As Josh Marshall reminds us.

The Democrats have a plan. It's called "Social Security."

The Republicans have a plan. It's called "hand your guaranteed retirement over to our campaign contributors from Wall Street.

And even though Bush failed to catapult the propaganda, the House Republicans have regrouped and are going to try to move a bill. It's essential that the bill never reaches a conference committee, because when it does, the Republicans will get together with the Wall Street lobbyists and rewrite the bill in the dead of night (eliminating any "compromises" the Dems were stupid enough to make, Joe Lieberman).

Let's watch the party of personal responsibility try to shift blame for breaking the Army. Not a pretty sight:

Several Senate Republicans denounced other lawmakers and the news media on Thursday for unfavorable depictions of the Iraq war and the Pentagon urged members of Congress to talk up military service to help ease a recruiting shortfall.

"Talk up" military service... Not, of course, volunteer themselves or their children... But then I suppose, like Dick "Go Fuck Yourself" Cheney, they have "other priorities."

Families are discouraging young men and women from enlisting "because of all the negative media that's out there," Sen. James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican, said at a U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

Yep, they're traitors if you ask me. Why, if the media weren't so darn informative negative, we'd still be hearing about all the flowers the Iraqis are throwing us!

Inhofe also said that other senators' criticism of the war contributed to the propaganda of U.S. enemies. He did not name the senators.

Obviously the latest salvo in Karl "Grub Man" Rove's coordinated "stab in the back"(back) campaign.

Army Chief of Staff Peter Schoomaker urged members of Congress to use "your considerable influence to explain to the American people and to those that are influencers out there how important it is for our young people to serve this nation at a time like this."

Yeah, Bush has a lot of 'splainin' to do, alright... And "influence," eh? Not, of course, actually volunteer yourself, or send your children...

The Army on Wednesday said it was 14 percent, or about 7,800 recruits, behind its year-to-date recruitment target even though it exceeded its monthly target in June. With extended deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, recruiting also is down for the National Guard and the Reserves.
(via AP)

They exceeded the June goal because (in typical Bush fashion) they moved the goalposts. Unfortunately, war is a lot less forgiving than the budgetary processsss

Back in election 2004, I kept hearing about how hot Jenna and Not Jenna were. But now, they seem to have dropped completely from sight. I wonder why that is? Have they decided on careers yet? Their country needs them!

You know, the 101st Fighting Keyboarders, the Gucci-clad fully paid up members of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, the Sons and Daughters of Rich Fucks, and the party of [spinning in his grave] Lincoln—none of them have any skin in the game. So where do they get off asking others to volunteer? Say, where are the megachurches on this one? Why doesn't [cough] Doctor James Dobson start holding recruiting drives?

NOTE Gosh, I think I'm letting my emotions run away with me on this one, and being just a little unfair. After all, the Pentagon even set up a a web site to support the troops! It's hard to imagine anything more supportive than that! And my goodness, does it feel good to press that SEND button... (Say, I wonder how much money that could have been spent on body armor went to the web designers... Oh, I'm sorry. I'm being unfair again.)

We've all seen this from Zogby today, right?:

In a sign of the continuing partisan division of the nation, more than two-in-five (42%) voters say that, if it is found that President Bush did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war with Iraq, Congress should hold him accountable through impeachment. While half (50%) of respondents do not hold this view, supporters of impeachment outweigh opponents in some parts of the country.

Well, how does this compare to the Clinton impeachment?

Thersites points us to the numbers:

"ABC News Poll. December 16, 1998. N=510 adults nationwide.

"As you may know, the House of Representatives is expected to vote soon on whether or not to impeach Bill Clinton. If the House impeaches him, the Senate will hold a trial to decide whether or not Clinton should be removed from office. Based on what you know, do you think the House should or should not impeach Clinton?"
%
Should 40
Should not 58
No opinion 2

In short, support for Chimpy's impeachment is now higher than it was for Clinton's impeachment even after a six-year campaign accusing of Clinton of everything from murder to drug-running to causing it to rain.

Do you expect the press to say a damned thing about this?

Well of course not.

I hope I'm wrong.

Alert reader, Hobson, sent me the following reminder of another time and place:

"Liberals saw the savagery of Slobodan Milosevic, first in Bosnia, then in Kosovo and prepared for war.

Consevatives saw the savagery of Milosevic and they said, "Give peace a chance."

No kidding.

Of course it was all a bit more complicated than that.

President Clinton had hesitated before taking action on the Bosnian nightmare until '95, despite having criticized the first Bush administration's passivity in the face of rape camps, mass graves and other similar horrors not seen in Europe since WW2.

The Republican Senate leader, Bob Dole was among the strongest voices to demand that something be done to stop the slaughter of Bosnian Muslims, if not by direct intervention, then by a US led campaign to lift the arms embargo which was keeping only the Muslim side from procuring arms, and leaving them defenseless against the onslaught of a well-armed Serbian army and its Bosnian Serbian militias. There was also the added complication of Croatia's entrance into the fray, committing it's own savagery, mainly against the Serbs.

Still, it is fair to say that Clinton, having acted in Bosnia, learned the lessons of dealing with Milosevic, and when he threatened to make another Bosnia of Kosovo, where the majority population of ethnic Albanian Muslims had been struggling to preserve their most basic human rights in a decade-long non-violent campaign of resistance to the tyranny of the ruling Serb minority, Clinton included the threat of military action to back up the year-long attempts by the State Department and General Clark, then the Supreme Commander of the NATO forces, to solve the conflict through negotiation.

When violence against Muslim Kosovars accelerated throughout late 1998, and then in early '99 Serbian fighting forces started to gather on the northern border of Kosovo, Clinton, having rallied the support of all the NATO nations, while managing to secure the unofficial acquiescence of the UN, demanded that either Milosevic must agree to withdraw all of his forces by a date-certain and to let an international peace-keeping force enter Kosovo or he must be prepared to face the certain prospect of an allied bombing campaign against broadly defined military targets inside of Serbia.

Hobson also pointed me to this Slate article from May of 1999, in which William Saleten had some fun playing vice versa with the Republican response to Clinton's Kosovo campaign, first positing the Saleten view of what are the major tropes common to all American anti-war movements, and then illustrating that in this instance it was the Republicans who were leading one that fit that pattern perfectly.

There's much in the column to disagree with, particularly the notion that Democrats and Republicans were being equally as hypocritical in their reversal of roles from the first Gulf War to the Kosovo campaign, (among other differences, once the bombing of Baghdad started in '91, no Democrat did anything to undermine or bad mouth American efforts to get Saddam out of Kuwait), but you should read it to remind yourself of how extreme were the actions and words of those same Republicans who are now accusing Democrats of giving aid and comfort to the enemy, although nothing that Democrats have done or said about Iraq could be considered anywhere near as corrosive and undermining as was the Republican opposition to what our military forces were attempting to achieve in the skies over Kosovo and Serbia.

It was Trent Lott who wanted to give peace a chance in 1999, and yes those were the very words he used, although, as Hobson notes, there's no evidence Lott sang them.

This was within weeks of the start of the bombing campaign, and while Serbian forces were completing the violent ethnic cleansing of one million Muslim Kosovars, who had been forced on trains, onto buses, or to pile what few possessions they could carry with them and to walk away, leaving their homes, their papers, in some cases their loved ones, to seek refuge in the empty border regions between Kosovo and Albania.

The president ought to open up negotiations and come to some sort of diplomatic end." Lott implored Clinton to "give peace a chance" and, comparing the war with the recent Colorado high-school shootings, urged him to resolve the Kosovo conflict with "words, not weapons."

edit

Unless Clinton finds "a way to get the bombing stopped" and to "get Milosevic to pull back his troops" voluntarily, NATO faces "a quagmire ... a long, protracted, bloody war," warned Lott. Clinton "only has two choices," said DeLay--to "occupy Yugoslavia and take Milosevic out" or "to negotiate some sort of diplomatic end, diplomatic agreement in order to end this failed policy."

And then there was Tom DeLay:

On Fox News Sunday, DeLay blamed the ethnic cleansing on U.S. intervention. "Clinton's bombing campaign has caused all of these problems to explode," DeLay charged in a House floor speech replayed on Late Edition.

edit

DeLay, meanwhile, voted not only against last week's House resolution authorizing Clinton to conduct the air war--which failed on a tie vote--but also in favor of legislation "directing the president ... to remove U.S. Armed Forces from their positions in connection with the present operations against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia."

edit

Clinton "has no plan for the end" and "recognizes that Milosevic will still be in power," added DeLay. "The bombing was a mistake. ... And this president ought to show some leadership and admit it, and come to some sort of negotiated end."

A majority of Republicans had refused to give congressional support to Clinton even while American troops were undertaking military action. They blamed the Clinton administration rather than Serbia for the failure of negotiations. They begged to disagree with military spokesmen who insisted that the air campaign was on target. Republicans sneered when Secretary Cohen insisted that it was Milosevic who had underestimated America and NATO's will to accomplish its objectives, insisting instead that it was Clinton et al who had underestimated Milosevec.

Best of all, Republicans blamed Clinton, not Milosevic, for that ethnic cleansing, which had necessitated a massive emergency construction of temporary camps for a million or so refugees. After all, as Republicans endlessly pointed out, the Serb forces didn't start their campaign of ethnic cleansing until the bombing of Serbia had begun, as if, had NATO backed down, the clearly well-planned Serbian campaign of violence and terror to rid Kosovo of its majority population would not have been carried out.

It should be said that many of the charges made by Republicans were also made by a number of people on the left, although most Democrats and many other liberals supported Clinton's actions. I thought the nay-sayers were wrong. But I saw the intervention as a tragic one, and not a model for future humanitarian interventions. War is always the worst alternative; its necessity almost always results from a failure to deal with a problem when it is solvable by other means.

Interestingly, Republicans paid no price for siding with leftists and against American interests and against an American military that fully supported Clinton's policy.

"What?", you say? Where was Coultergeist, as Hobson likes to refer to Ann?

