know they are pure?!

Fortunately, science—assuming that computer science is indeed a science, a topic for another day—has come to the rescue in the form of the purity test!

Answer 500 simple questions, and find out how pure you are!

There is, naturellement, software to construct your own purity test. Readers, anyone out there for constructing a winger purity test?

Man, it's pure something, anyhow...

Bill! Put down that loofah! Rush! Keep your hands away from your mouth! Jerry! Oh, Jerry... Newtie! Wait 'til after your wife gets her cancer operation done before you give her the divorce papers, m'kay? Georgie! Put down that frog!

Okay, maybe this is a small thing and it's defintely just one more in a long line of NPR shitshowers, but it still puts my overalls in a twist. Yesterday on NPR there was a story about North Korea and their nookyoolar program, and the correspondent felt compelled to say “the Communist nation” with every oblique reference to the place. Arrgggh! Red-baiting and ignorance of political science, ya ask me. Which you didn’t, but I’m saying…

1. I don’t think Marx or Engels or any of the other theorists would call Dear Leader’s form of government “communist.”

2. I have sincere doubts that there has ever actually been a real communist government in actual operation for any length of time.

3. Socialism and Communism are not the opposite of “freedom” and “liberty.” It’s possible to have civil liberties in a socialist society. In fact, perhaps even more than in a capitalist society.

So, knock it off, awright, NPR? And while we’re at it, shaddap with the references to America being the “world’s greatest democracy” too, m’kay? Pacifica Radio is really all that’s left that’s worth listening to, I swear… or is it just me?

Scream here:

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Yikes!

SUTTER, Calif. - The only grade school in this rural town is requiring students to wear radio frequency identification badges that can track their every move.

The badges introduced at Brittan Elementary School on Jan. 18 rely on the same radio frequency and scanner technology that companies use to track livestock and product inventory.

Each student is required to wear identification cards around their necks with their picture, name and grade and a wireless transmitter that beams their ID number to a teacher’s handheld computer when the child passes under an antenna posted above a classroom door.

This latest adaptation of radio frequency ID technology was developed by InCom Corp., a local company co-founded by the parent of a former Brittan student, and some parents are suspicious about the financial relationship between the school and the company. InCom plans to promote the technology at a national convention of school administrators next month.

InCom has paid the school several thousand dollars for agreeing to the experiment, and has promised a royalty from each sale if the system takes off, said the company’s co-founder, Michael Dobson, who works as a technology specialist in the town’s high school. Brittan’s technology aide also works part-time for InCom.
(via MSNBC)

I'd say there are at least two teachable moments here, wouldn't you?

1. It's OK to treat kids like livestock or cattle

2. It's OK to use kids, and the public schools, as part of your company's marketing plan—especially when you work for the schools too!

Really, what's not to like?

All I want to know is: Why don't we miniaturize these badges and inject them under the skin? Much more hygeinic, and permament, too!

WTF?

Pakistan pays tribe al-Qaeda debt
Pakistan says it has paid 32m rupees ($540,000) to help four former wanted tribal militants in South Waziristan settle debts with al-Qaeda.

Military operations chief in the region, Lt Gen Safdar Hussain, said the payments were part of a peace deal signed on Monday with tribesmen.

It is the first time Pakistan has admitted making such payments.
(via The Beeb from Kos)

Can someone explain why this would be a good idea?

Hooray!

And (bien sur) farmer is a finalist for best writing!

Vote early and often! They say to vote in comments or email, but if they said what address to use, I missed it, so I'm sticking with comments...

Well, looks like Naomi Klein over at The Nation got Dahr Jamail’s memo, too:

Al-Mahdi is the Bush Administration's Trojan horse in the UIA. (You didn't think they were going to put all their money on Allawi, did you?) In October he told a gathering of the American Enterprise Institute that he planned to "restructure and privatize [Iraq's] state-owned enterprises," and in December he made another trip to Washington to unveil plans for a new oil law "very promising to the American investors." It was al-Mahdi himself who oversaw the signing of a flurry of deals with Shell, BP and ChevronTexaco in the weeks before the elections, and it is he who negotiated the recent austerity deal with the IMF. On troop withdrawal, al-Mahdi sounds nothing like his party's platform and instead appears to be channeling Dick Cheney on Fox News: "When the Americans go will depend on when our own forces are ready and on how the resistance responds after the elections." But on Sharia law, we are told, he is very close to the clerics.

Iraq's elections were delayed time and time again, while the occupation and resistance grew ever more deadly. Now it seems that two years of bloodshed, bribery and backroom arm-twisting were leading up to this: a deal in which the ayatollahs get control over the family, Texaco gets the oil, and Washington gets its enduring military bases (call it the "oil for women program"). Everyone wins except the voters, who risked their lives to cast their ballots for a very different set of policies.

Do they really think they can pull this off without the whole of iWaq exploding into violence? Why did Bushco really invade? WTF?

Arthur Miller has died. He was 89. He lived one of the more fabulous of American lives. He died at home, surrounded by family. You can't feel sad about such a life, such a man.

The same could have been, and should have been said here at Corrente, about Ossie Davis' passing from us. I meant to, but everytime I tried, it made me too sad to talk about it. Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis were part of my growing up years - unique American artists, separate and together, when an American president could talk about art as if it were central to American culture. They had remarkable staying power. They became such a class act, they moved above the kind of scratchy racism used against so many other artists. Nothing tickled me more than their appearance in "Do The Right Thing." They never paid it safe.

Arthur Miller was already a theatre classic, when Ruby Dee starred on Broadway in "A Raisin In The Sun," and was already struggling with the American curse - no second acts. He refused to name names, and he still got the blonde shiksa. Miller managed not to be destroyed by becoming a celebrity; maybe because he'd already been one, a threatre celebrity. What I think is most admirable about him, he kept on writing, he kept on commenting, he kept on paying attention. A second act and then some.

Certain people whom you don't know personally and are unlikely ever to meet, nonetheless, are part of your personal world, because living at the same time that they are alive makes your life different, better in some way. When they go, when their voices, their visions, are finally stilled, it feels like a personal loss. I've felt that way about a huge variety of people, from Stravinsky and Balanchine, to Jean Renoir, to Wallace Stegner, to Julia Childs, to Uta Hagen, to Johnny Carson to Ansel Adams and W.Eugene Smith, to Buster Keaton, To Fannie Lou Hammer.....I could go on and on....What occurs to me in looking at that list, in thinking about Arthur Miller and Ossie Davis, is that all of those figures, artists, writers, activists, citizens, were, in one way or another, part of a liberal world view, one that has always insisted that paying attention was a form of citizenship available to anyone who takes the time to do it.

Somewhere on the twelfth floor of the American Enterprise Institute: Children Scarred for Life

*

William Greider, The Nation:

While dispirited Democrats stew over their party's uncertain future, they might check out an unusual cluster of progressive "activists" forming within their ranks. Some politicians with real muscle are pursuing far-ranging possibilities for reforming the economic system. Their potential for driving important change is not widely recognized, perhaps because the reformers are drawn from unglamorous backbenches of state government--treasurers, comptrollers, pension-fund trustees. Yet these state officials, unlike the minority Democrats in Congress, have decision-making power and control over enormous pools of investment capital. They are fiduciaries who manage the vast wealth stored by state governments in public-employee pension funds, invested in behalf of working people--civil servants, teachers and other types of public workers--who as future retirees are "beneficial owners" of the capital. ~ The New Colossus

*

Atrios complains that the White House website is referring to several early Democratic-Republican presidents as "Republicans."

I'm afraid, Atrios, that those presidents all called themselves Republicans. Now, according to the Wayback machine, the earlier version of the webpages (compare the 2000 version of the Madison page here with the 2004 version here) during the Clinton era made it clearer what that meant, but those pages referred to them as Republicans as well.

It's what these men called themselves and historians have called them Republicans as well. The Democrats didn't start regularly calling themselves "Democrats" until Andrew Jackson started doing it in the middle 1820s.

Atrios, my man, I'm afraid you're all wet on this one.

Last year? The year of the sheep.

No kidding.

Talon News "Service"? Snort! I mean, Talon's a brand of zipper!


(via eBay)

I mean, I don't mind a little gay subtext, but they keep shoving it my face. First the Bush mandate, now this. I mean, next they'll be denying Bush whistles show tunes. Oh, wait....

What will we tell the children?

Actually, I know what we'll tell the children. We'll tell them don't go here.

No, they're not destructionist....

A senior House Republican with long experience in Social Security matters outlined legislation Thursday that jettisons two controversial elements in President Bush's plan in an attempt to court Democratic support.

"I think politically it's the most salable," Rep. Clay Shaw, R-Fla., said of his alternative, although he conceded neither the White House, the House GOP leadership in the House nor any Democrat has yet to lend backing.
(via AP)

I guess I'm still just a bit confused, here.

Since there is no Social Security problem—and there are plenty of other problems, like 1 million Americans going bankrupt each year (RDF) because we don't have universal health insurance—why is there any need to tamper with Social Security at all?

And given that the Bush has run up the largest deficit in the history of the world in four short years, why on earth would anyone trust Him to make anything "solvent"?

Why would the Democrats let themselves be used as a shovel, so Bush and the Republicans can dig themselves out of a jam?

Nice to see the Dems fighting back at last. It won't be easy, and it will take time, but if we're going to save the Constitution, and the country, from these guys, it has to be done.

Dick Durbin connects a few dots:

The letter [to Bush] was written in milder terms. "We urge you to keep your word about being a uniter and publicly halt these counterproductive attacks so that we are able to work together in a bipartisan manner and debate issues on the merits," it says.

Bush and the White House have denied responsibility for the attacks.
(via AP)

Right. Bush just made Rove His Reichschancellor, and then claims that he can't control the RNC. Please refer that one to The Department of How Stupid Do They Think We Are?

But Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the second-ranking Democrat in the Senate after Reid, ridiculed that assertion, as Reid did earlier in the week.

"This is the Abu Ghraib defense, that a few renegade soldiers are responsible for their own behavior and the commanders are not accountable," said Durbin. His remarks referred to claims by military officials that a few low-ranking enlisted personnel were responsible for the shocking abuses [um, torture?]
at a U.S.-run prison in Iraq.

What Durbin says isn't even a hit or a cheap shot; it's the plain cold truth. More like this, please.

Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard law professor writing in WaPo, tears open another package awaiting delivery on Capitol Hill:

Nobody's safe. That's the warning from the first large-scale study of medical bankruptcy.

Health insurance? That didn't protect 1 million Americans who were financially ruined by illness or medical bills last year.

A comfortable middle-class lifestyle? Good education? Decent job? No safeguards there. Most of the medically bankrupt were middle-class homeowners who had been to college and had responsible jobs—until illness struck.

As part of a research study at Harvard University, our researchers interviewed 1,771 Americans in bankruptcy courts across the country. To our surprise, half said that illness or medical bills drove them to bankruptcy. So each year, 2 million Americans -- those who file and their dependents -- face the double disaster of illness and bankruptcy.
But the bigger surprise was that three-quarters of the medically bankrupt had health insurance.

Of course, faced with this shocking news, congress is off to make sure that something is done right away!

Many in Congress have a response to the problem of the growing number of medical bankruptcies: make it harder for families to file bankruptcy regardless of the reason for their financial troubles. Bankruptcy legislation—widely known as the credit industry wish list—has been introduced yet again to increase costs and decrease protection for every family that turns to the bankruptcy system for help. With the dramatic rise in medical bankruptcies now documented, this tired approach would be no different than a congressional demand to close hospitals in response to a flu epidemic. Making bankruptcy harder puts the fallout from a broken health care system back on families, leaving them with no escape.

There is no escape. Indeed. This hits close to home, because I went bankrupt some years ago behind medical bills. And I ain’t getting any younger. And if it’s this bad for folks with insurance, imagine…

If ya want the whole read, it’s at Sick and Broke with no registration required.

Dahr Jamail has been talking to survivors of Fallujah. Remember Fallujah? According to Tony Karon in Time Magagazine from November of last year, “…the primary strategic purpose of recapturing Fallujah…was to facilitate Sunni participation in the January election, and more generally in the post-Saddam order authored by the U.S…” Yeah, that worked out real well, didn’t it? So, what has been happening in Fallujah since we were all so pissed off about the tactics used to destroy it last year? Oh, just an ongoing, boiling-over pot of resentment, as one Fallujah doctor interviewed by Mr. Jamail makes clear:

“You must understand the hatred that has been caused…it has gotten more difficult for Iraqis, including myself, to make the distinction between the American government and the American people,” he tells me.

His story is like countless others.

“My cousin was a poor man in Fallujah,” he explains, “He walked from his house to work and back, while living with his wife and five daughters. In July of 2003, American soldiers entered his house and woke them all up. They drug them into the main room of the house, and executed my cousin in front of his family. Then they simply left.”

He pauses then holds up his hands and asks, “Now, how are these people going to feel about Americans?”

How, indeed? Pissed off, I would imagine. I can only imagine my reaction in similar situation.

Well, let’s be reeeaallly clear about this: 49% of us fought as hard as we could to run these lying thieves out of office, and most haven’t quit yet. There is a difference between the American government and a large chunk of the American people. But how to make that clear to the rest of the world? I vote for running as many of them out of their federal, state and local jobs as possible in 2006. That would send a message. And the time to organize is NOW. Of course, demonstrations, letter writing and so forth are great, too. But it starts in your local party organization. If you’re Green, and you can get a Green in a local office, great. Otherwise, let’s build our local and state Dem parties a spine. Two local counties have already elected new chairs (with spines), and my county elects next month (it looks like a lock for the candidate with a spine). Then, it’s on to start pushing candidates for public office. Yes, even candidates for the school boards and county commissions and city councils. Don’t think those jobs matter? Think again.

Let's send a message to the world. Bushco is not us. We are not Bushco. And we will not rest until they've been driven from office, exposed for what they are.

Josh Marshall picks up on a George Will column that repeats a Presidential assertion regarding SS that isn't, well, accurate, and then proceeds to use the assertion to beat up on Harry Reid. It seems that Will thinks the option Federal employees have to invest in the Employee's Thrift Fund is in some way comparable to the President's SS proposal for "personal" accounts; that the President appears to share Mr. Will's confusion doesn't make it any more true.

Begun in 1987, the Thrift Savings Plan, which as of December 2004 had assets of $152 billion, is a retirement-savings plan open to all civilian federal employees, including senators, and all members of the uniformed services.