You're forgetting, this was a "Democrat" president, and Clinton at that. Slick Willy had slipped the bonds of scandal and impeachment. The most corrupt administration in the history of the Republic, as Robert Bork unhesitatingly characterized the Clintons, had defied retribution. What were a million or so Kosovar Muslims, or the reputation of NATO, or the peace and stability of Central Europe, compared with the righteous necessity of all out opposition to all things Clinton all the time?

Think about that for a moment. And then remember the way that right-leaning persons from Andrew Sullivan to Sean Hannity were still able to fain shock at the intensity of Bush-bashing and Bush-hating on the left.

As for that so-called liberal media, as credulous and supportive as they were of Bush after 9/11, they were equally as skeptical and unsupportive of everything said and done in and about Kosovo by Clinton and his administration.

In general, I support skeptical analysis when this nation is called by anyone to undertake a military response to a problem, but in the case of Kosovo, those press voices brought no independent investigation or critical thought to evaluating Clinton's policies; instead, they were content to echo Republican critics.

No surprise, then, that John McCain was a particular favorite of broadcast and cable media. Some things didn't change after 9/111. McCain supported taking on Milosevic, but pronounced Clinton's policy too little, too late; we would need ground troops, he assured any number of Sunday pundits, and sooner or later, Clinton would either come to his senses and agree to that necessity, or lead the American military into a disaster. (Agreeing with McCain, William Kristol, more forward looking than most on the right, cautioned his disapproving fellow conservatives that what Clinton was doing in Kosovo, however incompetently, might be just the kind of thing neo-cons would want to advocate in the future.)

There was an obvious reason why Clinton's Kosovo policy had been shaped around a narrow military option that excluded both the use of ground troops and an invasion of Serbia to unseat Milosevic; only such a narrowly conceived policy had a hope of being supported by all the NATO nations. Nor would maintaining that support be an easy task, since sizable portions of the European electorate were against taking any military action against Serbia.

Yet, not a single interviewer ever asked McCain if he was proposing the US go it alone in Kosovo, and if not, how he would have whipped NATO into line, despite those same media voices' readiness to predict again and again, that NATO's support of its own demands was about to crack.

"War" is by its nature chaotic and the Kosovo campaign was complicated by the limited nature of both its goals and its means, but the US press, repeating Republican talking points rather than doing genuine critical analysis, contributed to a sense that the policy was failing, and sooner or later would have to be abandoned.

One of the major complications was Putin's Russia. A Serbian ally stretching back to WW 2, Russians in large numbers participated in anti-American demonstrations, and Putin made several aggressive, threatening moves, militarily and diplomatically.

The Clinton administration out-maneuvered Putin in the end, but nobody in the media bothered to notice while it was happening. Instead, at every twist and turn in the Kosovo narrative, the media predicted imminent failure. And the derision directed at Clinton as Commander-in-Chief was nothing short of astounding.

My favorite example - the media response to Clinton's trip to several key European capitals and American bases to bolster NATO's resolve and to acknowledge the work being done by our military by thanking the troops who were doing it. These latter stops on the tour were understated affairs, no big speeches, no big media shows, instead, the President had lunch in the mess with the troops, spoke with maintenance crews in hangars.

In one such stop, Clinton was wearing a jacket given to him by one of the aircraft maintenance units, and while he thanked the men and women who were doing the work of persuading Serbia to withdraw from Kosovo, commenting for MSNBC, Chris Matthews and several of the usual pundit turd-mouths were literally laughing at President Clinton, wondering aloud what the troops thought of this draft dodger wearing that military jacket, all this despite the fact that any neutral observer would have noted that the reaction of said troops was deep respect and appreciation for the presence of their Commander-in-Chief. It should also be noted that everywhere Clinton spoke, he reiterated the six points to which Milosevic must accede to stop the bombing campaign, and offered no hint that there was anything about which to negotiate.

No sooner was the President back in Washington than both Sam Donaldson, who had accompanied the President on the trip, and Tim Russert, who hadn't, reported that the administration was looking for a negotiated way out of the quagmire it had created. Li'l Russ' pronouncement was treated like a breaking news story, and John Hockenberry's MSNBC hour was interrupted to accommodate this important bulletin. Donaldson's pronouncment came during the group discussion on "This Week," and no one on the pundit panel thought to ask why President Clinton had gone to such great pains to express publicly his and net's resolve, if both we're getting ready to back down.

In the end, it was Milosevic (accepting all six of NATO's demands) who backed down, and a million Kosovar Muslims walked home.

Since the NATO policy depended on Milosevic coming to believe that neither Clinton nor NATO would crack, it is certainly a fair assumption that the very loud and public lack of support by Republicans of Clinton's Kosovo policy, and the almost entirely negative coverage by the entire media probably added to the length of the bombing campaign. However, I'm glad that no one in the Clinton administration, and no one among Democrats ever made that argument. No aspirations were cast upon the patriotism of any Republican or any press pundit.

Well, I guess some things did change after 9/11.

Republicans, and neo-cons in particular, have continued to devalue the importance of Kosovo, insisting that it had nothing to do with America's own strategic interests. Candidate Bush followed this line through-out his campaign, and Condi Rice, acting as his foreign policy advisor, made a diplomatic booboo by advising that a Bush administration would be withdrawing American troops from their peacekeeping mission in Kosovo. This caused such an angry reaction from the NATO countries supplying the majority of the peacekeepers there that Condi withdrew her observation.

So, let's test the perspicacity of the neo-cons against that of the security-chops-challenged Democrats.

Let's do a thought experiment.

In the late nineties, a group which included all our favorite neo-con heros, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Perle, Wolfowitz, you name one, the signature is there, sent President Clinton a letter advising him that now would be the time to finish the unfinished work of the first Gulf War by invading Iraq and getting rid of Saddam Hussein once and for all.

Clinton's position had been and continued to be that while regime-change in Iraq was a worthy goal on the basis of Saddam's horrendous human rights record and his habit of starting wars with or invading his neighbors, it could only be accomplished by a genuine Iraqi opposition which had some support within the country. The administration's evaluation of the Iraqi exile communities who were then answering the call was one of skepticism.

Let us suppose a different response from Clinton. Suppose he had heeded the call of the neo-cons and spent his final years in office leading the country in an invasion of Iraq? Ask yourself if there is any conceivable way such a strategy would have avoided 9/11? Ask yourself if it would have been an effective way to diminish the influence around the Muslim world of Al Queda? Ask yourself if it would have lead to an effective strategy for countering the Taliban or ending the safe passage Al Queda had through-out Afghanistan?

Now think back to our situation post 9/11. Imagine that in the heart of Europe, there were now permanent refugee camps, like the ones in the Middle East in which a million Muslims found themselves in a permanent diaspora. Can anyone in their right mind say that such a situation would have had no strategic importance in that famous neo-con formulation, the GWOT?

Just asking. (Feel free to use comments)

I'll tell you what was different after 9/11. The competent, pragmatic liberal/centrist Clinton/Gore administration was replaced by the incompetent, ideologically extreme, rightwing Bush administration, which didn't have a clue how to stop 9/11, and hasn't had a clue how to respond to 9/11 in ways that strengthen rather than weaken the security of this country, and offer an effective counter to Jihadist Muslim fundamentalism.

Mush from the loser (via The Man In The Grey Turtleneck. Saw his photo in Metro the other day, right before his testimony. Has he arrived, or what?)

F.B.I Death Squad Unit to be headed by famed human rights pioneer John Negroponte.

Ok, now I'm REALLY gone for the holiday.

It's been pretty sparse posting at my own home-sweet-homesite and The American Street, though I try to make more regular contributions at corrente as I can. This is the end of the fiscal year, a time of inevitably intense ratcheting-up of tasks at the place where I do that voodoo that I do so well for a union paycheck that has been shrinking like a frightened turtle under the past years of Bush's fuck-you economic kiss-off to the states. And for those of us for whom this blogging gig is merely an act of love, sometimes real life just has to come first.

But in another 24 hours or so I'll be putting it all behind me to head for the Adirondacks and hide out on an island for the national birthday---a place you can only get to by kayak, where the views will look something like this:



We will then pitch our tent, and weather willing, lay back under the Milky Way (which I can never see where I live) with homemade sangria, and put all this madness aside for a little while. We will read nothing but field guides, listen to nothing but loons and an ocasional wolf, and pretend for a little while that the world is a safer place than it is, or at least only dangerous in a way that makes sense.

If I were planning to stay home for the holiday, I might get out and give "War of the Worlds" a shot. I'm not a big Tom Cruise fan, and Spielberg's hothouse perfections can really grate, but the advance word intrigues the misanthrope in me. The H.G. Wells novel is a sustained threnody of terror that plugs directly into that part of the unconscious where fear of spiders and falling out of trees resides. What could be more frightening than the unstoppable onslaught of monstrous mechanical things aping vague life-forms, spreading through the countryside and targeting you for death simply because you live? (Seeing enemy tanks and APVs rumbling through your hometown probably does the same thing, except that it's real, and we do it to ourselves, over and over and over again).

One of the most terrifying and fascinating movies I remember seeing as a little kid was about giant robots who came to a city and laid waste to the inhabitants. Where did they come from? Why did they hate us? There were no answers, and none needed in that Cold War era of permanent paranoia. I grew up learning that simply being alive was enough to make those not like me want to kill me, whether they were giant robots or Russians. And what better time to re-visit those old horrors than in this brave new world of terrorism-with-a-trademark, where George Bush is working hard to give us the same free-floating anxieties that worked so well for Harry Truman, and have bloated to bursting the thousand defense industries that profited so greatly during the last World War?

The Village Voice's reviewer, Michael Atkinson, makes much of Spielberg's harkening back to 9/11; the destruction in the movie seems possibly exploitive to him. But any movie whose central premise is mass destruction will have scenes that you can't help link to 9/11. And we do have a predilection for that sort of cinematic bombast considerably predating 2001. (Strange, isn't it, that one of the two years we link to literature and cinema--"1984", "2001: A Space Odyssey"--has turned out to have been a harbinger after all;. just not the kind Stanley Kubrick intended.) More likely to me is that we externalize our fears into the stories we tell ourselves, and nowhere is that more obvious than in horror movies and books. If nothing else, it helps us see ourselves and offers a way to collectively brainstorm solutions by seeding the public consciousness.

On the other hand, if all this is too much like fantasy, there is always James Wolcott's favorite buzzkill, Jim Kunstler, inveighing against our fossil fuel-guzzling ways over at Clusterfuck Nation:

"Oil's remorseless up-ratcheting past $60 is as much a symptom of a weak dollar as a strained global energy allocation system, and the dollar is weakening because the way of life it represents is becoming more and more unreal. The harsh truth is that we've reached the limit of our ability to expand our suburban sprawl economy and there is no alternative US economy in the background ready to take its place. The world can't fail to notice this weakness. The inability to generate even fake wealth, in the form of ever more WalMarts, will take its toll on the consensus that the American Dream has enduring value.
The stock market contraction ought to reflect this reality -- apart from desperate attempts by US government proxies to levitate share prices -- and it is hard to imagine a rally in the face of $60 oil. I'm inclined to predict a gruesome journey down for the Dow Jones into the 4000 range by the end of the year. Until now the dollars created by the Federal Reserve's supernaturally loose credit policy have sought shelter in the "hard assets" of houses? A meltdown of the stock markets will translate into vanishing leverage in all other areas of finance, especially in real estate (as well as a swath of destruction through hedge funds, retirement accounts and, eventually, the entire creaking superstructure of the hallucinated mortgage industry). A few Americans are actually going to get the message that this is not a good time to buy an overpriced raised ranch house. A lot of real estate geniuses are going to witness their own ruin with wonder and nausea."

Ah. Good times, eh? Who needs a giant robot or a fleet of homicidal alien APVs when we've got...humanity!

And that's why I'm going to paddle off into the sunset and forget all this. See you next week.

(Posted originally today at my own site for obvious reasons.)

From last night’s patented Bush bombast, declamation, diatribe, disquisition, dissertation, eulogy, exhortation, harangue, homily, invocation, lecture, opus, oration, oratory, panegyric, pep talk, pitch, prelection, recitation, rhetoric, skull session, soapbox oration, spiel, stump, and tirade:

“Marking the first anniversary of the transfer of power from the U.S.-led coalition to Iraq’s interim government, Bush cited advances in the past year. These included elections in January that drew 8 million men and women voters; improvements to roads, schools, health clinics and basic services like sanitation, electricity and water; and gains in the number and quality of Iraqi security forces who “are proving their courage every day.”

From The Weekly Telegraph, courtesy Hobson:

“But the mood in the city is increasingly one of desperation. While residents wait in vain for promised reconstruction projects to materialise, the government cannot even agree on the make-up of the committee to draw up a new constitution, let alone its contents.
Sovereignty was returned to the Iraqi people from the occupying administration a year ago. But electricity output in the capital has decreased in the past five months - averaging only 854 megawatts per day now, compared with 2,500 megawatts before the war. The rationing system for sugar and baby milk collapsed at the beginning of the year, forcing many to go without.
Sadr City, the vast slum in the capital's west, is in the grip of a hepatitis outbreak. Forty per cent of Baghdad's homes have reported sewage on the streets. Fresh water had finally returned to most of the city by last night - but for only two hours a day.”

Today’s profiles from Iraq on BBC World Service:

“I'm Um Mustafa. I work in a salon for the ladies. And how are things? There is no electricity, no water, the heat is killing us.”

“When I reached the gas station, it didn't take me long to change my mind about buying fuel. The queue of cars stretching back hundreds of metres and the prospect of waiting hours in the burning sun made me decide to turn to the black market.
Black market fuel is about four times more expensive than the gas station.
With Baghdadis getting about six to eight hours of electricity every 24 hours, people are much more reliant on generators at home. This increases the demand on fuel."

"We are trying to create something from nothing. We don't have even adequate materials, equipments, drugs, or the simplest things we need in our work, or even proper theatres for minor or major surgery or enough emergency staff.”

From last night's Bush violin concerto:

“Finally, we have continued our efforts to equip and train Iraqi security forces. We've made gains in both the number and quality of those forces.”

From the Philadelphia Inquirer, courtesy last night’s post by Lambert:

“Iraqi and American officials said the killings were not being investigated systematically, but in dozens of interviews with families and Iraqi officials, and a review of medical records, a reporter and two special correspondents found more than 30 examples of this type of killing in less than a week. They include 12 cases with specific dates, times, names and witnesses who said they might come forward if asked by law-enforcement officials.
The Interior Ministry, which oversees the Iraqi police, denies any involvement in the killings. But eyewitnesses said that many of those who turned up dead had been apprehended by large groups of men driving white Toyota Land Cruisers with police markings. The men were wearing police commando uniforms and bulletproof vests, carrying expensive 9-millimeter Glock pistols and using sophisticated radios, the witnesses said.
If the killers are proven to be Sunni insurgents masquerading as Shiite police, that would raise troubling questions about how insurgents are getting expensive new police equipment. The Toyotas, which cost more than $55,000 apiece, and Glocks, at about $500 each, are hard to come by in Iraq, and they are rarely used by anyone other than Western contractors and Iraqi security forces.
Further evidence that a police force created, trained and funded by the United States has been abusing human rights, on the other hand, would complicate the Bush administration's efforts to muster greater domestic support for its Iraq policy and more international support for the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari”

And with a flourish of a wind-up pitch, Bush finished up:

“But Americans have always held firm, because we have always believed in certain truths. We know that if evil is not confronted, it gains in strength and audacity and returns to strike us again. We know that when the work is hard, the proper response is not retreat, it is courage. And we know that this great ideal of human freedom entrusted to us in a special way and that the ideal of liberty is worth defending.”

But back on February 7, 2002, he was thinking hard about how too much idealism might be more than we could handle:

“I also accept the legal conclusion of the Department of justice and determine that common Article 3 of Geneva does not apply to either al Qaeda or Taliban detainees, because, among other reasons, the relevant conflicts are international in scope and common article 3 applies
only to ‘armed conflict not of an international character’.
d. Based on the facts supplied by tbe Department of Defense and the recommendation of the Department of Justice, I determine that the 'Taliban detainees. are unlawful combatants and, therefore, do not qualify as prisoners of war under Article 4 of Geneva. I note that, because Geneva does not apply to our conflict with al Qaeda, al Qaeda detainees also do not qualify as prisoners of war.”

Freedom always spreads a little more freely when you grease the knife with blood.

Gee, we've been living in Canada a whole week, and my commitment to my spouse is already being undermined:

Canada is on its way to becoming the third country in the world to openly embrace homosexual marriage after the House of Commons gave its final approval last night to a bill that changes the definition to include same-sex couples.

...

But, just as there were celebrations, so too was there a feeling of dejection and loss among those who had worked hard to block the bill. Religious groups held prayer vigils after the final count was read and other opponents who had crowded the public gallery of the Commons walked quietly away.

Conservative Vic Toews, who has fervently opposed same-sex marriage, said he does not think the issue is closed.

"There are still a lot of concerns about how effective this bill is going to be in terms of protecting religious freedoms," he said. "What I have heard from people right across this country is, they're very unhappy with the way the Liberal government has rammed this matter through."
(via Globe and Mail)

Look for "scholarly" studies in the years to come, tracing every blip in the (hetero) Canadian divorce rate to the gays and their subversive connubial happiness.

As I was otherwise engaged with at my local Belgian bar, I happily missed Dear Leader's marketing campaign. I understand that the networks caved and they all put him on. Just skimming the NYTimes this a.m. (I"m rushing) I gather he did what he always does so well: extolled the joys of other people dying for some bullshit excuse, and kicked dirt over the scatpile of his own lies and incompetence by exhorting Americans to stop expecting accountability from him ("The past is the past").

More on this later, when I can, but let me ask for some reader feedback---How did you feel about the speech? What did it say to you? How did he look to you? What sense did you get of his captive audience? Were they behind him, or just going through the motions? What did you read on their faces? And how was it spun afterward by the lapdog press?

Well, another caption. This is Bush during his Big Speech at Fort Bragg. Somehow, I think He got the idea that His speech wasn't going over too well.

Yeah, I gave in and read the transcript. That's sure better than throwing things at the radio. Who knew so much delusion and mendacity could be packed into a mere 28 minutes? Anyhow, I grabbed for the bucket when I heard this line:

{BUSH] We live in freedom because every generation has produced patriots willing to serve a cause greater than themselves.
(via Think Progress)

Two words: Where's Jenna?

Three Words: Where were you?

Four Words: You're shitting me, right?

I mean, now we know "the intelligence and facts were fixed around the policy." And we knew then (because some Gucci-clad winger left his PowerPoint slides in a Starbucks) that Bush rolled out the war vote to win the 2002 mid-terms.

So how do you ask anyone to give their lives for a cause like that? Has the man no decency or honor at all?

From a review of Klein's vengeful screed on Hillary, which is flying off the shelves straight into the sweaty hands of the mouthbreathers:

The real reason such conservatives frequently wear Gucci loafers is that they cannot tie their own shoes.

[Rimshot. Laughter. "Thanks, you've been a great audience!"]

Al Franken? Molly Ivins?

WaPo's Richard Cohen.

The thing about the Republican Noise Machine is that it's so damn tiring. All volume, all the time. Like some asshole screaming into his cellphone for hour after hour, right next to you. And maybe, just maybe, people are getting tired of these guys. The worms turn slowly, but they do turn...

Anyone notice if he was using the earpiece this time, too?

UPDATE Looks like Bush has lost the military:

Bush's audience Tuesday evening was unusually quiet while the president spoke, however, applauding in unison after one key passage, as if on cue, and then at the end.
(via WaPo)

Part of me wishes they'd slow-clapped Him...

"Woe to you, Pharisees, hypocrites"!

Republican U.S. Rep. Donald L. Sherwood projected an image as homespun as this pocket-size town tucked in the Endless Mountains: family-focused, industrious, traditional values.