They can invest as much as 14 percent of their salaries in one of five retirement funds. Consider the rate of return of C Fund, one of the five. It is a common-stock fund, so it should represent the risks that Reid thinks should terrify Americans:

edit

Reid participates in the plan, but opposes allowing all Americans the comparable opportunity that Bush is proposing. But if the numbers just cited are the result of roulette, the legislators should let the rest of us into the game in which they are prospering.

As Josh points out, Will has it wrong; the program in question is an add-on to SS, in which all Federal employees also participate, just like you and me; any funds an employee chooses to invest do not come from their or their employers SS contribution.

Read what Josh has to say. And note where he says, "Who will make the obvious point?"

Well, how about all of us, for a really pleasant bloody change?

I know this is rather ad hoc, and I plan to talk at greater length about how blogs might be a way to get some of the bang for our liberal buck (think metaphor, not actual money) that conservatives get from talk radio. But for now, let's talk about what a perfect example this is of how the Democratic Party gets shafted by the press, as well as a damn fine example of what can conceivably be done about it.

For instance, there are emails that could be sent directly to Mr. Will., correcting him, in an entirely civil manner, of course, and explaining his own confusion to him. It won't matter to him if he gets a couple of dozen, but the day we can generate 700 emails to someone like George Will, he'll begin to notice that he's being noticed.

An additional option, why not call Senator Reid's office and let him know about Will's column, what's wrong with it, and suggest that someone in the office needs to raise George's consciousness, in an entirely civil manner, of course, and that Senator Reid needs to request a correction of the inaccurate information about options for Federal employees, and suggest that George will also probably wish to apologize for his mischaraterization of hypocrisy on the Senator's part. Or call your own Senator and express the same concerns, and ask that your Senator's staff contact Reid's staff.

These suggestions lack a certain grandeur, I'm aware, compared with the storming of the Winter Palace, say. But what political action doesn't, compared with that?. And I hear it wasn't really all that grand, in the end. I think a lot of you younger folk might be surprised to know how many of the glories of the Civil Rights movement were the result of this kind of dogged organizing. (If you haven't ever read John Lewis' movement memoir, "Walking With The Wind," please, please, do yourself a favor and read it; immediately. Then, get others to read it. And if you have read it, read it again. I read it at least once a year. Seriously, I do.)

What matters in an action like this is volume; what helps to motivate people to make calls like this is knowing that their effort will be amplified by hundreds (and more) of others. One of the best organizational tools that Move-On had going for it when it was still an ad hoc grassroots attempt to avoid the Clinton impeachment, and helped it to become such an effective organization was its organizers' ability, (remember it was put together by a handful of people who had busy professional lives outside of their citizen-activisim), to use their internet savvy to let people know how many phone calls or emails or money contributions had been generated about a specific issue; there was immediate feedback. Does anyone doubt that the din of outrage from liberal blogtopia changed the dynamic of Democratic opposition to the Gonzales nomination, and to Condi Rice as well?

Yesterday eve, Josh was also highlighting an aspect of the President's propaganda about SS "reform," that we at the grassroots might have a major role in getting out to the rest of America.

I can scarce believe this, even as I type it, but it appears that this gosh-darned bolder-than-bold (see also bold-faced liar) President really thinks he can get away with defaulting on the T-Bills held in the SS Trust Fund, the better to be able to make tax cuts to the super-rich permanent, and, in a single stroke, genuinely bankrupt SS. Josh focuses on this paragraph from yesterday's Presidential dog-and-pony show held at the Commerce Department to push for the end to class-action lawsuits:

Some in our country think that Social Security is a trust fund -- in other words, there's a pile of money being accumulated. That's just simply not true. The money -- payroll taxes going into the Social Security are spent. They're spent on benefits and they're spent on government programs. There is no trust. We're on the ultimate pay-as-you-go system -- what goes in comes out. And so, starting in 2018, what's going in -- what's coming out is greater than what's going in. It says we've got a problem. And we'd better start dealing with it now. The longer we wait, the harder it is to fix the problem.

Read the whole folksy approach of Bush here; this is what you are going to hear repeated again and again; study it, figure out how to shred it.

It's simply not true that there is a Social Security Trust Fund? Well, knock me over with a feather boa? Damn, I wish someone woulda told me that back in '83 when I, like so many American voters, approved the huge increase in payroll taxes, matched by a similar increase paid by my employers, the raison d'etre for which was precisely that SS would be moved from a pay-as-you-go program to one that would deliberately start to bring in a surplus, which would be accumulated to pay for the coming demographic bulge represented by the retirement of the baby boomers. If I was misinformed-informed about that, frankly, I'd like my money back - all that money deducted from my salary for the past twenty-odd years, plus a reasonable rate of return, of course.

Here's Josh:

So if you've paid Social Security taxes in any of the years from 1983 until today, you've been advance paying. And now President Bush just said that money is gone. So, you thought you were advance paying to cover part of the future expenses of your generation's retirement. But it seems you were just a sucker since President Bush is now saying the money ain't gonna be paid back. You're just fresh outta luck, you could say.

So here's our question: Does Alan Greenspan think there's a Trust Fund? Does he believe those bonds are backed up by the full faith and credit of the United States government? Does he think they will and should be paid back? If he doesn't, he's got a hell of a lot of explaining to do since it was under his guidance that we came up with this whole idea.

Or how about Sen. Bob Dole? He was on the Commission too. What does he think? Does he agree? Or the recently-retired House Ways and Means Chairman Bill Archer (R). He was on it too.

Let's ask all of them ...

Exactly so. And let's ask a variety of Democrats to ask the President if what he is talking about is defaulting on the obligation to start repaying back to the SS Trust Fund what was borrowed by his administration to pay for huge non-stimulative tax cuts, not to mention a certain war and occupation, and an inefficient, poorly crafted Medicare prescription benefit that benefits almost no one but the President's base, and which we now know will be hugely more expensive than the hugely expensive price tag originally appended to the legislation.

Let's start a campaign to call key members of the House and Senate to ask them to organize themselves to better use the media in order to get this key question into the media echo chamber, until the President can't get away without answering it.

I'm not going to bother to provide specific links to Josh's discussion, because if you aren't reading him every day, several times a day, including weekends, and taking copious notes, you are failing in your obligations as a citizen and a patriot.

For a fine discussion of the Trust Fund, see Kevin Drum; read the comment threads to get a sense of some of the feints the administration will probably use to confuse and destroy all opposition. And not to get picky about this, but to suggest that the government might default on T-Bills could be considered an impeachable offense, but let's not go there; let's not have to go there; let's stop this gravy train for the already-have-too-much by making clear to the rest of American that what they are watching when they tune into the President's "Bamboozlepalooza" tour, is an economic train-wreck for the entire American economy.

As you can tell, these are tentative thoughts; all suggestions for how to organize ourselves will be gratefully read and blogged; use comments or email; we're dying to hear from everybody, because we're in the midst of discussions of how to expand Corrente to include more grassroots journalism, and to find the link between that and effective political grassroots organizing.

I guess if you only talk to the true believers who are willing to sign loyalty oaths, it's hard to persude anyone else:

Those who have been targeted by Bush's visits say so far they aren't feeling the heat. Last week, Bush tried to woo the backing of several Democratic lawmakers in a tour of five states that he won last fall.

But staff for several of those senators said they haven't seen any increase in calls of support for Bush's ideas. Bryan Gulley, spokesman for Florida Sen. Bill Nelson, said they've seen the opposite — more people have been calling in against private accounts, perhaps because of newspaper ads opposing his plan that the AARP bought to coincide with Bush's visits.

Chris Thorne, spokesman for Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., said there hadn't been any upswing in calls to the senator's office, although there was some response to Bush's visit — editorials in some North Dakota newspapers praised Conrad for standing firm against the president.
(via AP)

What's that quacking sound I hear? It seems to be coming early this year.

Let's review:

A "reporter" who is badged into the oh-so-secure White House every day, and who provides both Scott "Sucker MC" McClellan and Bush Himself with the lifeline of nice, fluffy questions whenever they're hard pressed, turns out to be (a) innocent of any journalistic training, (b) operating under an assumed name (though I can see why "Guckert" isn't a name I'd think myself lucky to be born with, shouldn't the Secret Service care?), and (c) funded by the Texas GOP.

But wait! There's more! Not only does Guckert (a.k.a. "Gannon" of Talon "News" Service) (d) post photographs of himself on the Internet that, well, make the gay subtext of the Bush mandate really evident, he (e) owns several domain names that evince an interest in gay military porn.

But that's not all! Guckert was (f) Rove's channel for smearing Joseph Wilson in the Plame affair—with classified information no other news organization had.

Well. And what is the reaction of the wingers? Let's quote Howie quoting Instapundit:

Glenn Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor who writes on InstaPundit.com, said the tactics used against Gannon "seem to me to be despicable.

"If I were a member of the White House press corps, I'd be really worried," Reynolds said. "If working for a biased news organization disqualifies you, a lot of people have a lot to be worried about. If being involved in a dubious business venture is disqualifying, I suspect a lot of people have a lot to be worried about. I guess I don't see what all this has to do with his job."

Beautiful. Um, what do points (a), (b), (c), (d), (e), and (f) have to do with bias? Exactly nothing. And as for "dubious"—I don't care what domain names Guckert owns, or what photographs he poses for. But the winger base seems to care a lot—at least when the guy wielding the loofah isn't one of their own, that is.

And as for despicable—$70 million to impeach a sitting President over a blowjob as part of slow-motion, right-wing, media-fuelled coup? Personally, I find fascist enablers despicable. But that's just me.

While we're at it, let's remember the math: The White House has a budget for 200 media whores Paid Policy Advocates. We knew about 3; Guckert makes 4. I imagine F/Buckhead, the famous typographic authority, is another. That's 195 to go. Um, is Glenn Reynolds one of them? Where is all that Ketchum money going?

Don't worry! Condi's on the case!

"We have for some time taken account of the capability of the North Koreans to perhaps have a few nuclear weapons," Rice told a news conference after talks with the European Union.
(via Reuters)

Yeah, that "axis of evil" stuff played well with the 101st Fighting Keyboarders and the media whores Paid Policy Advocates, but the blowback was a bitch, wasn't it? Not that I have a "responsible" policy position—as usual, the malAdministration has so FUBARed the situation that there's no sorting out their propaganda from what's really going on. And as usual, the only "responsible" solution is to get them out of there and start cleaning up the mess with a reality-based approach.

"I don't think anybody could have predicted that ... they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile," National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, May 16, 2002 CBS News

Report: FAA Had 52 Pre-9/11 Warnings
U.S. National - AP

WASHINGTON - The Federal Aviation Administration received repeated warnings in the months prior to Sept. 11, 2001, about al-Qaida and its desire to attack airlines, according to a previously undisclosed report by the commission that investigated the terror attacks.

The report by the 9/11 commission that investigated the suicide airliner attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon detailed 52 such warnings given to FAA leaders from April to Sept. 10, 2001, about the radical Islamic terrorist group and its leader, Osama bin Laden.


The commission report, written last August, said five security warnings mentioned al-Qaida's training for hijackings and two reports concerned suicide operations not connected to aviation. However, none of the warnings pinpointed what would happen on Sept. 11.

[...]

Information in this report was available to members of the 9/11 commission when they issued their public report last summer. That report itself contained criticisms of FAA operations.

*

Found this Reuters story which reads as follows:

Iran Promises 'Burning Hell' for Any Aggressor
Feb 10, 7:23 AM (ET)
By Amir Paivar

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran, facing mounting U.S. pressure over its nuclear program, promised Thursday a "burning hell" for any aggressor as tens of thousands marched to mark the 26th anniversary of its Islamic revolution.

"The Iranian nation does not seek war, does not seek violence and dispute. But the world must know that this nation will not tolerate any invasion," President Mohammad Khatami said in a fiery speech to the crowd in central Tehran.

"The whole Iranian nation is united against any threat or attack. If the invaders reach Iran, the country will turn into a burning hell for them," he added, as the crowd, braving heavy snow blizzards, chanted "Death to America!."

Full story LINK

Ok, but, on the sidebar accompanying this story there appeared this offer below (red arrow added by me):





Yup. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, hmmm, I wonder if blizzards, burning hellfire, and throngs of angry locals chanting death threats would qualify me for some kind of discounted offseason rate. Perhaps an upgrade of some sort.

Then again, maybe I'll just stay home this year and clean the garage.

Plus, if you decide to stay at home, you can relax in front of your big 27" immitation hardwood BoobyTron console color tv and watch game shows on the Pentagon Channel! Show em what's waiting for them behind door number two Condi! It's Syria!

See grannyinsanity for further details on this exciting new info-tainment offer.

*

Faces under the hood:

Long criticized for its brand of journalism, The Washington Times makes a habit of publishing the work of extremists — including the wife of the newspaper's managing editor. By Heidi Beirich and Mark Potok

Feb. 9, 2005 -- Marian Kester Coombs is a woman who believes America has become a "den of iniquity" thanks to "its efforts to accommodate minorities."

White men should "run, not walk" to wed "racially conscious" white women and avoid being out-bred by non-whites. Latinos are "rising to take this country away from those who made it," the "Euroamericans." Muslims are "human hyenas" who "smell blood" and are "closing in" on their "weakened prey," meaning "the white race." Blacks, Coombs sneers, are "saintly victims who can do no wrong." Black solidarity and non-white immigration are imposing "racial revolution and decomposition" in America.

Coombs describes herself as just "a freelance writer in Crofton, Maryland." But this is one writer who's a bit more well-positioned than she lets on.

Marian Kester Coombs is married to Francis Booth Coombs, managing editor of the hard-right newspaper The Washington Times. Fran Coombs has published at least 35 of his wife's news and opinion pieces for his paper, although his relationship to her is not acknowledged in her Times bylines.

[...]

Most of Marian Coombs' especially inflammatory writings have appeared in white supremacist venues such as The Occidental Quarterly, which ran her glowing review of a book on "racially conscious" whites by Robert S. Griffin, a member of the neo-Nazi National Alliance. But the Times has published its share.

[...]

The Washington Times has taken something of a public relations beating recently. This Jan. 20, it ran an ad attacking Jews as "those folks of the anti-Christ." After the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington complained, Times general manager Richard Amberg Jr. wrote the group to profusely apologize, claiming the Times "never knowingly" allows ads that "denigrate religions."

That may be. But in just one sample period in late 2004, the newspaper ran at least nine similar ads — on Oct. 11, 13, 15, 20, 22, 26, 29, 30 and 31 — many of them plugging an anti-Semitic book called For Fear of the Jews.

On Dec. 6, it went one better, publishing an ad for the Institute for Historical Review, a leading anti-Semitic hate group that specializes in denying the World War II Holocaust.

The Washington Times is relatively small (circulation 102,000) and money-losing (it's been estimated that its backer, the Unification Church, has spent more than $1 billion to keep it going over the past 22 years). But its influence cannot be measured in those statistics. President Reagan once described it as his favorite paper. The first President Bush said it "in my view brings sanity to Washington, D.C."

Read it all: "The News That Fits" via the Southern Poverty law Center

*

Turn on the bubble machine! Propaganda and "perception management"; the Mighty Wurlitzer tune mill keeps on cranking on...

Robert Parry connects the dots.

Money, Media & the Mess in America, By Robert Parry; January 28, 2005

Sometime after 2009, when historians pick through the wreckage left behind by George W. Bush’s administration, they will have to come to grips with the role played by the professional conservative media infrastructure.

Indeed, it will be hard to comprehend how Bush got two terms as President of the United States, ran up a massive debt, and misled the country into at least one disastrous war – without taking into account the extraordinary influence of the conservative media, from Fox News to Rush Limbaugh, from the Washington Times to the Weekly Standard.

Recently, it’s been revealed, too, that the Bush administration paid conservative pundits Armstrong Williams and Maggie Gallagher while they promoted White House policies. Even fellow conservatives have criticized those payments, but the truth is that the ethical line separating conservative “journalism” from government propaganda has long since been wiped away.

For years now, there’s been little meaningful distinction between the Republican Party and the conservative media machine.

In 1982, for instance, South Korean theocrat Sun Myung Moon established the Washington Times as little more than a propaganda organ for the Reagan-Bush administration. In 1994, radio talk show host Limbaugh was made an honorary member of the new Republican House majority.

The blurring of any ethical distinctions also can be found in documents from the 1980s when the Reagan-Bush administration began collaborating secretly with conservative media tycoons to promote propaganda strategies aimed at the American people.

In 1983, a plan, hatched by CIA Director William J. Casey, called for raising private money to sell the administration’s Central American policies to the American public through an outreach program designed to look independent but which was secretly managed by Reagan-Bush officials.

The project was implemented by a CIA propaganda veteran, Walter Raymond Jr., who had been moved to the National Security Council staff and put in charge of a "perception management" campaign that had both international and domestic objectives.

In one initiative, Raymond arranged to have Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch chip in money for ostensibly private groups that would back Reagan-Bush policies. According to a memo dated Aug. 9, 1983, Raymond reported that “via Murdock [sic], may be able to draw down added funds.” [For details, see Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq.]

Besides avoiding congressional oversight, privately funded activities gave the impression that an independent group was embracing the administration’s policies on their merits. Without knowing that the money had been arranged by the government, the public would be more inclined to believe these assessments than the word of a government spokesman.

"The work done within the administration has to, by definition, be at arms length," Raymond wrote in an Aug. 29, 1983, memo.

In foreign countries, the CIA often uses similar techniques to create what intelligence operatives call "the Mighty Wurlitzer," a propaganda organ playing the desired notes in a carefully scripted harmony. Only this time, the target audience was the American people.

[...]

But these ad hoc propaganda tactics of the 1980s didn’t go away.

With the investment of billions of dollars over the next two decades, the strategy grew into the permanent conservative media machine that we know today, a vast echo chamber to amplify conservative messages on TV, in newspapers, through magazines, over talk radio, with book publishing and via the Internet.

This media machine gives conservatives and Republicans a huge political advantage both during elections and between elections. It has even changed how Americans perceive the world and what information they rely on to make decisions.

The clout of this conservative media machine explains why millions of viewers to Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News believe "facts" that aren't facts, such as their stubborn beliefs that the Bush administration did find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was collaborating with al-Qaeda in the Sept. 11 attacks.

These days, a large number of Americans are fed a steady diet of conservative propaganda disguised as information – and millions more are influenced by the conservative messages that pervade TV, radio and print.

There's much more. Go read the whole thing. Money, Media & the Mess in America

And, speaking of "perception management", CNN puddle muddler Wolf Blitzer teams up with Howie fuddle-scut Kurtz for a little CNN whorehouse glee club benefit performance on behalf of Jeff Porn-Cannon Gannon, or Guckert, or whatever the hell his name is. Digby has the transcript up in case you missed their act earlier in the evening.

*

The Bush legacy:

More than 200 Texas children died from abuse or neglect in the past fiscal year, up 11 percent from the previous year and double the number from a decade earlier, according to the state Department of Family and Protective Services.
(via AP)

Culture of life, my Aunt Fanny.

Obviously, all the proposed cuts in Lord Bush's budget (Amtrak, etc.) are a distraction—but from what?

You know, I'm amazed that the idea of the rancid heart of the Republican party turning fascist—the F word—has finally been, well, transmitted into the mainstream. I would have thought that the LRWM immune system was stronger than that, but apparently it isn't. We've been flogging this idea, with images, polemics, history, sick jokes, and umlauts for two years—as the essential Orcinus has been through true scholarship—and now it looks like success is in our grasp.

Not the end. Not even the beginning of the end. But perhaps the end of the beginning.

Nice:

"They're not going to frighten me. You know, they call me an obstructionist -- they're destructionists."
(via CNN from Kos)

Destructionists. I like it. "Over and over and over again my friend..."

NOTE Though lose that negative "They're not...." The unconscious doesn't do Boolean values.

According to AP:

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said Wednesday it will close a Canadian store whose workers are on the verge of becoming the first ever to win a union contract from the world's biggest retailer.

They say those unreasonable unionists are causing the store to lose money by demanding things.

The union's demands would have forced the retailer to add 30 people to the existing payroll of 190, and guarantee many workers additional hours, he [Andrew Pelletier, a spokesman for Wal-Mart Canada] said.

"In our view, the union demands failed to appreciate the fragile conditions of the store," he said.

W-why, these stores are practically on the verge of going under! Can’t they see that? What, do they expect to actually make a living at this?

Hey, remember when Wal-Mart’s meatcutters organized? Good old Sam eliminated all meatcutting positions, and went to prepackaged meats only.

Ain’t capitalism grand? It’s a great McWorld we live in. Yup.

Grow yer own.

More and more DIY journalism over at KOS (and since the journalists won't do it, we have to):

[AMBASSADOR JOSEPH WILSON] I did not like fascists when I fought them as a diplomat for 23 years and I don't like them now in my own country.

Don't like them? Why not? You can sit down and have a beer with them. Or maybe play with their loofah. After all, they're just entertainers, scholars, "Paid Policy Advocates"... And torturers (but they only torture non-Christians).

So what's not to like? Let's be reasonable, now.

UPDATE Extremely and justifiably alert reader Tinfoil Hat Boy comments:

There's a great way for Dems to frame this without getting tarred with the shrieks of the right saying we compared Bush to Hitler.

"I don't know if I would use the word fascist, but I do know that this Administration often wraps itself in the flag, brands opponents as traitors, relies heavily on propaganda for dissemination of its ideas, invokes subversive enemies (at home and abroad), embraces militarism and permanent war, favors expansion of the surveillance powers of the state, scorns intellectuals, etc.

Now you may want to call that fascism - I call it a threat to freedom and democracy."

I don't care about shrieks from the Paid Policy Advocates—they will shriek no matter what we do. But I do care about getting people to listen whose minds have been warped by the $300 million a year the fascists spend on propaganda.

If we can't say "Fascist," can we say, say, Effhead?

Always nice to see team play:

Sen. John Kerry is contributing $1 million to the Democratic National Committee to support efforts by the next chairman, Howard Dean, in building grassroots support for the party at the state level.
(via AP)

Bush uses more of every American's tax dollars to pay for rallies that only Partei members can attend. And, Philadelphians, He's coming tomorrow to a location near you!

Tickets to the [Montgomery Community College] event are available to the public through the county's GOP headquarters, said Adam Gattuso, executive director of the Montgomery County Republican Committee. Residents can call 610-279-9300 to get tickets, he said.
(via Morning Call from The Amazin' Froomkin)

Citoyens! Give Adam a call and see if you can get in! Hey, maybe two times: First time, say you're a Democrat, second time a Republican... Think there'll be any difference in your treatment?

I hear the after-partei is going to feature a fabulous torchlight parade....

Of course, it's a "botch" only if you're a taxpayer, or a "beneficiary." If you're Big Pharma—not a Rush joke, really [rimshot]—you're laughing all the way to the bank:

The White House released budget figures yesterday indicating that the new Medicare prescription drug benefit will cost more than $1.2 trillion in the coming decade, a much higher price tag than President Bush suggested when he narrowly won passage of the law in late 2003.
(via WaPo)

What a surprise!

At a House Ways and Means Committee hearing, Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) taunted Treasury Secretary John W. Snow about the rhetorical discrepancies.

"If you're looking for a crisis, I would suggest you look at a crisis that was self-made in just last year, because the crisis exists in what's happened to Medicare by weighing it down," Emanuel said. "Those of us who told you it was going to cost twice as much were right."

Only in the SCLM would saying the simple truth be described as "taunting." Sigh...

Of course, one way to lower the price of the program would be to allow the Federal Government to use its massive purchasing power. (Why do you think Canadian drug prices are lower?) But the law—I wonder why?—expressly forbids that.

Nice to see Rahm Emanuel ripping John Snow a new one, too. More like this, please.

My, my, my…the BBC notes that freedom and democracy exports are rising. No trade deficit here:

...The former CIA officer acknowledged that some of the suspects sent to places such as Egypt could then be tortured.

But he said: "It wouldn't be us torturing them and I think there is a lot of Hollywood involved with our portrayal of torture in Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

"Human rights is a very flexible concept... It depends how hypocritical you want to be on a particular day."

Human rights campaigners, however, find it difficult to reconcile rendition with President Bush's claims of upholding the United Nations convention against torture. It says: "No state shall expel, return or exradite a person to another state where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture."

Mr Scheuer was among other ex-CIA officers who told File On 4 that as well as sending people to Guantanamo Bay, both the CIA and the US military were sending dozens of others to prisons in countries such as Jordan, Syria and Egypt.

Say, isn’t Syria an outpost of tyranny? Oh well. As Thomas Jefferson said, “human rights is very a very flexible concept, and must account for political reality—for instance, we’ll keep slavery legal and exterminate the Native peoples.” Oh, no, wait. He didn’t say that.

Around here, when the corporate-run jails get full, the overflow goes to Texas, where, for some reason, they always have room.

Human rights are apparently as flexible as reality to some folks.

Some days, I marvel that we can idealistically talk about human rights atall, without crying or laughing, or both, until the snot and tears cover us completely.

Our visiting lyric genius, MJS, has been inspired by Juan Cole to anthem-heights; it's an effort too fine to be left to the vagary of Halo-scanned comments.

ODE TO JUAN COLE

Show us how to bury the devil
So deep he can't get out
Paint a sign and we will follow
What you whisper we will shout

The knave bows to the power
The grinning skull behind the mask
Beyond the lightning and the thunder
And the questions never asked

(chorus)
They got the TV, the Radio
They got the highs, they got the low
They got the river, they got the stream
They're coming after our dreams
A pretty good scheme
A pretty good scheme
A pretty good scheme
They're coming after our dreams

Show us how the coward cringes
Show us the ways the game is played
How they made poison from the honey
Here in the land of the brave

Take us to the mountain
We will spy the land below
The clarity and structure
Borne on the wind that flows

(chorus)
They got the TV, the Radio
They got the highs, they got the low
They got the river, they got the stream
They're coming after our dreams
A pretty good scheme
A pretty good scheme
A pretty good scheme
They're coming after our dreams.

And if I may piggyback on Xan's graceful shoulders, there was another passage in Professor Cole's post yesterday on the strange phenomenon of Goldberg-fils which makes a crucial point about the source of what is pernicious in so much of rightwing opinion.

Goldberg is now saying that he did not challenge my knowledge of the Middle East, but my judgment. I take it he is saying that his judgment is superior to mine. But how would you tell whose judgment is superior? Of course, all this talk of "judgment" is code for "political agreement." Progressives think that other progressives have good judgment, conservatives think that other conservatives have good judgment. This is a tautology in reality. Goldberg believes that I am wrong because I disagree with him about X, and anyone who disagrees with him is wrong, and ipso facto lacks good judgment.

An argument that judgment matters but knowledge does not is profoundly anti-intellectual. It implies that we do not need ever to learn anything in order make mature decisions. We can just proceed off some simple ideological template and apply it to everything. This sort of thinking is part of what is wrong with this country. We wouldn't call a man in to fix our plumbing who knew nothing about plumbing, but we call pundits to address millions of people on subjects about which they know nothing of substance.

But I did not say that Goldberg's judgment is always faulty. I said he doesn't at the moment know what he is talking about when it comes to Iraq and the Middle East, and there is no reason anyone should pay attention to what he thinks about those subjects, as a result. If judgment means anything, it has to be grounded in at least a minimum amount of knowledge. Part of the implication of my assertion is that Goldberg could actually improve his knowledge of the Middle East and consequently could improve his judgment about it (although increased knowledge would only help judgment if it were used honestly and analytically). I don't think he is intrinsically ignorant, I think he is being willfully ignorant. He'd be welcome to get a sabbatical and come study with me for a year some time.

Cole's observation here ties together so much we already know about the American right - the two decades plus attack on universities, the crucial institutions for validating intellectual knowledge, but having shown themselves insufficiently welcoming to explicitly rightwing propaganda, continue to be attacked for being too ideological; the establishment of a separate corporate-sponsored infrastructure by which ideologically approved "intellectuals" can be given accreditation and then media access, the constant association of expertise with elitism, the constant re-writing of recent history to fit a rightwing perspective, often in contravention of the most obvious facts, and finally the insistent charges of liberal/left bad faith in the form of nasty personal attacks pretending to be humor, and God save us, wit, and a willed ignorance of all other inconvenient facts and opinions that might get in the way of what one wants to believe.