So imagine their surprise, residents say, upon hearing allegations starting this spring of a five-year, sometimes violent affair with a Peruvian woman less than half his age, Cynthia M. Ore.

"Can't picture the man doing that," said Shirley Swartz, working the counter at Gable's Bakery. "He has a very good reputation, a very moral person. That is what we always thought: a good family man."

"If he admitted it up front [that] he made a mistake, no problem," said George L. Stonier, 42, an appliance repairman and Republican who has voted for Sherwood. "Now he's got himself in a jam because he didn't admit it. It's funny because he touts 'family values' and he is not family values."

Sherwood [64] Ore [29] met at a 1999 Young Republicans event.
(via the Inkwire)

Boggles the mind, doesn't it?

Sherwood was trawling for jailbat at a Young Republicans event...

How low can you go?

After all, we do what we're good at, and Negroponte did have experience, from the last time the US fought a dirty war:

ys after Iraq's new Shiite-led government was announced on April 28, the director of Baghdad's central morgue began noticing that the bodies of Sunni Muslim men were turning up after the men had been detained by people wearing Iraqi police uniforms.

Faik Baqr, who is also the chief forensic investigator at the morgue, said the corpses first caught his attention because the men appeared to have been killed in methodical fashion. They were blindfolded and their hands had been tied or handcuffed behind their backs, Baqr said. In most cases, the morgue director said, the dead men looked as if they had been whipped with a cord, subjected to electric shocks or beaten with a blunt object and shot to death, often with a single bullet to the head.

Iraqi and American officials said the killings were not being investigated systematically, but in dozens of interviews with families and Iraqi officials, and a review of medical records, a reporter and two special correspondents found more than 30 examples of this type of killing in less than a week. They include 12 cases with specific dates, times, names and witnesses who said they might come forward if asked by law-enforcement officials.
(via Filthydelphia Inkwire)

Iraq civil war, here we come....

R.I.P. Shelby Foote, a true gentleman, an exquisite teller of tales, and a shining example of all that's right and decent in the South. He was also the cousin of Horton Foote, who wrote the magical screenplay for To Kill A Mockingbird. I discovered him, like many, when I watched Ken Burns' Civil War, and fell under the spell of his soft drawl, kind manner, and sharp intelligence.

Good people keep dying, while the ugly live on. Speaking of which, if you know what's good for you tonight you'll take a tip from me and eschew torturing yourselves in front of the TV waiting for Bush to give you a stroke, and instead spend the evening drinking fine Belgian beers and eating frites in a dark friendly bar. As I will be doing. Soon. Not soon enough.

Since when is an address to folks who are under orders to clap (and are essentially being paid to clap) considered an "Address to the Nation?" (You can go read this rather typical fluff piece about what the soldiers at Fort Bragg hope to hear.)

And since when would such a pathetic thing be televised on a national network? ABC should be embarrassed. It doesn't appear the other three (even Fox!) are going to carry it.

But I digress. Isn't it astonishing that this president will only talk to a hand-picked audiences of people who all agree with him -- or are being paid to pretend they do?

This president really is in a world all his own, huh? I've never seen a president this isolated from the American people. Well, um, since Nixon anyway.

And you know what the funniest part is? Whenever Chimpy opens his mouth to try and stem the approval rating bleeding it always fails miserably.

I expect W's approval ratings to be in the upper 30s within a month or two. (Ruy Teixeira has been expecting this for a few days now.)

They're floundering, folks.

As Atrios often says, pass the popcorn.

The ditch is maybe a hundred yards long where it was choked up with Russian Olive (via (you can find out more about this nasty beast at PCA Alien Plant Working Group - Russian-Olive (Elaeagnus angustifolia)) and it is now clear of them.

Until they come back. Because they surely will. Couldn’t get the roots out completely. (No salt cedar here yet, gracias. The old folks tell me the Russian Olives keep them away. Hm.)

Even with gloves and long sleeves the thorns ate me up. Cutting, chopping and burning.

As with Lambert’s tomato theory below, I was reminded of an analogy.

An invasive species is imported from Europe in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s as an “ornamental.” (Smells real good in the summer when it blooms.) It soon spreads to take over all of the native areas it can find and will grow well in, which is just about everywhere. No matter how long and hard you battle it, it always sprouts back up, even right in your own back yard as it plays on every vulnerability of the riparian system.

This is why, I realized suddenly, that it was stupid of me to think that any lasting victory had been won back in the 60’s and 70’s. Of course they would come back and try to choke off the rivers of justice rolling down like mighty waters.

And yet the native species live on, and come back, and we have much to learn from them about survival and retaking what is good and right.

And many ditches to clear. But the local party is slowly but surely coming together around our new chair, and already we are beginning to canvass for ’06 candidates locally, floating names for county commissioners, school boards, etc.

The cottonwoods will return, and offer shade. But it’s hard work and the invasive species are always there, waiting.

In February 2003, Acting Director of the Selective Service System Lewis Brodsky met with a small group of high-level DoD and SSS participants to propose the reinstitution of the draft and its expansion to include older draftees and women. While this was much played down as merely bureaucratic woolgathering and given barely any notice by the media, it continues to haunt us.

Now Bob Herbert wants you to know that he thinks the draft may be coming back:

"Now, with the war going badly and the Army chasing potential recruits with a ferocity that is alarming, a backlash is developing that could cripple the nation's ability to wage war without a draft. Even as the ranks of new recruits are dwindling, many parents and public school officials are battling the increasingly heavy-handed tactics being used by military recruiters who are desperately trying to sign up high school kids.
"I started getting calls and people coming to the school board meeting testifying that they were getting inundated with phone calls from military recruiters," said Sandra Lowe, a board member and former president of the Sonoma Valley Unified School District in California.
She said parents complained that in some schools "the military recruiters were on campus all the time," sometimes handing out "things that the parents did not want in their homes, including very violent video games."
Ms. Lowe said she was especially disturbed by a joint effort of the Defense Department and a private contractor, disclosed last week, to build a database of 30 million 16- to 25-year-olds, complete with Social Security numbers, racial and ethnic identification codes, grade point averages and phone numbers. The database is to be scoured for youngsters that the Pentagon believes can be persuaded to join the military.
"To have this national data collection is just over the top," Ms. Lowe said."

He goes on to link (gotta love it when the Gray Lady links!) to an organization called Leave My Child Alone, whose purpose is to stop such unwanted military recruitment and help parents and students fight back, and on whose site you'll find this explanation:

"Buried deep within the No Child Left Behind Act is a provision that requires public high schools to hand over private student information to military recruiters. The purpose of this invasion of family privacy is to allow minor students to be recruited at home by telephone calls, mail and personal visits. If a school does not comply, it risks losing vital federal education funds. The only way to keep your children’s contact information from military recruiters, is to submit an Opt-out” letter in writing to your school district’s superintendent."

I'll spare you the endless links proving Herbert's point, that the successful rate of luring new conscripts is dive-bombing along with troop morale as the American disapproval of the war effort rises. There are plenty out there.

Unless we find a way to staunch the flow of human cannon fodder into Iraq, the draft is inevitable. And this lame duck president is just the one to give it to us as his final going-away present.

I actually had a garden once, back in the day when I was coming up and freelancing and could be out in the sun during the day. I was living in a neighborhood with Portuguese who fermented their own wine, had grape arbors in their back yards, grew their own vegetables.... One day, one of the grandfathers silently beckoned me into his potting shed—he didn't speak English—and showed me his secret: Miracle Gro.

So I determined to be part of the neighborbood and have a garden, and spent many hours in the sun removing rocks, broken glass, auto parts, athletic shoes, rusty nuts and bolts, and other fruits of the good earth from the dirt in my back yard.

Unfortunately, my yard was infested with Japanese bamboo—an invasive perennial that looks like bamboo and can grow fifteen feet tall; one hot afternoon I swear it grew several inches when I turned my back on it for a moment. And soon, shoots of Japanese bamboo began to sprout from my freshly turned soil.

Before I planted anything, I determined to terminate the Japanese bamboo with extreme prejudice. I cut it down; it grew right back. I sprayed it with weedkiller; it put forth new shoots. Where I ripped out one by the roots, two sprouted. When I hacked all its roots into small chunks with a spade, from each chunk a whole new plant shot up.

Finally I decided to go ahead and plant my tomatoes anyhow, and Lo! The tomato plants grew even more rapidly than the Japanese bamboo! And the tomato plants spread out leafy green, and shadowed the ground. Denied sun, the Japanese bamboo shoots grew pale, and thin, and withered, and died.

The tomatoes took over the yard, and in the fall we had a great harvest. There's nothing better than a fresh tomato slice with a little salt and pepper, maybe a slice of mozzarella.

This is a true story. But it's also a parable:

The Japanese bamboo, the "invasive perennial," is the Republicans, and how they operate.

The tomato plants, that put the Japanese bamboo in the shade, and killed it, are the Democratic institutions that we have to grow.

And the harvest is the victory we have to earn.

Il faut cultiver notre jardin.

The lousiness of the
political climate rises
in direct proportion to
the amount of craving I
have for pistachio ice cream
with hot fudge sauce.









"Hot Fudge" by Aaron Fink

Or retire, either.

Aaaw, no court nomination fight?

And why? Rehnquist's got cancer; why doesn't he retire? Could it be that he doesn't want Bush to name his successor?

No theocratic paraphernalia in the nation's courtrooms.

Maybe Judy Miller will serve time. And it couldn't happen to a nicer whore.

So the administration has made its propaganda paradigm shift at last, no doubt prompted by Dick Cheney's blithe remarks that the insurgency is in its last throes:

"President Bush struck back Friday against growing calls to schedule a U.S. pullout from Iraq, vowing there would be no timetable to withdraw troops.
To do so would be "conceding too much to the enemy," Bush said at a news conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari at the White House.---Bush, Friday"

"That insurgency can go on for any number of years," Rumsfeld said in a U.S. television interview. "Insurgencies tend to go on five, six, eight, 10, 12 years. Foreign forces are not going to repress that insurgency---Rumsfeld, Sunday"

This is the gauntlet Bush has finally thrown down: we're not going anywhere. And if anyone thinks we can stay in that hellhole for "5, 6, 8, 10, 12 years" without a draft, they're living in a fantasy world.

The draft is coming, regardless of how the government spins it. And that is when Americans will fold this hand and cut their losses, once the bodies and the the wounded pile up so high not even George Bush will be able to spin them away. And when they do, they won't give a shit whether we've left any infrastructure in place to keep the whole country from turning into a black hole of civil war. And all we'll have accomplished with this foul agression will have been to make the people we are so afraid of hate us even more. Even Clear Channel and Fox News won't help us then.

All are lives are equally precious, right?

So that would mean that the everyone should have the same right to medical care, wouldn't it?

Or is it OK with your God that people without insurance might die?

Dana Milbank slightly redeems himself for trashing John Conyers with the following:

The Republican-controlled state House of Representatives in Pennsylvania took the paddle last week to its home-state junior senator. Santorum, of the aforementioned Hitler controversy, had received tens of thousands of dollars from Penn Hills School District, outside Pittsburgh, for tuition for his children to attend online charter schools called cyberschools. One problem: Although the Santorums own a house in Penn Hills, they live most of the time in Northern Virginia, where their children are home-schooled. In a bill inspired by the Santorum case, the House voted 175 to 24 to restrict eligibility for such payments to people who actually reside in the state. The measure now goes to the state Senate.
(via WaPo)

Oh well. Look, I'm a taxpayer, and I'm happy to support Sen. Santorum (R-Man on Dog) and his children wherever they live and whether they go to school or not; in fact, as a [cough] Christian like Senator Santorum, it's my duty to do so. I only wish I could give more. And if Senator Santorum wants to give his kids extra credit for holding the dead fetus he was passing around, well, that's OK by me too!

Man, he sounds like Jimmy Carter!

In a statement to mark United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, Bush said: "Freedom from torture is an inalienable human right, and we are committed to building a world where human rights are respected and protected by the rule of law."

"America will not pretend that jailed dissidents prefer their chains, or that women welcome humiliation and servitude, or that any human being aspires to live at the mercy of bullies," Bush said in the statement.
(via Reuters)

Bush seems to have lost his touch. This won't help him with the base at all, and the rest of us already know not to believe a word that He says.

However, I find myself strangely in agreement with Bush when he says: "[No] human being aspires to live at the mercy of bullies." Especially bullies like Dick "Go Fuck Yourself" Cheney and Karl "Grub Man" Rove, not to mention The Boy Emperor himself.

The clever folks at CORKED BATS , a clever new blog which has already been nominated for the Nobel Prize for Blogging, (and why not when your local congressperson can nominate you for the Nobel in Medicine), have just shown that they may well deserve something akin to a Nobel by way of their having had the brilliant idea of setting up a blog for military personnel to record their thoughts about Karl Rove and his recent remarks at a GOP fund-raiser.

It will be no surprise to those of us who have always understood what utter crap is the rightwing characterization of itself as pro-military that all kinds of military personnel and their families who consider themselves to be liberal, or to be old-fashioned enough conservatives to not fancy that the other half of America is their sworn enemy, have shown up at TAKING THE FIGHT TO KARL to express their disgust and anger directly to Mr. Rove.

I'll have more to say in a later post about the constant mis-characterization of the right as pro-military, and of the left as anti-military, but for now let me pose this question: how concerned could about troop morale can Mr. Rove really be when he makes a statement meant to get lots of coverage to the effect that half of all Americans support a political party whose leadership is motivated by a desire to heighten the risk of injury to American soldiers in Iraq?

Read what actual soldiers and their actual families have to say about Mr. Rove, let the Corked Bat gang know what a good idea they had, and maybe offer a small contribution, and most important, tell anyone you know who is in the military, has ever been in the military, or the family member of such a person, who are also either Democrats, or the kind of of Republican whom Dwight D. Eisenhower was, to go over to the new website and give a talking to Mr. Rove.

It's a l-o-o-o-o-o-n-g timetable, but a timetable it is:

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Sunday it may take as long as 12 years to defeat Iraqi insurgents and that Iraqi security forces will finish the job because U.S. and foreign troops will have left the country.
(via )

Translation: You're on your own, pal!

Of cours, in reality the timetable is the 2006 election.

Rove's plan has two parts:

1. Cut loose from Iraq before the 2006 elections


2. Blame the Democrats for the ensuing clusterfuck

Part 2 we've already seen; that's the "Stab in the back" theory that Rove just rolled out. (I mean, how could American possibly screw up a war unless there were a fifth column of traitors, i.e., Democrats. Et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseum, ad infinitum. See The Department of Changing the Subject, below).

Part 1 is now coming into view. We saw part 1, as through as glass darkly, where Iraqi President Jafari asked about a "Bush Plan," like the Marshall Plan, for Iraqi reconstruction. Bush was notably silent. News flash, Ibrahim : There ain't gonna be no Bush Plan for you, because the Bush Plan for Bush is to heave you over the side before the Republicans lose any seats in 2006. (Remember, the Republicans don't ever plan to surrender power, which is why they don't care about what they do; they feel they will never be held to account. So when the prospect of losing power gets anywhere close, they become very, very edgy.)

So, ditching the Iraqis won't be a pretty sight. But it's starting now:

LONDON - U.S. officials recently met secretly with Iraqi insurgent commanders at a summer villa north of Baghdad to try to negotiate an end to the bloodshed, a British newspaper reported Sunday.

The insurgent commanders "apparently came face to face" with four American officials during meetings on June 3 and June 13 at a summer villa near Balad, about 25 miles north of Baghdad, the Iraqi capital, The Sunday Times newspaper in London said.

The report, which quoted unidentified Iraqis whose groups were purportedly involved in the meetings, said the insurgents at the first meeting included the Ansar al-Sunnah Army, which claimed responsibility for suicide bombings in
Iraq and an attack that killed 22 people in the dining hall of a U.S. base at Mosul last Christmas.

Two others were Mohammed's Army and the Islamic Army in Iraq, which in August reportedly killed Italian journalist Enzo Baldoni, the newspaper said.

One American at the talks introduced himself as a
Pentagon representative and declared himself ready to "find ways of stopping the bloodshed on both sides and to listen to demands and grievances," The Sunday Times said.

A senior U.S. official said earlier this month that American authorities have negotiated with key Sunni leaders, who are in turn talking with insurgents and trying to persuade them to lay down their arms. The official, who did not give his name so as not to undercut the new government's authority, did not name the Sunni leaders engaged in dialogue.

Iraq's former electricity minister, Ayham al-Samarie, has told The Associated Press that two insurgent groups — the Islamic Army in Iraq and the Army of Mujahedeen — were willing to negotiate with the Iraqi government, possibly opening a new political front in the country.

Al-Samarie, a Sunni Muslim, said he had established contact with the groups which account for a large part of the Sunni insurgents and were responsible for attacks against Iraqis and foreigners, including assassinations and kidnappings.

A senior Shiite legislator, Hummam Hammoudi, also told AP recently that the Iraqi government had opened indirect channels of communication with some insurgent groups.

The contacts were "becoming more promising and they give us reason to continue," Hammoudi said, without providing details.

U.S. and Iraqi officials also are considering amnesty for their enemies as they look for ways to end the country's rampant insurgency and isolate extremists wanting to start a civil war.
(via AP

Translation: "Mohammed, we need you to help us dig ourselves out of the hole we've dug for ourselves."

No, not a pretty sight. Rummy's lying about all this, of course, but we expect that.

Um, I thought we never negotiated with terrorists? Oh, silly me. IOKIYAR!

NOTE Look for Bush's Big Speech on Tuesday to say the same thing in nicer words.

Dick "Go Fuck Yourself" Cheney is said to have checked himself into a cardiac unit...

More of the first throes of the latest Rove campaign?

Interesting post from Amanda at Pandagon. As an aging, embittered dot-com-bubble survivor, I'm more of a Clash listener. Still, interesting, and I've never had the history explained to me the way Amanda does.

At his photo-op with Jafari, Bush made the mistake of allowing himself to be asked a question by an actual journalist.

An Iraqi journalist. These guys were pretty green, and got suckered by the imperial grandeur (not to mention the Grace of His Presence, of course:

Some of the Iraqis were clearly awed by the trappings of power: the twin armored limousines in the driveway with U.S. and Iraqi flags, and the gilded East Room bedecked with fresh flowers and prominent officials .

"You have a great country," remarked a radio reporter, one of the five Iraqi journalists traveling with Jafari, as he and his colleagues snapped photos of one another before the event.
(via WaPo)

Taking photos of each other for the wife and kids.... Precious...

Anyhow, here's the question one of them asked Bush:

"When will you begin the reconstruction in Iraq?"

So, to an Iraqi, it looks like no reconstruction at all has taken place—a little reality therapy for our delusional President:

[The] question that seemed to take Bush, who has already sunk a couple of hundred billion dollars into the occupation, by surprise.

Hundreds of billions gone, and no evident results on the ground. What a clusterfuck.

Of course, there's the $8 billion that simply went missing (I wonder where?), but that's just a small percentage.

So, what did Bush answer:

"We are spending reconstruction money," Bush said. "But, you know, you need to ask that to the government. They're in charge. It's your government, not ours."

Nice example of passing the buck. And what does Jafari say? Show me the money! (which was doubtless the purpose of his visit)

That didn't satisfy Jafari, who stood beside the natty Bush in creased suit pants and well-worn tasseled loafers. "We hope that Mr. Bush will try to redo a Marshall Plan, calling it the Bush Plan, to help Iraq, to help the Iraqi people," he urged. "And this would be a very wonderful step." The president, by way of reply, said "Good job" and led the prime minister to lunch.

"Good job." How patronizing.

Pitiful. And sad.

Of course, Bush has already decided on an exit strategy: Fuck the Iraqis and blame the Democrats ("The Democrats stabbed the Army in the back!", back). Jafari will never see a dime. And if Bush has a spare $50 billion lying around, don't Americans have first claim on it?