What Jonah Goldberg tried to do to Professor Cole he does all the time to whomever he pleases. He's especially good when the person he's attacking is dead. Here's a sample of Goldberg's analytic prowress. His subject, the conscious choice not to be "American" by mainstream American journalists. That the pundits he talks about have said some fairly silly things doesn't make Goldberg any less silly, but what I'd like you to look at is this little throwaway paragraph:

And then there's the simple fact that elite journalists find patriotism itself unfashionable. One telling example: When the writer I.F. Stone died, Peter Jennings dubbed him a "journalist's journalist." The Los Angeles Times said he was "the conscience of investigative journalism."

Well, I.F. Stone was also a life-long Communist propagandist who apologized for Stalin's murders, praised North Vietnam, Castro and Mao while fraudulently accusing the United States of, among other crimes, using chemical weapons in Korea.

Now, I don't think our leading journalists share Stone's views. But there is a vestigial attitude, reflected in the fact that Stone is such a role model, which seems to hold that America is more likely to be wrong than right. When journalists' goal is complete neutrality, that's more than enough to tip the scales against America.

I.F. Stone was NEVER a Communist propagandist, he NEVER apologized for Stalin's murders, he was, in fact, an anti-Stalinist, although he was also deeply suspicious of the value of the cold war, he didn't praise North Vietnam, he told the truth about why they probably couldn't be defeated by American intervention, a truth that we were to find out later was exactly what the CIA was saying in the Pentagon Papers, and he didn't fraudulently accuse the US of anything in Korea, he wrote a book which has proved over the years to be wrong. On the other hand, I'll give Jonah that one if we can agree that every time anyone at The Corner is caught saying or writing anything that proves to be factually inaccurate we can sue the magazine for fraud. To get the taste of vomit out of your mouth, I suggest you take a look at Wikipedia's notated summary of Stone's career here.

When not attacking the dead, one of Jonah's favorite tropes is to attack straw. In this thumb-sucker of a column, he rightly and roundly jousts with lame arguments on behalf of rejecting SS privitization based on a sentimental reverence for the memory of FDR's legacy, an argument I've never heard, but which he claims he hears all around him. As with his attack on Stone, there is not a single link to a single fact or example of same. Joshua Holland at The Gadflyer did a proper evisceration of the column at the time, but what is most depressing to consider is the fact that the column didn't just go up at the National Review of Townhall, it was syndicated to the likes of the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Some commentators have wondered about the energy expended by a distinguished Professor to take on a critique by a source that is more recognizable as a nudge than as a journalist, a specialist in inaccuracy who mistakes breezy insults for analytic rigor, a pundit who practices ignorance by design. I'm sure it wasn't any actual fun for Dr. Cole. I'm glad he did take it on. I'm glad he stood up and said, very publicly, you're not going to get away with lying about me. I wish more of those who have public voices would do the same thing.

Jonah's last response to Dr. Cole is beyond contemptible; by turns incoherent, insulting, mendacious, and above all, terminally clueless as to the persona that Dr. Cole has established through his blog and his public appearances; Jonah seems to believe that he can convince the world that Juan Cole is who Jonah wants to believe he is, but Goldberg's characterizations of the good professor, (Manichean and messianic, for instance, and who believes Jonah came up with those two on his own, nor did Cole claim he was being personally silenced by Jonah, rather clearly he hasn't been), are laughable to any regular reader of "Informed Comment," as Jonah might have noticed, if he'd bothered to read so much as a single day's worth of the professor's output.

The one virtue I'll concede to Jonah Goldberg is that he has found the perfect vehicle to express the deep nature of his commitment and concern for the Iraqi people:

Anyway, I do think my judgment is superior to his when it comes to the big picture. So, I have an idea: Since he doesn't want to debate anything except his own brilliance, let's make a bet. I predict that Iraq won't have a civil war, that it will have a viable constitution, and that a majority of Iraqis and Americans will, in two years time, agree that the war was worth it. I'll bet $1,000 (which I can hardly spare right now). This way neither of us can hide behind clever word play or CV reading. If there's another reasonable wager Cole wants to offer which would measure our judgment, I'm all ears. Money where your mouth is, doc.

I cannot hope to add anything to that chilling moment of self-revelation.

UPDATE: It turns out I didn't need to add anything. Dr. Cole responds to that paragraph here.

Maya Marcel Keyes brings up an issue that gets, well, none, or very little, attention. Especially from the media glitterati.

In the International Herald Tribune two days ago was an article about gay homeless kids. It said something anyone who knows anything about life for homeless kids will have noticed - "as many as half of all homeless youth are lesbian or gay, many of them tossed out by parents who scorn homosexuality for a variety of reasons."

I've had three friends in the past few years who've been kicked out of their houses for no other reason whatsoever than being gay. Two of those three are dead now (one from leukemia - his parents didn't know he was sick at the time they tossed him out but even after finding out didn't want to help him; the other was murdered by a group of other street kids who left the knife they stabbed him with still sticking out of his body, pinning a sheet of paper to his chest that just said "FAG") and the third (prior to being kicked out he was a straight-A student, captain of the track team, 1500 SATs, who didn't touch drugs or cigarettes or alchohol and who was planning on staying a virgin until marriage) was raped by two men and beaten nearly to death within two weeks of being thrown onto the streets and is now a heroin-addicted prostitute who has starved himself down to about 70 lbs.

Privileged straight people rarely ever believe you if you tell them that so many kids get kicked out for being gay. They say things like, "Well he must have been [insert bigoted sterotypical all-queers-do-this activity here; eg., having tons of promiscuous sex, going out to clubs all night, taking drugs] and that's the real reason they did it." Which is total predjudiced garbage and even if your kids were doing any of the above what on earth will it help them forcing them into an environment where they're going to end up doing much worse just to stay alive? Most sane parents would try and help their kids if they found they were promiscuous addicts, not just throw them out like so much trash.

Saturday, February 05, 2005

Shymmer was kicked out of his house a few years ago, the summer after his junior year in high school, because he is gay and his parents are conservative. Sounds familiar?

But unlike me, Shymmer's parents aren't famous, and he didn't have a huge online community supporting him. So Shymmer, for the past few years, has been actually out on the streets. He did manage to finish high school (like me also, he was Ivy-League accepted, but never made it to college - he was in my graduating year, 2003) but since then has been wandering. Any of you who deal with street kids at all will know at least somewhat what the streets can do to people - after a couple years it has certainly taken its toll on Shymm. He went from a bright cheerful kid with a potentially bright future to something of a wreck, having been beaten, raped, and otherwise abused during his time on the streets more than I like to think about. He ended up here where I am - in Chicago - on heroin and selling himself, until Shiva brought him back to DC and he cleaned up. But even off heroin and with Skyzombie's roof over his head, all the abuse is hard to get rid of, and emotionally he's just not been in a good place.

[...]

I suppose that more than anything this has just reminded me even more why Bria and I for so long have wanted to start a GLBT youth center; a place where queer homeless kids especially can find support - run by people who actually know what it's like to be in their position...

*

Froomkin makes a good point. Why are the taxpayers funding Bush to fly around the country, when only people who sign loyalty oaths can get in to see him?

“Oil for guaranteed political power,” eh? The Shiite ticket is coming on strong, and United Press International reports that

Companies such as Shell, Exxon and Chevron are offering all sorts of pot sweeteners to get on a refinery short list, the official said. Each one wants a "one-off" production-sharing agreement that will make it worthwhile to deal with the volatility in Iraq, including a still-changing government.

Instead, U.S. advisers are recommending that the government write a petroleum law to keep things open and transparent. "One-off" deals create conditions that encourage corruption, the official said.
"If we go contract by contract, other companies will out-bribe the United States companies, and we will lose," the official said. "We want an fair, open, equal process, and U.S. companies have better technology."

No foreign company can own land or extract natural resources under rules written by U.S. administrators after U.S. troops came into the country in April 2003.

Also still up for discussion are existing extraction contracts such as one signed by former president Saddam Hussein with Russian giant Lukoil, which has now been joined by ConocoPhillips. The current interim government has said that contract is void, but a newly elected parliament expected to be seated by the end of the month, may think otherwise. Other deals are still up for grabs.

In the meantime, Ghadban [iWaq’s Oil Minister] and an interim government "ministers' council" have approved at least six smaller refineries in recent weeks. A 30,000 barrel-per-day "package refinery" will be built in Koysenja near the northern city of Suleiymania, officials say. Another one is slated for Koya, nearby. In northern Mosul, where recent fighting kept some polls closed on Election Day, a refinery is planned to deal with crude reserves, said Asim Jihad, an oil ministry spokesman.

In the south, a new 10,000 barrel-per-day refinery recently came online in Nasriyah. A 230,000 barrel-per-day refinery is to be built in Najaf, a Shiite Muslim religious site, and another in Musayab.

So, we make sure the Shia gain power, make sure the bidding process is “fair” (i.e., American companies get the contracts), and make sure that Najaf gets a refinery, too. (Hey, sorry about that whole holy shrine thing, y’know…oopsie!) (Now, of course, the Kurds get theirs, too, but autonomy? Well…) (And the Sunni are all okay with this because, well, heck, they lost the election fair and square…)

In other words, except for the whole ugly “royal family” thing (the Brits already tried that in their mideast colonies, recall), the “New iWaq” really looks a lot Saudi Arabia. Or is it more like Iran? Maybe there’ll be kinder, gentler imams and ayatollahs in the New iWaq. But this New iWaq will be where? In the south? North? My, my… who’d-a thunk it? Fighting over the oil carcass while others protect your interests. Where’d they learn behavior like that? Harken? Halliburton?

Juan Cole has an even-more-must-read-than-usual post up today. It's gotten a good amount of attention because of the conclusion of his evisceration of Jonah whatsisname (a hint on the outcome: in a battle of wits, Jonah is unarmed) but hidden down toward the end is one of the best summaries yet written of just why morons like Jonah, in their witless ramblings, are dangerous: they are serving as leading lemmings in our march to the cliffs:

Cranky rich people hire sharp-tongued and relatively uninformed young people all the time and put them on the mass media to badmouth the poor, spread bigotry, exalt mindless militarism, promote anti-intellectualism, and ensure generally that rightwing views come to predominate even among people who are harmed by such policies. One of their jobs is to marginalize progressives by smearing them as unreliable.

The corporate media failed the United States in 2002-2003. The US government failed the American people in 2002-2003. That empty, and often empty-headed punditry, which Jon Stewart destroyed so skilfully, played a big role in dragooning the American people into a wasteful and destructive elective war that threatens to warp American society and very possibly to end the free Republic we have managed to maintain for over 200 years. Already severe challenges to our sacred Constitution have been launched by the Right. Goldberg is a big proponent of "profiling," which is to say, spying on people because of their ethnicity rather than because of anything they as individuals have done wrong. That is only the beginning, if such persons maintain their influence on public discourse.

I'm not even sure where to begin with this post. So I guess I'll begin right here with this most recent item below which is posted to Digby's place: See Digby/The Last Temptation

With their usual up-is-downism, these are the same guys who claim that frivolous lawsuits are killing America. Evidently, it's only frivolous if somebody has been disabled for life. It's perfectly acceptable to use the courts to quell dissent.

Matt calls it Putinization. Neiwert calls it psuedo-fascism. I call it Republican totalitarianism. Whatever you call it, it's long past time that we started to speak out clearly about what is really happening here. Interestingly, some of the most pointed criticism of this nature is now coming from the right:

A reader alerted me to this fascinating article from this month's American Conservative in which yet another conservative goes off the reservation and utters the F word.

[SNIP] Several weeks later, Justin Raimondo, editor of the popular Antiwar.com website, wrote a column headlined, “Today’s Conservatives are Fascists.” Pointing to the justification of torture by conservative legal theorists, widespread support for a militaristic foreign policy, and a retrospective backing of Japanese internment during World War II, Raimondo raised the prospect of “fascism with a democratic face.” His fellow libertarian, Mises Institute president Lew Rockwell, wrote a year-end piece called “The Reality of Red State Fascism,” which claimed that “the most significant socio-political shift in our time has gone almost completely unremarked, and even unnoticed. It is the dramatic shift of the red-state bourgeoisie from leave-us-alone libertarianism, manifested in the Congressional elections of 1994, to almost totalitarian statist nationalism. Whereas the conservative middle class once cheered the circumscribing of the federal government, it now celebrates power and adores the central state, particularly its military wing.”

Ok, I guess that's as good a place to start as any. I pointed out this Raimondo column in a post I wrote about Paul Craig Roberts on Jan 19, 2005. Some of you may remember it. If not, and you'd like to read what I wrote then, it's here: Midnight In America.

In any case, what I wrote then isn't particularly important to this post aside from congratulating the Paul Craig Robert's and the Lew Rockwell's for finally emerging from whatever cloud cuckooland they were inhabiting. I don't buy Rockwell's contention that "the most significant socio-political shift in our time has gone almost completely unremarked, and even unnoticed." It certainly has'nt gone unremarked or unnoticed by many on the Left (including readers and writers here) for almost thirty years. But it's nice to see guys like Lew finally figuring it out for himself. Better late than never.

I also don't completely buy Rockwell's rosy good old days characterization of the "red-state bourgeois", whatever that is, as some kind of tragic lost innocence gone astray. Spare me that. Ok.

All that aside I'd like to get my two cents in here on what it is I think we have with respect to this New Order which seems to have arrived. And since I've been harping on this topic here and there since I began posting at Eschaton nearly two years ago I'd like to at least briefly summarize my thoughts on the matter.

Essentially, I'm gonna tell ya what I call it. Not that most people give a flying hot god-damned what I have to say on this matter - I suspect they do not - but that's ok too. I'll throw it out there for Corrente readers to make of it what they will.

Putinism. Psuedo-fascism. Republican totalitarianism.
What I think we have here - where we have arrived at - what I call it - is a stepping stone on a long path to some form of something very similar to Gen. Francisco Franco's Spain.

Francoism: A kind of hokey-pokey dance and high wire balancing act of varying right-wing ideologies and interests.

From populist nationalist right wing organizations, conservative Christian churches and ministries, and elitist (often laissez-faire "libertarian") corporatist special interests, to the Pax American power of the military industrial complex and the neoconservative movement today, this entire "fusion" of rightist interests resembles the key foundational elements that revolved around Franco's regime. Franco managed to position himself as a kind of central pivot orbited by multiple powerful like minded right wing ideological players.