NOTE Of course, Jafari could have planted the question with the journalist. If so, that indicated, um, a certain lack of confidence that Bush was going to come up with anything at all.

... when you fight your wars with elephants.



As The Man in The Grey Turtleneck says, everybody has linked to this story (thanks, Knight Ridder!):

Young Republicans gathered here for their party's national convention are united in applauding the war in Iraq, supporting the U.S. troops there and calling the U.S. mission a noble cause.

But there's no such unanimity when they're asked a more personal question: Would you be willing to put on the uniform and go to fight in Iraq?

I think this is the money quote:

"Frankly, I want to be a politician. I'd like to survive to see that," said Vivian Lee, 17, a war supporter visiting the convention from Los Angeles,

Those darned Republicans! Just like Dick "Go Fuck Yourself" Cheney, they always have "other priorities" when it comes time to risk their own lives...

NOTE The Yellow Elephant stickers are here, suitable for printing using Avery 5294 round labels (Thanks, patriotboy!). I think I'm going to print some out and put one next to every Bush/Cheney bumpersticker I see.

But they did drink the Kool-Aid....

Among Republicans (36% of adults registered to vote in the survey), 84% approve of the way Bush is handling his job and 12% disapprove. Among Democrats (38% of adults registered to vote in the survey), 18% approve and 77% disapprove of the way Bush is handling his job. Among Independents (26% of adults registered to vote in the survey), 17% approve and 75% disapprove of the way Bush is handling his job as president.
(American Research Group via Kos)

Republicans: 84% approve of how Bush is doing his job
Democrats: 18% approve
Independents: 17%

Anyhow, good news: It looks like Dems and independents are joining the reality-based community. No wonder Karl "Grub Man" Rove (back) is pulling out all the stops. By catapulting the propaganda at the Dems (for example, Dick Durbin), he's hoping to scare away those newly close to the Dems—the independents.

And pick up their dry cleaning, and hump their golf bags in from the club, and so forth?

Apparently not:

To avert an ethics docket stuffed with hundreds of cases, Republican leaders have contemplated declaring what amounts to an amnesty for past paperwork errors, then restating the rules and enforcing them rigorously. Substantive violations, such as accepting a trip from a registered lobbyist, would not be excused, according to aides.
(via WaPo)

So, lemme see if I get this straight. The Republicans are going to give themselves a Get Out of Jail Free card for violations of past rules, in exchange for a promise to obey the rules in the future. Hey, if I were offered that deal on, well, you name it, I'd sure take it!

Oh, wait. I didn't read carefully enough. The Republicans are going to address substantive violations. That's alright, then. I'm sure that process will be conducted with complete integrity, as would befit any [cough] Christian. Though how they're going to determine what is substantive when the paper trail has been completely corrupted, I'm not sure I completely understand...

Taking a momentary break from fighting Totalitarianist Creep to point out that more Mad Cow was confirmed yesterday, and the Department of Blowing Smoke Up Your Ass is revving up to full tilt to spin it away.

I have a very long-standing interest in the subject, and posted a piece on this latest development over at my own site, as it's way too long to burden the mighty Corrente pipeline. Check it out, for backgorund, context, and what to do to keep yourself safe.

For more in-depth information, and a real thrill-ride, check out Richard Rhodes, whose book Deadly Feasts was a real eye-opener.

So much for the flypaper theory:

The CIA believes the Iraq insurgency poses an international threat and may produce better-trained Islamic terrorists than the 1980s Afghanistan war that gave rise to Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, officials said yesterday.

A classified report from the agency says Iraqi and foreign fighters are developing a broad range of skills, from car bombings and assassinations to coordinated conventional attacks on police and military targets, officials said.

Once the insurgency ends, Islamic militants are likely to disperse as highly organized battle-hardened combatants capable of operating throughout the Arab-speaking world and in other regions including Europe.

Although the Afghan war against the Soviets was largely fought on a rural battlefield, the CIA report said, Iraq is providing extremists with more comprehensive skills including training in operations devised for populated urban areas.
(via Boston Globe)

Populated urban areas like New York (Democratic), Philadelphia (Democratic), Boston (Democratic), Chicago (Democratic), Los Angeles (Democratic), San Francisco (Democratic), Seattle (Democratic), Miami (Democratic)... Well, you get the idea.

It's been bad enough that the Republicans have treated homeland security as a pork barrel, and have left the (Democratic) ports unprotected against, say, loose nukes in shipping containers, and water supplies and public transportation systems unprotected against biowarfare, bombings, and so on.

But that the blowback from Bush's war of choice would be Islamic fighters trained to attack the country at precisely the (Democratic) points Bush has left unprotected... That Bush has put me and my (Democratic) city in the cross-hairs... Well, the mind reels.

Rove got one thing right (Froomkin) : I'm enraged. And anyone who isn't, isn't paying attention.

UPDATE Oh, wait. I forgot. The cities are Democratic. And Democrats are traitors. That's even worse than being gay (or, if you're in the Air Force Academy, a "filthy Jew.") So it's OK to kill us. Especially when Islamic fighters do it, that's just poetic justice. So forget you read this post, I'm sorry. I get so confused!

[Tearfully] I apologize!

UPDATE From the time vault of The Mighty Corrente Building, here's some background on loose nukes:

2005-05 (Bush port security programs make a bad situation worse), 2005-03, 2005-01 (Ashcroft (!) says loose nukes greatest threat), "Unquenchable fire from heaven" (Da Bush Code) (2005-01), 2004-11 (AQ wants to use loose nukes), 2004-10, 2004-04, (loose nukes and Iraq postwar clusterfuck looting), 2004-08 (loose nukes and Kazahstan), 2004-03 (AQ may have suitcase nukes), "Reckless indifference to the nightmare scenario.". This was posted well over a year ago. Nothing, of course, has changed, except for the worse. At some point, you wonder: Is it sheer incompetece, or malevolence?

And where are the Dems on this? Not a peep. WTF?

Reagan greater than Washington or Lincoln? In what alternative universe?

Vote early and often!

NOTE For me (Firefox 1.04 with Flashblock extension) the voting buttons don't work (thanks, AOL). I have to move the cursor well up, almost to the masthead, at which point there's a clicking noise, and the button immediately below turns red. At that point, I click, and indeed a "Thanks for voting" button comes up.

From the time vaults of The Mighty Corrente Building, deep in the bedrock of One Corrente Square, comes this classic image by farmer:



I don't know why I didn't think to repost this at once; I must have repressed it or something.

NOTE Original post "Fresh Garden Tips! ~ USDA Approved".

Think it's ugly now? You ain't seen nuthin' yet.

Granted, about the only thing the Republican party is good at is politics, but that, they do awesomely well. Tactically, and strategically. And their presiding genius is Karl "The Man-Grub" Rove (back, and put your drink down first. Though I have to admit Bush is pretty good too. If you read the transcripts, and forget everything you know about the man, he sounds great. Down home, and all that.)

Anyhow, it looks like we're seeing the rollout of a new Rovian communications strategy. So let's connect a few dots:

Dot one: Rove, ripping a page from the winger playbook in '30s Germany, is setting the Democrats up for the ol' stab in the back theory: "The Democrats stabbed the Army in the back!" [That's the translation of "...certainly putting our troops in greater danger. No more needs to be said about the motives of liberals." Yep, it's the liberals who sent the troops to Iraq without body armor, yessir.]

That's why Dick Durbin got savaged; and he just happened to be the target of opportunity on that particular day. If it hadn't been Durbin, it would have been somebody else. (Showing, if it needed to be shown, the folly of apologizing to the Republicans for anything. It never does any good, and it makes us look weak.)

If this meme gets traction, when we withdraw, and when Iraq collapses, or splits up, it won't be Bush's fault (and how could it be, since He has been divinely appointed to rule over us?). No, it will be the Democrats' fault. Never mind that the war, if it could have been won, was Bush's to win, and he blew it. Starting with the troop levels and going on through the lack of postwar planning to today. But never mind—"The Democrats stabbed the Army in the back!"

Dot two: Iraq President Ibrahim Jafari's visit to Washington this week. More of the usual. Juan Cole writes:

Every time the interim leader of Iraq has a photo op with US officials, he seems to feel a need to say all kinds of unrealistically optimistic things. It used to happen with the rotating presidency of the Interim Governing Council. Izzedin Salim went on saying optimistic things right up until he was killed while waiting on the Marines to let him into the Green Zone. Allawi came and said that the problems were only in four provinces (he didn't mention that one of them was Baghdad).

Now Jaafari is saying that progress is being made against what he calls "the terrorists," and that all that is necessary is an acceleration of the training of Iraqi troops (with maybe some other countries than the US helping [NATO already is].)

Most observers I know of who know anything serious about military training don't expect an effective Iraqi army to be stood up for five to ten years, so if Jaafari thinks there is a quick fix in this regard, he is just wrong.
(via Informed Comment)

So, if we don't stay in Iraq for five to ten years—with what Army?—then what? Nothing good. But that will never be Bush's fault. And how could it be? Everyone knows the Republicans are strong on defense! We would have won, if it hadn't been for the liberal traitors in our midst! "The Democrats stabbed the Army in the back!"

Dot three: Bush's upcoming speech on Iraq, at a military base, naturally. WaPo reads the Republican entrails as follows:

Bush's remarks were a preface to a major prime-time speech he plans to give Tuesday evening from Fort Bragg, N.C. His challenge is to reframe the Iraq debate, in order to maintain public tolerance for an open-ended military commitment at a time when polls suggest patience is dwindling.
(via WaPo)

And look for Bush to tell the Army—You guessed it!—"The Democrats stabbed you in the back!" He'll use nicer-sounding words than Rove, but dollars to donuts that will be the message.

I think Bush has decided he's got to cut his losses before 2006. Because things are going to get very, very bad for him quite soon—if He can't manage to change the subject. Robert Steinback (thank you, Knight Ridder) has an excellent editorial about the wave of shit moving, ever so slowly, toward the fan:

Do you want to know?