Representative groups that played influential roles in Franco's Spain, and their current compares, included:

Falangists (fascism and radical pseudo-populist right wing nationalists) - Here you have what can be compared to todays radical "pseudo-fascist" populism of, lets say, the wing-nut radio right. Including some of the populist nationalist Christian Nation howlers, Neo-Confederates, Worldnut Daily types. And so on. Take a look at The American Falangist Party website if you like. You'll easily recognize what you'll find there. (URL: www.falange.us/faq.htm).

Monarchists/Militarists/Theocrats - Support for a constitutional monarchy was popular with many members of the military and those powerful moneyed elitists who argued for greater economic "liberalism". But not popular with Franco or the nationalist right wing factions and the conservative Catholic Church who saw messy representative democracy (and any kind of liberalism) as a danger to it's conservative traditionalist and nationalist theo-fascist styled patriarchal order. Franco was essentially a right wing military dictator. An authoritarian (and the object of heroic national renewal, strenght, and traditional grandeur, etc...), so any threat to that position was unacceptable to Franco himself. However, following WW2, as Falangist party favor waned due to the world's revulsion at Nazi fascism, Franco's alignments would ultimately be forced to adopt more a "liberal", "fee-market", economic stance in order to keep Spain engaged with the rest of post war Europe and America. Here you can make a similar compare to the strenght of the neoconservative, corporatist, militarist alignment. Throw in the ultra-conservative Opus Dei technocrat Catholic capitalistist intellectuals and you have the elitist "success" church (retaining conservative religious cultural values), meets corporatist business, meets militarist security state relationship, you see in America today.

So you have a kind of fusionist arrangement of pseudo-fascist nationalism and imperialistic glorification, ultra conservative religious traditionalism or fundamentalism, militarism, and corporatist elitist monarchism all orbiting a heroic figurehead. Sound familiar?

And, like most pseudo-fascist authoritarian ultra-conservative religious and corporatist elitist coalitions, liberalism, and "the left", as embodied in popular representative democracy, such as the one we thought we had in this country for a long time, are percieved as the ultimate enemy of the nation and the state. Aping the usual pre-WW2 conspiratorial boogeymen of fascist causes Franco would pose liberals, left secular so-called decadent culture, and representative democracy, alongside communism, as one of the greatest threats to Spains future.

That's where I think we may be in America toady. Especially when compared to old New Right alignments and the evolution of the conservative right-wing movement in this country since at least the late 1970's. With obvious refinements and updates of course. Except today, the kind of dictitorial authoritarian power once held by Franco alone, is more cooperatively distributed among the neoconservative clique and militarists and powerful multi-national corporatists. And their sympathetic elites. The decorative cultic figurehead we call a "leader" and embodied in the GOP and currently represented by president George W. Bush is relegated essentially to little more than a useful celebrated master of ceremonies. Or, the show-girl who jumps out of a cake from time to time. Wearing a cowboy hat and clutching a fourth of July sparkler and a bottle full of charismatic corn-fire and singing God Bless America. Love it or leave it.

Of course the morons of the land (for example, the "red-state bourgeoisie", to borrow a term), love it. It's like an endless stag (or halftime) party with beer and bunting and explosives and good old fashion Jesus shouting so called traditional 'Murican "family values". Give em a chance to hoot and holler and whoop it up and to essentially make a good deal of grunting noises on behalf of Jesus and bunting and explosives and boobies in general and they'll be eternally grateful at least from a practical useful idiotic perspective. They don't care who baked the cake or why there is some clown jumping out of it waving a bottle of moonshine around as long as its a good show and they're on the right side of the winning team and there's a big parade paid for by the bossman with plenty of saluting and marching about and everyone pretending that they'll be headed off to church services in the morning. It's an old story.

So thats it. Thats what it is. To me. In some context or another. I think. But who knows, maybe I'm just completely full of shit. I hope so. And I'm just kind of flinging this stuff out there at this point. So, if this hasn't been as carefully articulated as it should be, I apologize. Please let me know if you think I'm thrashing around in the weeds here.

In any case I think there is a lot more that can be said about this down the road and I'll try to throw up some more on this topic as soon as I can. There is just too much of it to run through in a single blog post. Like I said, I wasn't even sure where exactly to start with this one. And now I'm not sure how to end it. The fun never ends.

*

Pleasant dreams.

I know I've been harping on the problem of evil (back), and it isn't a popular meme; but it's real and important. Anyone who wants to think seriously about Abu Ghraib has to take the possibility and nature of evil into account.

As good liberals, we want to believe in human perfectibility; sometimes, I think, because we want so much to make things right, we believe that anything can be made right. But I'm afraid human nature, as revealed through history, is against us (the Holocaust; Pol Pot; the Irish potato famine, "Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees"). That's our problem of evil: we want to believe that evil is not real.

But conservatives—or should I say "conservatives"—believe so strongly that they are good, that they fall into the trap of believing that only others can be evil ("evil doers"). In fact, Christianity teaches that evil is an inherent part of the human condition; all of us are capable of; this is called original sin. That is the conservative's problem of evil: They want to believe that evil is only real in others (compare Winger Projection Syndrome.)

Interestingly, the problem of evil is now going mainstream. From The Times:

Western religious leaders, evolutionary theorists and psychological researchers agree that almost all human beings have the capacity to commit brutal acts, even when they are not directly threatened. In Dr. Stanley Milgram's famous electroshock experiments in the 1960's, participants delivered what they thought were punishing electric jolts to a fellow citizen, merely because they were encouraged to do so by an authority figure as part of a learning experiment.

In the real world, the grim images coming out of Iraq -the beheadings by Iraqi insurgents and the Abu Ghraib tortures, complete with preening guards - suggest how much further people can go when they feel justified.

Dr. Angela Hegarty, director of psychiatry at Creedmoor who works with Dr. Stone, said she was skeptical of using the concept of evil but realized that in her work she found herself thinking and talking about it all the time. In 11 years as a forensic examiner, in this country and in Europe, she said, she counts four violent criminals who were so vicious, sadistic and selfish that no other word could describe them.

One was a man who gruesomely murdered his own wife and young children and who showed more annoyance than remorse, more self-pity than concern for anyone else affected by the murders. On one occasion when Dr. Hegarty saw him, he was extremely upset - beside himself - because a staff attendant at the facility where he lived was late in arriving with a video, delaying the start of the movie. The man became abusive, she said: he insisted on punctuality.

Hmmm...

Of course, evil is a spiritual category, not to be confused with psychological categories like psychopathology or sociopathology. And it's dangerous to think about or study evil too much; it's like a toxic material that can't be handled without endangering the mind or the spirit.

That said:

Researchers have found that some people who commit violent crimes are much more likely than others to kill or maim again, and one way they measure this potential is with a structured examination called the psychopathy checklist.

As part of an extensive, in-depth interview, a trained examiner rates the offender on a 20-item personality test. The items include glibness and superficial charm,, grandiose self-worth, pathological lying, proneness to boredom and emotional vacuity.

Broken homes and childhood trauma are common among brutal killers; so is malignant narcissism, a personality type characterized not only by grandiosity but by fantasies of unlimited power and success, a deep sense of entitlement, and a need for excessive admiration.

It really is not a coincidence that the boy who blew up frogs with firecrakers is the man who mocks those he has the power to execute and the man who authorizes policies of torture.

POTL.

The one that was later debunked, of course. But at the time it seemed really really serious!

Let's ask the old question: Cui bono?

In this case, Republican Governor and possible presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who got priceless media coverage for [cough] keeping the citizens of Massachusetts safe:

But two government actions that evening reinforced the impression that something was up: Gov. Mitt Romney (R) cut his Washington trip short and flew back to Massachusetts. And the U.S. attorney in Boston released the names and photographs of the four Chinese suspects found in the border drop. Those photos were broadcast on local television stations that night and stripped across the front pages of the Boston newspapers the next morning.
(via WaPo)

So that would make the origin and motivation of the information that [cough] "somehow" leaked reasonably clear....

But the really interesting part of this story is (bien sur) buried:

The tipster failed to show up for a meeting with federal agents but delivered a package by tossing it over a border fence to a prearranged drop site. Inside were several documents, including three Chinese visas and a Chinese identification card. In all, the documents provided the names of 14 people, as well as photographs of four of them -- a level of detail uncommon to such blind tips.

So, um, the "tip" turned out to be a "hoax," a "prank"—but where did the package of documents come from?

What kind of government agency could forge visas, photos, and ID cards?

Oh, wait... I think it's coming to me...

Naah. Way way too far out in tinfoil hat territory. I mean, even if the CIA has been newly politicized by firing all the top staffers and replacing them with House Republican operatives ....

I mean, they would never do that, right?

Clinton appeared together with Deep Throat at Super Bowl XXXIX, and Clinton was great.

Yes, the heart operation has taken its toll, but now that Clinton's face is thinner, his eyes are much more powerful: Very blue, very sharp, very aware. Wiser.

He ran two great riffs (sorry, can't find the transcript: I just can't bring myself to type "Fox news" into Google advanced search).

When Clinton was asked who would win, he said he'd find it very hard to choose between Boston and Philadelphia "because they both voted for me." [rim shot]

And then, out of the midst of some on-air chaffing banality, came this Clinton riff about the Constitution: Something like ... The Constitution is great, and back when it was written, we thought some Americans were only 3/5 of a man. "But we fixed that," and that shows that "American can do anything."

Awesome. Democrats need to be using the word Constitution all the time—and Clinton linking that to both justice and the Can-Do American spirit...

Clinton truly is The Big Dog.

I know Clinton's had it tough, medically, and I'm sure Clinton doesn't want to take the spotlight away from Hillary, but —

The Dems need everyone on the field now. The Big Dog needs to come off the bench. Howard, as one of your first agenda items, figure out how to do that, OK?

Dick "Dick" Cheney:

Cheney acknowledged yesterday that the federal government would need to borrow trillions of dollars over the next few decades to cover the cost of the personal retirement accounts at the heart of President Bush's plan to restructure Social Security.

Appearing on "FUX News Sunday," Cheney said the government would have to borrow $754 billion over the next 10 years, and conceded that the price tag would involve borrowing trillions of dollars more in subsequent decades.

"That's right. Trillions more after that," Cheney said in response to a question.
(via WaPo)

So the concept is, that we borrow trillions of dollars and then gamble it on the stock market?

There's a nice letter in the always interesting and useful Times Letters to the Editor today:

To the Editor:

I have news for those sweet-talking ideologues who try to sugarcoat their plans to privatize Social Security by calling their proposed diversions to the stock market "personal" rather than "private" accounts ("A Spoonful of Sugar," editorial, Feb. 1).

Like millions of other older Americans, I already have a personal account. It delivers a guaranteed benefit check in my name every month and is identified by my personal Social Security number.

H. Jack Geiger
Brooklyn, Feb. 1, 2005

Heh.

Well, the Iggles have lost, and another Super Bowl Sunday comes to pass. I was kinda hoping the Eagles would win because I feel a kinship with Philadelphia what with the Corrente building being located in Philly and all. Plus, I'm sick of watching the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl. And, I don't like "dynasties." And, the logo on the NE Patriots helmets is cheesy. The Eagles have a better logo on their helmets. Those wings are pretty cool. I have no idea what that thing on the Patriot players helmets is but it looks like clip art to me and I'm against it. At least for now. The Eagles have a better color scheme too. Other than that, I didn't really care all that much who won as long as it was a good game and the Eagles won. Sure. You know how it goes.

I watched the game with Pete and Kitty Deer. Pete is a Bucks fan so he really didn't care who won either and and Kitty Deer likes the Rams which makes Pete angry and jealous. Pete is convinced that Kitty wants to fuck a Ram on some windswept rocky crest in the Grand Teton National Forest or somewhere elevated and photogenic like that and so he sulks whenever the subject of the Rams comes up. Kitty thinks its funny until Pete threatens to run off with a Denver Bronco cheerleader at which point Kitty tells Pete he can go hump on a wet Dolphin's blowhole for all she cares because she'll be flirting with Cowboys next year anyway. Ay yi yi. This goes on all the time with these two.

So I asked Pete and Kitty if either of them had ever been to Philadelphia or even in Pennsylvania for that matter. They said no they hadn't but Kitty Deer said that one of her sister's best friends had been run over by a tractor trailer on I-81 just south of Wilkes Barre near the Sugar Notch exit sometime back in the early 90's. I told Kitty I was sorry to hear that. Pete said Kitty's sister was a Lyme diseased slut who chased after 49'ers and Kitty told Pete he should consider jumping in front of a Ford Bronco full of cheerleaders at the earliest possible opportunity. I decided to go to the kitchen and refill the snack bowl with Crunchy 16.

By the time I got back Pete was desperatly yammering on about the Indianapolis Colt's cheerleaders and the Eagles had scored and things were looking up. I told Kitty and Pete that there was a city in Pennsylvania named Intercourse and that since I myself had actually experienced intercourse, on numerous occasions in fact, I felt a kind of solidarity with Pennsylvania in general. I told them that if Intercourse had a professional football team I would surely root for it every chance I had.

Kitty told me that the thught of two sweating naked human beings having intercourse with each other revolted her and that both Pete and I should be traded to the Packers for lunchmeat. Kitty's a regular laugh a minute.

Pete asked me what I thought would be a good name for a football team from Intercourse Pennsylvania and to be honest I wasn't sure. How 'bout the Gamecocks, I said. Which was pretty lame. Pete said, how 'bout The Missionaries! Which was even more lame. Kitty said, how about the Rams! Which made Pete mad again. I said, the Trojans, the Intercourse Trojans! And we all got a good yuck out of that one.

By this time the New England Patriots had scored once more and things weren't looking too good for the Eagles.

Some other lame team name ideas for the Intercourse franchise that we tossed around included: the Pistons (nah, taken). The Intercourse Pirates! (my favorite but again, already swooped up by another PA team). The Organs. The Slam. The Solicitor Generals. The Fuckeyes (heh, that would piss off those hicks in Columbus, Ohio). The Pussies. The Snatch. The Nittany Loins! At which point Kitty asked, what the fuck is a Nittany anyway? And, at which point, Pete and I just basically looked at each other and said, well fuck, what the fuck is a Nittany anyway? Pennsylvania was becoming a serious fucking mystery. And the Eagles looked doomed.