That's the only popular division that matters in the United States today: Those who want to determine once and for all if President Bush knowingly ``fixed the facts'' regarding Iraq, thereby misleading Congress and the American people into supporting an unnecessary war, and those who will cover their ears and hum loudly in order to maintain their belief that Bush and his advisors remain above reproach.

You're in one camp or the other. Either you want to know if you've been lied to, or you don't.

The American public is inching tentatively toward a reckoning unlike any this nation has ever experienced. The oh-so-clever Bush administration strategists and their quasi-media acolytes, who have kept the reckoning at bay with a deft combination of we're-at-war patriotic fervor and fear-the-evil-liberals rhetoric, are running out of parlor tricks.

Do you want to know if the president's people misled America into war? Conservative pundits are trying desperately to jump-start the sputtering media-distraction machinery that worked so well during Bush's first term.

But I get the sense this strategy isn't working as reliably as it once did. Even the Michael Jackson trial hype fizzled quickly after the verdict. The president's poll numbers have plummeted since Nov. 2, suggesting more and more Americans are tiring of the bluster and blather that had entertained them like an endless summer action flick.

I never hear anymore from the conservative readers who once admonished me for not trusting that Bush had secret intelligence about weapons of mass destruction. Or who said the British wouldn't have joined us if the case for war wasn't solid. Or who insulted the French and Germans for not going along with the madness.

I do miss those spirited exchanges. But if it means that at long last, a reckoning is under way, I'll manage.
(via Fort Wayne Tribune Sentinel)

Indeed. Welcome to the reality-based community.

But Rove and Bush only know one way to play: Play dirty, and play to the base. Losing a war? Change the subject. "The Democrats stabbed the Army in the back!"

We should know Monday:

The justices of the Supreme Court on Thursday debated whether to take on the cases of Matt Cooper (search), a Time magazine reporter, and Judith Miller (search), a reporter at the New York Times. Both have refused to comply with federal subpoenas over the outing of former CIA official Valerie Plame's (search) identity.

The decision whether to grant certiorari, or take the appeal, is expected to be announced on Monday during the court's final session of the 2004 term. If the justices decline to intervene, both face up to 19 months behind bars.
(via FUX (and nowhere else; how very odd)

And as a bonne bouche, here's Scottie "Sucker MC" McClellan giving some really choice spin. You can't help but admire it:

Q Is the President concerned about [Cooper and Miller], and will [H]e urge whoever the leaker was to come forward? Does [H]e think journalists should have a shield?

MR. McCLELLAN: The President has actually talked about both the questions that you brought up recently. He talked about this situation and said he wasn't going to weigh in on it, essentially. That's a matter the courts are working to address.

And in terms of these two individuals, and in terms of the whole investigation that is being overseen by the special prosecutor, I think we've made our views very well known when it comes to that. No one wants to get to the bottom of it more than the President of the United States, and he has urged anyone who has information that can help resolve this matter to come forward and give that information to the prosecutors.
(via Editor & Publisher

Oh, the mendacity!

Or is it never been at war with Oceania? I keep forgetting. It's so confusing:

Bush then: Mission accomplished!

Bush now: "I'm not giving up on the mission. We're doing the right thing."

Um, maybe it's a different mission?

They're making my head explode again!

From Letters to the editor in our own Inky:

I did not realize that the President's conservative agenda was in such trouble until this week when the flag-burning amendment was pulled out of the dust bin and wrapped in the bloody flag of 9/11.

In the spirit of compromise that has been missing since that date, I would be willing to support such an amendment if it included banning the public display of the Confederate flag.

If burning the flag is a desecration that requires a constitutional amendment, how much worse was an attempt to rip 11 stars from it?

If we owe something to the nearly 3,000 people who died on 9/11, how much more do we owe to the hundreds of thousands who died to preserve the flag that the Republican majority in Congress wants to protect at the expense of free speech?

Mark Stackhouse
(via Philly)

Of course, I know we have to win over at least some of the guys with Confederate flags on their trucks (as the good Doctor says), so this proposal won't and shouldn't fly.... But I can admire good snark!

Thank you.

I rest my case.

Please note:

Haloscan has been on the fritz the last couple days, and although you can post comments, and others can see them, it isn't counting them up, or at all. So if you see (O) Comments (or any other given #) at the bottom of a post, it may not be accurate.

You may now return to your regularly scheduled rant.

1969: Richard Nixon is sworn in as the 37th President of the United States.

Nixon's Attorney General, Richard Kleindienst, "calls for the repression of 'ideological criminals'", and declares the anti-war movement an "epidemic" of "national subversive activity".




VFW accepts Durbin apology

Pundits debate effect of Nazi remarks on senator's political future | Thursday, June 23, 2005 | By Dori Meinert of Copley News Service

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Veterans of Foreign Wars on Wednesday accepted the apology of Sen. Dick Durbin for his controversial remarks comparing the actions of American interrogators at Guantanamo Bay to Nazis and other murderous regimes.
"The senator was totally out of line for even thinking such thoughts," said John Furgess, the commander-in-chief of the 2.4-million-member organization. "But his public apology Tuesday to our service members and their families helps bring to a close an unfortunate yet preventable accident."

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said that Durbin's apology "was the right thing to do, and I think it was the right thing to say to our men and women in uniform who are serving and sacrificing in defense of freedom."

Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, made an emotional public apology on the Senate floor Tuesday night after a week of growing criticism. The controversy began June 14 when Durbin read part of a report from an FBI agent detailing the treatment of detainees at the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba.

"If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime - Pol Pot or others - that had no concern for human beings," Durbin said on the Senate floor last week.

Dan Mitrione was a policeman in Richmond, Indiana from 1945 to 1957. In 1959 he would join the FBI. Eleven years later, in August of 1970, Mitrione was kidnapped, held for ransom, and eventually executed by Tupamaros guerrillas (Movimiento de Liberacion Nacional) in Uruguay; sparking an international incident.

Poster above reads: Radio Berlin - It is officially announced - All men of Lidice - Czechoslovakia - Have been shot - The women deported to a concentration camp - The children sent to appropriate centers - The name of the village was immediately abolished. - 6/11/42/115P

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The issue of medical personnel assisting at the interogations in Guantanamo is not news, not even at the Gray Lady. When the Red Cross finally got past the 3-headed guardian at the gate last year, they had much the same story to tell as we read this morning in the Times, where the "questioning" of prisoners as it relates to medical ethics is getting a little more attention:

"Military doctors at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, have aided interrogators in conducting and refining coercive interrogations of detainees, including providing advice on how to increase stress levels and exploit fears, according to new, detailed accounts given by former interrogators...
The former interrogators said the military doctors' role was to advise them and their fellow interrogators on ways of increasing psychological duress on detainees, sometimes by exploiting their fears, in the hopes of making them more cooperative and willing to provide information. In one example, interrogators were told that a detainee's medical files showed he had a severe phobia of the dark and suggested ways in which that could be manipulated to induce him to cooperate."

The American Medical Association's Code of Ethics clearly states at E 2.607:

"Torture refers to the deliberate, systematic, or wanton administration of cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatments or punishments during imprisonment or detainment.
Physicians must oppose and must not participate in torture for any reason. Participation in torture includes, but is not limited to, providing or withholding any services, substances, or knowledge to facilitate the practice of torture. Physicians must not be present when torture is used or threatened.
Physicians may treat prisoners or detainees if doing so is in their best interest, but physicians should not treat individuals to verify their health so that torture can begin or continue. Physicians who treat torture victims should not be persecuted. Physicians should help provide support for victims of torture and, whenever possible, strive to change situations in which torture is practiced or the potential for torture is great."

But the semantics-freaks at the Pentagon, who are more used to waging wars of words using the firepower of legal loopholes, had this to say in their defense:

"Bryan Whitman, a senior Pentagon spokesman, declined to address the specifics in the accounts. But he suggested that the doctors advising interrogators were not covered by ethics strictures because they were not treating patients but rather were acting as behavioral scientists."

Go back to that snippet from the Code of Ethics, where it says: "Participation in torture includes, but is not limited to, providing or withholding any services, substances, or knowledge to facilitate the practice of torture." Behavioral scientists, my ass. As for the responsiblity of the psychologists in this mess, they're all a-twitter because their own code of ethics doesn't really cover it, so they're going to "discuss" it, which is no doubt of infinite comfort to some guy who's been crouched in a squat with his hands tied behind his back for 12 hours (Think it's not torture? Try it for 10 minutes!):

"But in a statement issued in December, the American Psychological Association said the issue of involvement of its members in "national security endeavors" was new.
Dr. Stephen Behnke, who heads the group's ethics division, said in an interview this week that a committee of 10 members, including some from the military, was meeting in Washington this weekend to discuss the issue.
Dr. Behnke emphasized that the codes did not necessarily allow participation by psychologists in such roles, but rather that the issue had not been dealt with directly before.
"A question has arisen that we in the profession have to address and that is where we are now: is it ethical or is it not ethical?" he said. "

Well, duh.

Meantime, the UN, without US cooperation, is going ahead with its own investigation into our possible human rights violations.

Nazis! Gulags! Pol Pot! There, I've made outrageous comparisons! What are you gonna do? Make me apologize? Fuck you, Karl Rove.

And did the apology do him, or us, any good?

One thing I do know: A tearful apology didn't help the cause at all.

Durbin's a good guy, a D-Ill, not a D-MBNA or a D-FUX, but.... WTF?

As farmer writes, the Army's desperate to make up the recruiting shortfall Bush caused by lying his way into Iraq, and somehow, for some reason, not enough Christian Youth, 101st Fighting Keyboarders, fully paid up members of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, or Sons and Daughters of Rich Fucks are signing up.

So, the Army, not unreasonably (given the givens) has framed the issue as a marketing problem, and they're outsourcing the solution. That way, nobody has to worry about privacy laws or pesky Congressional oversight.