Before I knew what had happened the game was over and the Simpson's were on the TV and we'd nearly finished off the case of Buckhorn and the forty pound bag of Crunchy 16 that I'd purchased for the party. I suddently felt depressed. Here I was sitting on a couch, beside what amounted to two giant rodents, drinking cheap crappy canned beer, watching a cartoon, and trying to think up obscene names for a make believe football team from the Amish country of Pennsylvania. I felt doomed. There were'nt even any rogue boobies or shaved beaver close-ups or live anal sex action during this years half-time show. What the fuck is the professional sports world coming to? I wanted some LSD.

Pete and Kitty were both three pelts to the wind by this time and snorting at each other like a couple of rutting teenagers, and so, as teenagers will often do, bounded out the back door and off the back porch and into the far pasture where they screwed each other stupid under a crescent moon.

Like I said, I felt doomed. So I clicked over to MSNBC for some so called news and was greeted with eight hours of psycho narrative and old video clips about serial killers and rapists and child molesters and crazy doctors that poison their patients and disgruntled employees who shoot everyone at work because they are apparently disguntled about being poisoned by crazy doctors or something or other like that. And so on. Thats MSNBC's idea of "news" on the weekend. Jeezis Kee Ryst.

Did you know that Pennsylvania's state bird is the ruffed grouse? Yup. It's not the eagle at all. I don't suppose the Philadelphia Grouse would be much of a draw for most football fans in Philadelphia, but, I bet, assuming they didn't fly headlong into a windshield or a picture window at some point along the way, I bet, the Grouse could beat the shit out of the New England Chickadees any day. And, as they used to like to say in Boston, there's always next year. At least I think they used to say that in Boston. I really have no idea.

Hey? How about those Intercourse Twins!

*

Damn.

There goes the other wall.

The good guys played brilliant defense, but the offense made one too many bad decisions under pressure. The winners were all about margin: They parlayed small weaknesses into slightly less small gains, and at the end, the small gains added up to just enough. The margin was only three points.

Sounds a lot like the 2004 election, doesn't it?

Given that the good guys were Philly (sorry, Bostonians).

Man, though, it sure was weird seeing Bush Pere and Clinton together (Clinton was great). They shared a luxury box. I wonder if Bush Fils used Bush Pere to send the Dems any kind of message?

More information/files released pertaining to US intelligence service recruitment of Nazis following WW2:

From the National Security Archive at The George Washington University:

CIA and Nazi War Criminals
National Security Archive Posts Secret CIA History
Released Under Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 146
February 4, 2005

The documentation unearthed by the IWG reveals extensive relationships between former Nazi war criminals and American intelligence organizations, including the CIA. For example, current records show that at least five associates of the notorious Nazi Adolf Eichmann worked for the CIA, 23 other Nazis were approached by the CIA for recruitment, and at least 100 officers within the Gehlen organization were former SD or Gestapo officers. (Note 2)

IWG report May (2004) US Intelligence and the Nazis:

"The notion that they [CIA, Army Counterintelligence Corp, Gehlen organization] employed only a few bad apples will not stand up to the new documentation. Some American intelligence officials could not or did not want to see how many German intelligence officials, SS officers, police, or non-German collaborators with the Nazis were compromised or incriminated by their past service… Hindsight allows us to see that American use of actual or alleged war criminals was a blunder in several respects…there was no compelling reason to begin the postwar era with the assistance of some of those associated with the worst crimes of the war. Lack of sufficient attention to history-and, on a personal level, to character and morality-established a bad precedent, especially for new intelligence agencies. It also brought into intelligence organizations men and women previously incapable of distinguishing between their political/ideological beliefs and reality. As a result, such individuals could not and did not deliver good intelligence. Finally, because their new, professed 'democratic convictions' were at best insecure and their pasts could be used against them (some could be blackmailed), these recruits represented a potential security problem." (Note 3) - The CIA and Nazi War Criminals

A good deal has been written in the past about the Gehlen organization including its relationship to the ODESSA network. As Martin A. Lee observes: [ed note to below: Otto Skorzeny, SS and Gestapo, is one of the guys who helped rescue Mussolini, on behalf of Hitler, from his detention in an Abruzzi mountain ski resort in 1943.]

Skorzeny's ongoing association with gehlen was emblamatic of the pivotal alliances between ODESSA and the Org - and, by implication, the CIA asw ell. For many of those unsavory characters who constituted the ODESSA underground, Gehlen was the life raft; he was the one who commandeered the vehicle to rescue the comradeship. In the end, the most important service performed by the Org had little to do with gathering information for the CIA. "Gehlen's organization was designed to protect the ODESSA Nazis. It amounts to an exceptionally well-orchestrated diversion," maintains historian William Corson, a retired U.S. intelligence officer. (Martin A. Lee, The Beast Reawakens; pg. 44)

In later years, Skorzeny, then living in Spain, would adopt the Italian fascist terrorist Stefano delle Chiaie as one of his proteges. Chiaie would become a key player in a good deal of the nightmarish right wing terror that swept through Latin America. Helping orchestrate the "cocaine coup" in Bolivia, as well as assisting Pinochets DINA and d'Aubuisson's death squads in El Salvador.

Based in Latin America in the early 1980's, delle Chiaie also proffered his services to the fledgling Nicaraguan Contras in their war against the Sandinistas. At times he coordinated his efforts with the World Anti-Communist League, a neo-fascist umbrella organization that assisted U.S. intelligence operations in Latin America during the Reagan years. A CIA report during this period described the fugitive Italian as "the most prominent rightest terrorist...still at large." (Lee, The Beast Reawakens; pg. 189)

Chiaie, along with Klaus Barbie, are also credited with instructing mercenaries in the finer points of torture; especially during their service to the fascist military regime in Bolivia.

*

I wonder how many times this has happened that we don't know about?

On Tuesday, the Colorado Supreme Court heard argument on the issue of whether Harlan's death sentence was correctly overturned by a lower-court judge when it became known that Harlan's jurors researched biblical passages when not in deliberations and then brought at least one Bible into the jury room during sentencing deliberations in order to persuade one holdout juror to vote for death.

Adams County District Judge John Vigil noted at the time that "the biblical passages involved not only encouraged the death penalty but required that it be imposed when another life is taken. The passages also directed jurors to take guidance from and obey the government. They left jurors with no discretion." The passages cited - "fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth"; "whoever kills a man shall be put to death" - contradict Colorado's sentencing scheme in many ways.
(via Denver Post)

Again, how widespread is this?

The essential Orcinus has noted that gays are the new Jews. When the wingers finally take their eliminationist rhetoric seriously, and start murdering gays, will they then be freed by their Bible-clutching brethren on the jury?

More concretely: Is the "Christian" right infiltrating the jury system the way they have infiltrated the school boards?

UPDATE Googling around, I found this at once, which led me to the following Juror's Handbook:

Nor does any "law" forbid a jury from pardoning a man who violated an unjust statute, even if an acquittal requires them to ignore the court's instructions on the law. The Constitution does no such thing; it actually protects the jury's right to acquit based on their sense of justice. The penal code does not criminalize such conduct, and would be clearly unconstitutional if it did. Not even the Bible imposes any such rule. See Deuteronomy 16:20 ("Follow justice and justice alone"). If there is any such "law," it is true only in the narrow sense of illegitimate case law made up by judges acting well beyond the scope of their lawful authority.

The subtext here, of course, is Leviticus 20:13.

Following up on Dahr Jamail’s idea that the iWaq (s)elections were all about “oil for guaranteed political power,” the local Sunday fishwrapper blares an AP headline: “Facing Shiite landslide, insurgents step up attacks.” Read a little further down, and yes, indeed, it looks like the deal is done, the UIA is a lock.

And it looks like the Sunnis aren’t going to take it very well. Will the Kurds demand autonomy? How long until someone calls this a civil war brokered by the USA, which is what it is? And how will the US troops help secure American Oil in the coming months? With blood, naturlich.

Stay tuned. I’m sure the talking heads will be all over this.

Meanwhile Bushco, not content with assuring oil profits and tax breaks for their cronies, another headline announces that “Indian schools may be slashed” in this year’s budget. Oh dear, Indian Health Services, too? So much for SOIN. Well, heck—what’s another treaty violation or two among friends? Oh my, and lookie here—home heating aid for the poor will be slashed as well. Eat yer Alpo in the cold and dark, grandma and grandpa. And quit yer whining. There’s a war on, and everybody has to make sacrifices.

From CNN's coverage of the Iraq elections:


Triumph of will, eh? Or, in the original German, "Triumph des Willens". For those of you not quite what living in an irony free zone might imply, the Amazon page offers some detail:

Product Details

• Starring: Adolf Hitler, Hermann Göring, See more
• Director: Leni Riefenstahl
• Encoding: All Regions
• Format: Black & White, Widescreen
• Audio Encoding: Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
• Rated: NR

Encoding, "All regions"... No kidding... "Black and white"... No kidding....

You know, I've been flogging the "Triumph of the W" meme for some time: here (2004-11-05), here (2004-10-27), here (2004-10-18), here (2004-10-16), and here (2004-01-10), with some actual analysis by the inimitable farmer here.

But I never really expected to see this meme make the mainstream. But it has. It just shows that in America, if you work hard enough, your dreams will come true!

Except those dreams will come true in a nightmare, won't they? "Triumph of the Will" propagates in 2005, applied to Bush, but without irony, or historical context. Probably some young pup of a staffer at CNN....

I mean, it's not even "defining deviancy down," it's "defining deviancy über"... Or something...

UPDATE Alert reader degustibus is quite right: "Defining deviancy über..." Nice.

Uh oh, Dan Okrent's all excited. Apparently Ahmed Chalabi's girlfriend Judy let fly with a shocker whopper which wasn't really a shocker or much of a whopper at all but rather more like a sloppy hooter got loose from its hopper. And right on TV to booter. On a Sunday! Uh my gawd! And now she, Miss Judy, is off getting drunk in a motel room in Miami - or something - and Dan can't get a hold of her and her stepdad Mr. Keller won't let Dan see her or even talk to her and none of her friends is fessing up a thing. Christ, it's like a Gidget movie - or something.

Talking on the Air and Out of Turn: The Trouble With TV, By DANIEL OKRENT - February 6, 2005

LAST Sunday, Times reporter Judith Miller appeared on MSNBC's "Hardball With Chris Matthews" to discuss the Iraqi elections. In the course of the conversation Miller said sources had told her the Bush administration "has been reaching out" to the Iraqi political figure Ahmad Chalabi "to offer him expressions of cooperation." She continued, "According to one report, he was even offered a chance to be an interior minister in the new government." This led Matthews to interrupt Miller, exclaim "Wait a minute!" and press her to elaborate.

[...]

But to anyone who has tried to follow the jagged contours of Ahmed Chalabi's connections to the Bush administration, Miller's statement was a shocker.

Oh yeah sure, it was a real shocker. It was so shocking I decided to revisit the transcripts of Ahmed Chalabi speaking with Wolf Blitzer at CNN (about the election in Iraq) earlier on that same Sunday.

BLITZER: So, what happens to you now? What position would you like to see - you're on one of the main Shiite lists that supposedly is going to be doing very well. Would you like to be the next prime minister of Iraq?

CHALABI: I would like to be in the assembly. In the case I win, I would like to be in the assembly because I think the assembly is the power center in Iraq. It is the most important power center.

BLITZER: But are you hoping that the assembly, eventually when they have to name a new prime minister, are they hoping that it might be you?

CHALABI: I'm hoping clearly to influence issues in the assembly. The most important thing is the constitution and the status of forces agreement and the security, the finance. All these things are very important, and I expect to be involved in them.

[...]

BLITZER: Mr. Chalabi, what about your relationship with the Bush administration right now? It was once excellent in the weeks, month, years leading up to the war. It's deteriorated, as you know. Do you still speak with top U.S. officials, and if you do, with whom?

CHALABI: No, I don't speak to top U.S. officials. I have not (UNINTELLIGIBLE) they have. And I think this was a hostility to (UNINTELLIGIBLE) by various U.S. authorities, which is almost nonexistent now. Contacts at the low level have started, and I expect them to continue at this rate.

Ok, so Chalabi has not spoken to US officials. Then again, maybe he has talked to US officials. "Contacts" having begun at lower levels and all. Blitzer continues:

BLITZER: Are you bitter about the way this has turned out?

CHALABI: Not at all. This is just about normal. I'm not bitter at all. I don't look back. I want to look forward. And my role in Iraq now is in the assembly.

Ok, so early in the interview Chalabi "would like to be in the assembly" and was expecting to be involved with the assembly, but, by the end of the interview, he's announcing that his "role in Iraq now is in the assembly." Well, dip me in shit. What's it gonna be Ahmed? In or out? Make up your mind because you're letting flies into the kitchen.

So then, is Miller simply confirming what Chalabi alluded to on CNN? Are those "sources" who are "reaching out", as Miller termed it, the same low level contacts Chalabi is speaking of with Blitzer? And are those people who "offered" Chalabi "a chance to be an interior minister in the new government", as Miller stated, also the same contacts Chalabi mentions? Well, Okrent? What does the Times know about that? Chalabi seems pretty confident that he's going to be sitting at that "power center" by the time he finishes talking with Wolf Blitzer hours before Miller appears on Hardball. Awright, let's let Okrent continue...

This piece of news hadn't appeared in The Times that morning; it didn't appear in The Times the next morning; as I write this column, on Friday, it still hasn't appeared. A lengthy analysis of the election aftermath by reporter Dexter Filkins, published Tuesday, didn't even hint of any current contact between Chalabi and the Bush administration.

Oooops! Danny boy, buy a fucking television! Sign up for cable! Check out transistor radios while yer at it. They're really neat too. And then, if ya have some time go read the CNN transcript from Sunday Jan 30: Wolf Blitzer

Okrent thrashes on:

Judging by their absence from the paper, one must conclude that either Miller's Chalabi revelations were wrong or unsubstantiated or that The Times is suppressing an important piece of news. If the first, the paper has suffered a blow to its credibility: Matthews introduced Miller as "an investigative reporter for The New York Times." The ID on the screen said "Judith Miller, 'The New York Times'." At five separate points in the show Matthews invoked her connection to The Times, as any host would.

Oh for Christ sake shut the fuck up with the paranoia and self important bellowing about suppressing an important piece of news etc. You fuckers at the NYT have been burying important pieces of news for years. Who do you think you're kidding. The problem is that your newspaper all too frequently has had its head up its own ass staring at its own glistening intestinal tract as if it were the greatest shit fit to print. That's part of the NYTimes credibility problem. It has no idea what the fuck is going on around it. The New York Times needs to PULL ITS HEAD OUT OF ITS OWN ASS and open a fucking window and let in some fresh air for a change.

Okrent rambles on becoming more excited and melodramatic:

If there's an act of suppression going on, the price is of course incalculable. But I don't remotely think that is the case. I've been able to determine with a very high degree of confidence that editors in the two departments most likely to have an interest in Miller's Chalabi assertions were unaware of them. (Miller was away from New York this week, and did not respond to messages I left on her office phone, her cellphone, and on e-mail. Executive editor Bill Keller declined to discuss the matter. "I'm sorry to be unhelpful on this one, but Judy faces a serious danger of being sent to jail for protecting a confidential source," Keller told me in an e-mail message. "I think this is not the time to be drawn into unrelated public discussions of Judy.")

Aw no. It's turned into a caper.

Look, any moron at the NYTimes who thinks that the Bush administration and its numerous spooky vassals from any number of spooky sources - be it CIA, Pentagon, NED, IRI, NDI or any other number of government and or covert networks operating on its behalf - haven't been in touch with Ahmed Chalabi and/or his associates is truly deluded. They should have their pencil sharpeners confiscated immediately. For God sake again. This is old stuff and it goes back to the Reagan administration's creation of covert quasi-private back channels for the purpose of manipulating elections all over the globe. Ever heard of the NED (National Endowment for Democracy)? What do you think George W. Bush was talking about during his Jan 2004 SOTU when he said:

As long as the Middle East remains a place of tyranny and despair and anger, it will continue to produce men and movements that threaten the safety of America and our friends. So America is pursuing a forward strategy of freedom in the greater Middle East. We will challenge the enemies of reform, confront the allies of terror, and expect a higher standard from our friend. To cut through the barriers of hateful propaganda, the Voice of America and other broadcast services are expanding their programming in Arabic and Persian - and soon, a new television service will begin providing reliable news and information across the region. I will send you a proposal to double the budget of the National Endowment for Democracy, and to focus its new work on the development of free elections, and free markets, free press, and free labor unions in the Middle East. And above all, we will finish the historic work of democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq, so those nations can light the way for others, and help transform a troubled part of the world. (Applause.) ~ George W. Bush (SOTU Jan 20, 2004) White House.gov

The NED, Dan.

They fuck with other people's elections, and every other thing they can get their hooks into. That's their spooky mission.

Controversial U.S. Groups Operate Behind Scenes on Iraq Vote - by Lisa Ashkenaz Croke and Brian Dominick

Washington-funded organizations are hard at work providing assistance to political campaigns in the lead up to next month’s nationwide elections, but critics suggest their participation is anything but benevolent.

Dec 13, 2004 - Even as the White House decries the ominous prospect of Iranian influence on the upcoming Iraqi national elections, US-funded organizations with long records of manipulating foreign democracies in the direction of Washington’s interests are quietly but deeply involved in essentially every aspect of the process. [continue reading: New Standard News]

Seems pretty likely secret agent Judy probably knows more than she's lettin' on. What exactly that is, is another matter. And that's probably why you can't find her, Dan. Who knows? Maybe she's in Wellfleet watchin' the tide go in and out. But WTF, everyone else knows this kind of shit goes on all the time. So go chase after Vin Weber. Maybe he'll tell ya all 'bout how it works. And buy a friggin' television while yer at it.

*

Last year, I watched the Eagles get beat in a big hotel lobby downtown with two ladies who lunch in from the 'burbs on SEPTA and a homeless person. A waitress kept coming round asking us all, including the street person, if there was anything she could get us, but this was while I was still unemployed, thanks to the Republicans in Congress, so I had no money, and kept cadging the free peanuts from the bar...

This year I hope it's the same: With at least one exception—oh, wait, let me not jinx them, please Jeebus...

UPDATE Alert reader Matt Davis writes:

Look, Lambert.

The best thing you can do to avoid jinxes is to focus on the Eagles' potential to lose because of last year.

Go Iggles!

And that's what I'm doing, Matt, thanks to your helpful advice. Go Iggles! Right down the crapper, as usual. Fuckin' chokers.

Philadelphia, that is. From the town where booing fans pelted Santa Claus with snowballs:

When [Andy Reid] finally got to Philadelphia the next day, there were introductions to be made, offices to be arranged, and assistant coaches to consider, along with the countless small details that go with starting a new football regime.

It was late evening when an exhausted Reid started out in search of a meal, along with Butch Buchanico, a team official.

As they finally sat down in a South Philadelphia restaurant, in walked a priest. Recognizing the Eagles' newest hire, he offered Reid his blessings.

As the priest moved on, he was stopped by a large group at a nearby table and asked why he had bestowed his prayers on the large gentleman with the big, bushy mustache.

Informed that man was the new coach of the Eagles, they booed in Reid's direction.
(via LA Times)

See, Philly is a many-splendored thing. There's more to us, much more, than competitive eating!

Poor, poor Jonah.

I've got sympathy for him, of course. "Never send a boy to do a man's job," and all.

The man in the grey turtleneck eviscerates poor Jonah—or would have, if Jonah possessed viscera.

Folks, there's good news tonight!

With religious Shiite parties poised to take power in the new constitutional assembly, leading Shiite clerics are pushing for Islam to be recognized as the guiding principle of the new constitution.

Exactly how Islamic to make the document is the subject of debate.

At the very least, the clerics say, the constitution should ensure that legal measures overseeing personal matters like marriage, divorce and family inheritance fall under Shariah, or Koranic law. For example, daughters would receive half the inheritances of sons under that law.

On other issues, opinion varies, with the more conservative leaders insisting that Shariah be the foundation for all legislation.

Such a constitution would be a sharp departure from the transitional law that the Americans enacted before appointing the interim Iraqi government led by Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. American officials pressed Iraqi politicians drafting that law in early 2004 to guarantee equal rights for women and minorities. The Americans also persuaded the authors to designate Islam as just "a source" of legislation.

That irked senior Shiite clerics here, who, confident they now have a popular mandate from the elections, are advocating for Islam to be acknowledged as the underpinning of the government. They also insist that the Americans stay away from the writing of the new constitution.
(via Times)

Great news, right? 1000 and counting American dead, 100,000 and counting Iraqi dead, but it's all worth it: The country will be governed by religious law!

Praise Jeebus!

Judge Roy Moore will be proud! Not to mention Fat Tony.

Oh, wait. Wrong religion. And wrong God. After all, our God is bigger than their God ....

As I said of the SOTU, "This means war." (back)

WASHINGTON -- Senate Republican leaders have decided to begin their use of the "nuclear option." Associate Justice Janice Rogers Brown of the California Supreme Court was one of 16 Bush nominees for U.S. appellate courts whose confirmation was prevented by Democratic filibusters in the last Congress. With Republicans still short of the 60 senators needed to limit debate, the nuclear option will seek to confirm judges with a simple majority vote through parliamentary maneuvers.
(via Town Hall)

And useful idiots like Kristof think the Dems should go first on Social Security to give those moderate Republicans cover?

I don't think so, since the Republicans are clearly going to ram through whatever they have the power to do.

Never mind that it's taxation without representation for half country minus Bush's 100,000 margin in Ohio.

From Omaha:

"Moocher!" a Bush supporter yelled [at a privatization protester].
(via Omaha World Herald)

That's what Bush supporters believe in their hearts.

Never mind that I paid into the system to support my mother and father—and yours, and the Bush supporters. That's "mooching."

Fuck 'em.

They want Momma on the couch why, exactly?

The Times had the story that ultimately ran in Salon, but spiked it.

The poor old Times. Morally bankrupt. And they still think they're the good guys.

To refresh your memory.

The Bulgegate story originated when a number of alert viewers of the first presidential debate noticed a peculiar rectangular bulge on the back of Bush’s jacket [back]. That they got to see that portion of his anatomy at all was an accident; the Bush campaign had specifically, and inexplicably, demanded that the Presidential Debate Commission bar pool TV cameras from taking rear shots of the candidates during any debates. Fox TV, the first pool camera for debate one, ignored the rule and put two cameras behind the candidates to provide establishing shots.

Photos depicting the bulge and speculating on just what it might be (a medical device, a radio receiver?) began circulating widely around the Internet, and several special blog sites were established to discuss them. The suspicion that Bush had been getting cues or answers in his ear was bolstered by his strange behavior in that first debate, which included several uncomfortably long pauses before and during his answers. On one occasion, he burst out angrily with "Now let me finish!" at a time when nobody was interrupting him and his warning light was not flashing. Images of visibly bulging backs from earlier Bush appearances began circulating, along with reports of prior incidents that suggested Bush might have been receiving hidden cues (London Guardian, 10/8/04).

Finally, on October 8, this reporter ran an investigative report about the bulge in the online magazine Salon, following up with a second report (10/13/04)—an interview with an executive of a firm that makes wireless cueing devices that link to hidden earpieces—that suggested that Bush was likely to have been improperly receiving secret help during the debates.

At that point, Dr. Robert M. Nelson, a 30-year Jet Propulsion Laboratory veteran who works on photo imaging for NASA’s various space probes and currently is part of a photo enhancement team for the Cassini Saturn space probe, entered the picture. Nelson recounts that after seeing the Salon story on the bulge, professional curiosity prompted him to apply his skills at photo enhancement to a digital image he took from a videotape of the first debate. He says that when he saw the results of his efforts, which clearly revealed a significant T-shaped object in the middle of Bush’s back and a wire running up and over his shoulder, he realized it was an important story.

But the Times spiked the story. John Schwartz, the reporter working the story tells us why in an email to Nelson:

Subject: Re: reanalysis of debate images more convincing than before
Dear Dr. Nelson,
Thanks for sticking with me on this. I don’t know what might convince them—and the bar is raised higher the closer we are to the election, because they don’t want to seem to be springing something at the last moment—but I will bring this up with my bosses.

As usual, (back) "political" means anything that would alter a frame—here, the frame that Bush is plain spoken man of integrity, not a sock puppet taking orders from unseen handlers. "Not political" is whatever does not alter, or reinforces, an existing frame. The term of art at the Times for "not political" is "balanced."

It's easy to see how at the top editors at the Times, having bought into this ideology, can't think or act as a news gathering organization any more: Facts can only be raised as issues when it doesn't matter. You'd think that the most important time to bring up new facts would be during an election, but no, that would be "springing something," "political." One obvious symptom of this was in their recent massively researched multipart series on... Railroad crossing accidents. Social Security? No. The state of the constition? No. Whack? No. Intelligence? No. Loose nukes? No. The environment? No. Railroad crossing accidents. Nope, can't lose your balance writing about that!

Unbelievable? All too believable.

Anybody got any photos of Bush's back at the Alpo Accounts partei rallies?

UPDATE From alert reader Felix: Hmmmm.....

Just a question for any anti-Dean forces out there.

Here's the Republican concept of administering a public trust, as shown during electricicty deregulation:

Enron Corp. traders conspired to shut down a healthy power plant as blackouts rolled across California in early 2001, according to documents released Thursday.

In the brash language that has become a familiar coda to the electricity crunch, Enron traders and others were captured discussing in e-mail messages and telephone conversations how they could profit from the state's problems.

That set of tapes, in which traders chanted "burn baby burn" and gloated about inflating costs for "Grandma Millie" in California, inflamed the simmering controversy.
(via LA Times)

Of course, I'm sure this will never happen with Bush's Alpo Accounts—I have complete faith in the integrity of the financial industry and its brokers, and I'm sure that "Grandma Millie" will be in very good hands.

This time.

From smartone in comments at the Washington Monthly:

The Democrats do have a plan for Social Security: They implemented it 70 years ago and it's still working.

Not bad. Readers?

I love it that Philly hosts a top event in the sport (?) of competitive eating: The Wing Bowl.

A world-class event in a world-class city!

Why, then, is Philadelphia only #2 on the list of the top 25 fattest American cities?!

Fuckin' chokers...

In comments, alert reader Marine's Girl reminds us that our stooge Allawi is a cousin of Judith "Kneepads" Miller's little friend, Chalabi. Here's the link: AP.

They're not exactly kissing cousins, but they were both united in sucking us into Whack by feeding the malAdministration false WMD evidence, Allawi with the false 45 minute claim.

Leave no 13,000-square-foot mansion behind. Via NYTimes (no login required):

Top White House Chef Is Leaving
By MARIAN BURROS

WASHINGTON, Feb. 4 - Unlike members of the White House staff who maintain the fiction that resigning was their decision, the executive chef, Walter Scheib 3rd, minced no words Friday in saying he had been fired.

"We've been trying to find a way to satisfy the first lady's stylistic requirements," Mr. Scheib said in a telephone interview, "and it has been difficult. Basically I was not successful in my attempt."

Mr. Scheib sensed a change afoot, he said, when Cathy Fenton was succeeded as White House social secretary last month by Lea Berman, the wife of Wayne Berman, a wealthy contributor to the Republican Party. Mrs. Berman is a well-known Washington hostess who entertains in a 13,000-square-foot Embassy Row mansion.

"Clearly with the new social secretary, there is a new set of eyes and a new vision," said Mr. Scheib, whose imminent departure was first reported Friday by The Washington Post. "She is a very hands-on social secretary, very involved with all aspects of food, flowers and décor. She clearly has a mandate."

Meet the Berman's:

Husband and wife Wayne and Lea Berman are both Bush Pioneers, although Wayne suspended his 2000 Pioneer activities to comply with a federal probe into his ties to ex-Connecticut treasurer Paul Silvester. Silvester, who received major campaign donations from Pioneers Herbert Collins, Thomas Foley, Hank Greenberg and Peter Terpeluk, was convicted in 1999 of taking kickbacks from the private money managers to whom he awarded contracts to invest state pension funds (Pioneer Christopher Burnham was Silvester’s predecessor). Berman, who was one of the first President Bush’s assistant commerce secretaries, snagged a $500,000 “finder’s fee” for helping Pioneer Hank Greenberg’s AIG Capital Partners land a contract to invest $100 million of these pension funds. After Silvester lost a 1998 campaign, he went to work for Park Strategies lobby firm, which Berman started in 1999 with Pioneer Alfonse D’Amato (see also David Albert). Berman lobbied for two other firms that won big investment contracts from Silvester: PaineWebber (see Joseph Grano) and the Carlyle Group (see Robert Grady), which retained the first President Bush as a senior advisor. After the Connecticut scandal, President-Elect George W. Bush appointed Berman to his 2000 Commerce Department transition team. Berman has lobbied for the plaintiff firm Scruggs Millette Lawson Bozeman & Dent, which led state lawsuits against the tobacco industry. Berman also lobbied for Flo-Sun, the sugar company owned by the “First Family of Corporate Welfare.” The Fanjul family (see Jose Fanjul) has such extraordinary political access that President Clinton took a call from Alfonso Fanjul[*see below*] during a tryst with Monica Lewinsky. The Bermans paid $4.5 million in 2000 for the 13,000-square-foot Embassy Row mansion of art collector Paul Mellon. “We’re Anglophiles and we just liked the traditional Georgian nature of the house,” explained Lea Berman. The home boasts eight bedrooms and seven fireplaces.

Name - Mr. & Mrs. Wayne & Lea Berman
Appointed To - Commerce transition
Industry - Lawyers & Lobbyists
Employer - Berman Enterprises, Inc.
Occupation - Owner
Address - Washington, DC 20016
Status for 2000 - Raised at least $100,000
Status for 2004 - Ranger
Info Link

The fabulous family Fanjuls:

A 1998 Time Magazine expose dubbed the Fanjuls "the First Family of Corporate Welfare." The Fanjuls get about $64 million a year from U.S. taxpayers because Tio Sam guarantees U.S. sugar producers a price that is double the world-market price.~ more on the Fanjul's

So take that all you forty two thousand dollar per year pissant public high school home ec. teachers milking the public teat! Aren't ya glad ya voted for plain-spoke reglar' folk like Gee Dubya and the little librarian homemaker misses. Wait till the Berman's and their pals get their hooks into your commie teacher union pension funds! Bwahahahahaha. Enjoy your retirement dinner of diced Nine Lives mackerel etoufee you fucking servile jangle-witted sugar junkie morons!

Oh yeah, go ahead, call meeeee an "elitist". Heh. Indeed.

*

Hey, Dobson, what say me and you and Jesus Christ buy us a twelve pack of Coors and round up Marge, that education secretary slut, and drive around lookin' for some fag cartoon charcacter ass to kick? What ya say? Beats sittin' around playin' Moby records backwards or watching those scared little PBS mice shivering in the corner.

What makes this story more insidious still is the glaring reality that the most prominent Republican lesbians in America are Mary Cheney, a former gay and lesbian marketing liaison for Coors beer, and her partner, Heather Poe, who appeared as a couple in public and on TV during the presidential campaign. That Ms. Spellings would gratuitously go after this specific "lifestyle" right after taking office is so provocative it smells like payback specifically pitched at those "pro-family" watchdogs who snarled at the mention of Ms. Cheney's sexual orientation during the campaign whether it was by John Kerry or anyone else. Surely Ms. Spellings doesn't believe in discrimination against nontraditional families: by her own account, she was a single mother who had to park her 13-year-old and 8-year-old children in Austin when she first went to work at the White House. Then again, President Bush went on record last month as saying that "studies have shown that the ideal is where a child is being raised by a man and a woman" (even though, as The New York Times reported, "there is no scientific evidence that children raised by gay couples do any worse").

That our government is now both intimidating PBS and awarding public money to pundits to enforce "moral values" agendas demonizing certain families is the ugliest fallout of the campaign against indecency. That campaign cannot really banish salaciousness from pop culture, a rank impossibility in a market economy where red and blue customers are united in their infatuation with "Desperate Housewives." But it can create public policy that discriminates against anyone on the hit list of moral values zealots. Inane as it may seem that Ms. Spellings is conducting a witch hunt against Buster or that James Dobson has taken aim at SpongeBob SquarePants, there's a method to their seeming idiocy: the cartoon surrogates are deliberately chosen to camouflage the harshness of their assault on nonanimated, flesh-and-blood people.

Frank Rich, making up for Elisabeth Bumiller's pointless tail pipe emissions . Read on: The Year of Living Indecently/NYTimes (no login required)

I know, The Great Cartoon Character Scare of 2005 is getting old. But still, gotta give Frank Rich credit for rubbing their stupid blue noses in it once again.

*

The New York Times actually pays for this kind of obnoxious ostentatious bullshit?: (No login required)

ELISABETH BUMILLER/NYTimes - February 6, 2005

Oooo, that snotty elitist liberal media.

*

Dammit, put my fist through the wall again.

Could any statement be more revealing of the moral bankruptcy of today's Republican party, and Bush, its leader? (SOTU)

Here's some easily accessible information on asbestos:

Strong concerns about the health hazards associated with asbestos had been described many times over the years. As early as 1898 the Chief Inspector of Factories of the United Kingdom reported to the Parliament in his Annual Report about the "evil effects of asbestos dust". He reported the "sharp, glass like nature of the particles" when allowed to remain in the air in any quantity, "have been found to be injurious, as might have been expected" (Report of the Select Committee 1994). In 1906 a British Parliamentary Commission confirmed the first cases of asbestos deaths in factories in Britain and recommended better ventilation and other safety measures. In 1918 an American insurance company produced a study showing premature deaths in the asbestos industry in the United States and in 1926 the Massachusetts Industrial Accidents Board processed the first successful compensation claim by a sick asbestos worker.

The fine asbestos fibres are easily inhaled, and can cause a number of respiratory complaints, including a potentially serious lung fibrosis called asbestosis. Exposure to asbestos has also been determined to cause a very serious form of cancer, mesothelioma, that occurs in the chest and abdominal cavities. This aggressive disease is not properly referred to as a lung cancer, as the malignant cells are derived from the mesothelium, a tissue found on the inner walls of the chest and abdominal cavities and on the outer surface of the lungs rather than in the lung itself.

Asbestos is carcinogenic. In the United States alone, it is estimated that ten thousand people die each year of asbestos-related diseases

10,000 deaths a year. Mighty frivolous! Whack isn't the real war at all, is it?

such as mesothelioma, asbestosis, lung cancer, and gastrointestinal cancer. Asbestos has a synergistic effect with tobacco smoking in the causation of lung cancer.
(via Wikipedia)

Here are some of the symptoms of mesothelioma, from the NIH (still allowed to publish scientific information, even now):

Symptoms of mesothelioma may not appear until 30 to 50 years after exposure to asbestos. Shortness of breath and pain in the chest due to an accumulation of fluid in the pleura are often symptoms of pleural mesothelioma. Symptoms of peritoneal mesothelioma include weight loss and abdominal pain and swelling due to a buildup of fluid in the abdomen. Other symptoms of peritoneal mesothelioma may include bowel obstruction, blood clotting abnormalities, anemia, and fever. If the cancer has spread beyond the mesothelium to other parts of the body, symptoms may include pain, trouble swallowing, or swelling of the neck or face.

Pain; thinning blood; choking; fever: Cancer. Mighty frivolous!

Of course, Dick "Dick" Cheney, in a brilliant business move, had Halliburton purchase Dresser industries, encumbered with asbestos lawsuits at the time. Read what happened next:

Let's talk about Halliburton's well-executed $5 billion escape from its asbestos problems, most of which Cheney created when he orchestrated Halliburton's purchase of Dresser Industries in 1998. Few people connect this problem with Cheney, but they should, given that he was in charge at the time and got a raise as a result of buying Dresser.

$5 billion. From the courts the Republicans have already stacked with wingers. Mighty frivolous!

Now that Halliburton has managed to extract itself from its asbestos liability by paying a ton of cash and stock to trusts that will compensate victims and their lawyers, we can get a handle on how much Dresser's piece of the problem cost Halliburton. It turns out to be almost as much as Halliburton paid for the company.
(via WaPo)

Cheney, through Bush, naturally tried to make Halliburton's asbestos problem go away by using the Republican Congress as a sock puppet:

I give [Halliburton's current management] big credit for dealing with the problem rather than awaiting a miracle [cough] rescue from Congress. Almost from the day it took office, the Bush administration has pushed hard to get Congress to limit asbestos liability. That includes President Bush's visit to Illinois last week to push his "reform" proposals.

Gee, I wonder why that was?

If there is a God, and there is a Hell, I hope Bush and Cheney earn their just reward for "frivolous asbestos lawsuits."

I hope they're sunk deep in the deepest part of the ninth circle, and every stinking cancer-riddled corpse they've caused is hung around their necks.

Wondering what the resurrection of Ahmed Chalabi was all about? Wondering why anybody atall voted in iWaq? Wondering why the Sunni vote was suppressed and the Shia vote encouraged? And how does all of this fit with Iran? Dahr Jamail has the skinny, puts the pieces together, and now it all begins to make sense. Of course, this means that Bush is not deluded in the usual sense of the word, since presumably he knows what’s going on. It means that this is really about greed and evil. I quote it at length to save you the trouble of going elsewhere, but if you already read Dahr Jamail, skip on down:

Antonia Juhasz, a Foreign Policy in Focus scholar, authored a piece just before the “election” that sheds light on a topic that has lost attention amidst the recent fanfare concerning the polls in Iraq.

Oil.

I think it’s worth including much of her story here, as it fits well with today’s topic of things most folks aren’t being told by the bringers of democracy to the heart of the Middle East.

On Dec. 22, 2004, Iraqi Finance Minister Abdel Mahdi told a handful of reporters and industry insiders at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. that Iraq wants to issue a new oil law that would open Iraq's national oil company to private foreign investment. As Mahdi explained: "So I think this is very promising to the American investors and to American enterprise, certainly to oil companies."

In other words, Mahdi is proposing to privatize Iraq's oil and put it into American corporate hands.

According to the finance minister, foreigners would gain access both to "downstream" and "maybe even upstream" oil investment. This means foreigners can sell Iraqi oil and own it under the ground — the very thing for which many argue the U.S. went to war in the first place.

As Vice President Dick Cheney's Defense Policy Guidance report explained back in 1992, "Our overall objective is to remain the predominant outside power in the [Middle East] region and preserve U.S. and Western access to the region's oil."

While few in the American media other than Emad Mckay of Inter Press Service reported on — or even attended — Mahdi’s press conference, the announcement was made with U.S. Undersecretary of State Alan Larson at Mahdi's side. It was intended to send a message — but to whom?

It turns out that Abdel Mahdi is running in the Jan. 30 elections on the ticket of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution (SCIR), the leading Shiite political party. While announcing the selling-off of the resource which provides 95 percent of all Iraqi revenue may not garner Mahdi many Iraqi votes, but it will unquestionably win him tremendous support from the U.S. government and U.S. corporations.

Mahdi's SCIR is far and away the front-runner in the upcoming elections, particularly as it becomes increasingly less possible for Sunnis to vote because the regions where they live are spiraling into deadly chaos. If Bush were to suggest to Iraq’s Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi that elections should be called off, Mahdi and the SCIR's ultimate chances of victory will likely decline.

I’ll add that the list of political parties Mahdi’s SCIR belongs to, The United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), includes the Iraqi National Council, which is led by an old friend of the Bush Administration who provided the faulty information they needed to justify the illegal invasion of Iraq, none other than Ahmed Chalabi.

It should also be noted that interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi also fed the Bush Administration cooked information used to justify the invasion, but he heads a different Shia list which will most likely be getting nearly as many votes as the UIA list.

And The UIA has the blessing of Iranian born revered Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Sistani issued a fatwa which instructed his huge number of followers to vote in the election, or they would risk going to hell.

Thus, one might argue that the Bush administration has made a deal with the SCIR: Iraq's oil for guaranteed political power. The Americans are able to put forward such a bargain because Bush still holds the strings in Iraq.Regardless of what happens in the elections, for at least the next year during which the newly elected National Assembly writes a constitution and Iraqis vote for a new government, the Bush administration is going to control the largest pot of money available in Iraq (the $24 billion in U.S. taxpayer money allocated for the reconstruction), the largest military and the rules governing Iraq's economy. Both the money and the rules will, in turn, be overseen by U.S.-appointed auditors and inspector generals who sit in every Iraqi ministry with five-year terms and sweeping authority over contracts and regulations. However, the one thing which the administration has not been unable to confer upon itself is guaranteed access to Iraqi oil — that is, until now.

Continue reading "What They’re Not Telling You About the “Election”"

It all begins to make sense, now. Watch “election” results for confirmation.

Who knew?!

[O]ne election commision official was "evasive about the turnout, implying it might end up significantly lower than the initial estimate." They quoted this official, Safwat Radhid, exclaiming: "Only God Almighty knows the final turnout now."
(via Editor and Publisher)

Hmmm.... Have we heard stories like this before? Bien sur!

Those with long memories may recall the downward-adjusted turnout numbers that followed violence-plagued elections in South Vietnam in 1967 and in El Salvador in 1984.

In fact, the numbers are so bad, they may undermine the ability of the Iraqis to write their Constitution:

And one thing we now know for sure: the early media blather about a "strong" Sunni turnout has proven false. Adding a dose of reality, The Associated Press on Wednesday cited a Western diplomat who declared that turnout appeared to have been "quite low" in Iraq's vast Anbar province. Meanwhile, Carlos Valenzuela, the chief United Nations elections expert in Iraq, cautioned that forecasts for the Sunni areas were so low to begin with that even a higher-than-expected turnout would remain low.

In a rare reference to an actual vote tabulation, The New York Times on Thursday reports that in the "diverse" city of Mosul, with 60% of the count completed, the overall turnout seems slightly above 10%, or "somewhat more than 50,000 of Mosul's 500,000 estimated eligible voters."

This, of course, is no minor matter: Iraq's leading Sunni Muslim clerics said Wednesday that the country's election lacked legitimacy because large numbers of Sunnis did not participate in the balloting. Sure, many of them are simply sore losers (they lost an entire country) but that doesn't make their reaction any less troublesome for Iraq's future, especially with the cleric-backed Shiite alliance apparently headed for a landslide win.

Dexter Filkins of The New York Times warned Thursday that the widespread Sunni boycott "could even lead to the failure of the constitution; under the rules drafted last year to guide the establishment of a new Iraqi state, a two-thirds 'no' vote in three provinces would send the constitution down to defeat. The Sunnis are a majority in three provinces."

Well, slap my monkey and call me Bonzo—yet again, I just wasn't cynical enough!