Here's part of an interview with Andy Cutler, the CEO of BeNow, the vendor the Army chose:

Andy Cutler is one of the world's top experts at building database marketing strategies for Fortune 500 companies.

Q: Why is a "conversation" so important in B2B marketing
online?

Because you want to keep customers.

Q: We keep on hearing that 'integrated marketing' is the big thing now -- what does that mean to your conversation building?

[CUTLER:] You need all customer conversations to be captured in your database. That they called customer service three times last week, that you sent them email and direct mail campaigns, and also what the total value of the relationship is.
(via E-Consultancy.com)

First, the Army is going to be a having lot of "conversations" with potential candidates.

[Recruiting] is a labor-intensive, frequently frustrating business. An average of 10 telephone calls is required to produce a single “contact” with a prospective recruit. Five or six contacts are needed to gain an “appointment.”

It takes two or three appointments to set up an “interview,” a three-hour session that tests the persuasive powers of the recruiter. One in five interviews results in a “contract,” a commitment to join the Marines.
(Fort Wayne News Sentinel)

"All conversations" means just that. So, it won't be only the recruits who are in the Army's privatized database. It will be everyone the recruiters talked to. Not the 80,000 who signed up, but, using the numbers above, 10 * 5 * 2 * 80,000.

Sounds pretty innocuous, right? Until you ask yourself: What would these conversations be about? The answer: Identification and intimacy. Because that makes the 18-year-old targets most vulnerable to being recruited:

"Honestly, the best way I've found (to reach people) is simply sit down and relate to the person you're talking with," [Staff Sgt. Darrick McGee, an Army recruiter] McGee said.

"Allow them to share their experiences and ask them do they have a vision for themselves. And once they share that vision, you start to discuss, how can we get them where they're going to? It's really basic stuff, benefits. You really have to understand where the person's coming from, and I think that as a recruiter from this area, I do provide that. I've gone to the schools, I've been through a lot of the same things."
(via Roanake Rapids Daily Herald)

"Sit down and relate to the person." Sounds pretty innocuous, right? Well, not exactly:

In one well-publicized case in Colorado, Army recruiters were tape-recorded encouraging a student journalist posing as a high school dropout to create a diploma from a non-existent school to comply with military enlistment requirements.

They also were heard giving him advice on how to disguise a chronic “marijuana problem” and how to pass a mandatory drug test.
(via Fort Wayne Journal Gazette

Pretty funny, huh? An eighteen-year-old treating an Army recruiter like his Father confessor, and confessing to his marijuana habit. [Sure, the "kid" is a journalist. You think that was the first time the recruiters did what they did?]

It gets even funnier when you remember that "all conversations" means just that.

When the recruiter sits down at his terminal at the end of the day, that kid's confession is going straight into the Army's (privatized, unregulated) database, and follow the kid for the rest of his life, whether he signs up or not. As will "all conversations" about credit problems, grades in school, girlfriend trouble, and whether the kid is "undesirable" (i.e. gay, or, if the Air Force uses the same system, a Jew). Losing your Social Security number looks pretty trivial by the side of putting a potential felony into your permanent record, doesn't it?

I think the Army's going to have some PR problems on this one. Maybe they could hire Ketchum to improve their image?

NOTE The savage irony is that blaming the recruiters is really shooting the messenger. Sure, they're moral agents, and some of the tactics are, um, unsavory, but the Army wouldn't be in the fix that it's in if Bush hadn't screwed the pooch in iWaq.

You can't buy press coverage like this:

Four men and a woman were charged yesterday in the melee between demonstrators and police Tuesday in Center City that left a veteran Philadelphia police officer dead of a heart attack.

[Officer Paris] Williams, a 17-year veteran, was trying with other officers to prevent protesters from nearing the entrance of the Convention Center where the BIO 2005 conference was under way.

[Reactionary death penalty maximalist D.A. Lynn] Abraham said news photographs and video helped police "ascertain precisely what appears to have occurred" during the scuffle.

Abraham said investigators believe that Williams was struck - either kicked or hit with a fist - during the struggle.

She added, however, that the autopsy showed no evidence of physical injury.

[A] member of the group, who identified herself as Init, said: "Our friends in jail did not cause any harm to any police officer.

Abraham said investigators did not have evidence at this point to justify a murder charge.

Williams, they said, had a well-equipped weight room in his basement that he allowed neighborhood youths to use.

Brian Weston, 21, said Williams could press more than 200 pounds. "He taught us how to lift weights properly," Weston said. Weston's father, Jon, the block captain, said there was never any hint that Williams was ill.

Williams was also a baker. "He made some incredible pies," said Peggy Weston, 49, Brian's mother.
(via Philly)

Leave aside the corporate food angle and whether policemen are cops or pigs or whatever.

If there was any incident that shows the self-indulgence and inanity of protests (as opposed to the sort of organizing that RDF does, for example) it's this incident. No real obstacles were put in the way of corporate food, and a man is dead in a way that will give all our enemies talking point fodder for years to come.

And what's with those stupid, stupid, stupid giant puppets?

This was emailed to me without a link, but its message is pretty simple…

Opting Out in the Debate on Evolution

By CORNELIA DEAN Published: June 21, 2005

When the Kansas State Board of Education decided to hold hearings this spring on what the state's schoolchildren should be taught about evolution, Dr. Kenneth R. Miller was invited to testify. Lots of people thought he was a good choice to speak for science…

But Dr. Miller declined to testify. And he was not alone. Mainstream scientists, even those who have long urged researchers to speak with a louder voice in public debates, stayed away from Kansas….

When the hearings ended, the subcommittee running them concluded just that. The hearings had produced "credible scientific testimony that indeed there are significant debates about the evidence for key aspects of chemical and biological theory," the panel said, and it is "important and appropriate for students to know about these scientific debates."

Still, scientists who stayed away say they did the right thing.

Declining to testify "can be made to look as if you do not want to defend science in public, or you are too afraid to face the intelligent design people in public," Dr. Miller said.

But, he said, taking part in this kind of argument only contributes to the idea that there is something worth arguing about, and "I wasn't interested in playing a role in that."

There seems to be a lot of this kind of thinking going on in the scientific, reason-based communities. Arguing with the idiots only legitimizes them.

I dunno about that. I think we should take every opportunity to testify about facts and evidence. I think we should take every opportunity to expose sloppy irrational thinking.

In any case, I will be blogging lightly for a week or so. The water board has informed me that if I don’t clear out the Russian Olives from my portion of the ditch, they will take away my water rights. They’re right—the stuff is a menace and I should have cleared it out a long time ago. But the damn seeds came from somewhere upstream, and they’ll just come again. If any of you are familiar with Russian Olive, you know what a thorny pain in the ass it is to clear. So, if you don’t hear from RDF, it’s only because of non-native, invasive species. Anybody want to debate the science of that? Russian Olives evolved to annoy humans.

Maybe there’s a metaphor in this somewhere about the wisdom of debating with irrational people. I dunno.

Your government, your media, and the reactionary right have one message for you:
Sit down and shut up.

And just in case you didn't get the message, they're going to codify it for you.

So long, suckers. Your brave new experiment in self-government is over.

John Gorenfeld via the American Prospect

Dear Leader's Paper Moon
The Washington Times considers North Korea a “gulag state.” But funny thing: The paper’s owner considers it a great place to do business. ...Several years ago, the communist dictator of North Korea decided to send a birthday gift to a special friend. The gift was a rare ginseng root, and the recipient, given the ideology of the sender, may seem at first blush to be a surprise: the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, self-proclaimed messiah and proud owner of Washington’s flagship right-wing newspaper, The Washington Times.

Their relationship, in fact, is based on more than the exchange of baubles.

*

Uh oh... I think Farmer Bob might have been feeding this stuff here to the raccoons:

Meanwhile Tiller has put 6 miles between himself and Farmer Bob's crazy spread. He finds himself overcome by an intense fear of water as sheets of heavy cold rain begin to soak the warm freshly renewed earth. He begins to salivate and shiver uncontrollably. In a final moment of lucidity Tiller thinks back to the raccoon that he encountered near the tool shed only days ago. There was something not quite right about that raccoon he thinks; then he takes off in a loping snarling frothy stagger toward a glowing yellow school bus delivering small hopelessly economically unproductive low income elementary school children to a local emergency storm shelter located inside an abandoned tool and dye factory. - Butternut Valley/circa: Spring 2005

43rd State Blues would make a really good name for a band.

update "this stuff here" (link above) fixed. (thanks to Serephin)

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Your tax dollars at work. DoD contracts marketing scum to slither through the keyhole...

"The new database will include an array of personal information including birth dates, Social Security numbers, e-mail addresses, grade point averages, ethnicity and what subjects the students are studying."

Pentagon Creating Student Database
Recruiting Tool For Military Raises Privacy Concerns

By Jonathan Krim
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 23, 2005; Page A01

The Defense Department began working yesterday with a private marketing firm to create a database of all U.S. college students and high school students between 16 and 18 years old to help the military identify potential recruits in a time of dwindling enlistment in some branches.

The program is provoking a furor among privacy advocates. The new database will include an array of personal information including birth dates, Social Security numbers, e-mail addresses, grade point averages, ethnicity and what subjects the students are studying.

The data will be managed by BeNow Inc. of Wakefield, Mass., one of many marketing firms that use computers to analyze large amounts of data to target potential customers based on their personal profiles and habits.

"The purpose of the system . . . is to provide a single central facility within the Department of Defense to compile, process and distribute files of individuals who meet age and minimum school requirements for military service," according to the official notice of the program.

Privacy advocates said the plan appeared to be an effort to circumvent laws that restrict the government's right to collect or hold citizen information by turning to private firms to do the work.

[...]


The Pentagon's statements added that anyone can "opt out" of the system by providing detailed personal information that will be kept in a separate "suppression file." That file will be matched with the full database regularly to ensure that those who do not wish to be contacted are not, according to the Pentagon.

[...]

The system also gives the Pentagon the right, without notifying citizens, to share the data for numerous uses outside the military, including with law enforcement, state tax authorities and Congress.

[...]

Yesterday, the New York Times reported that the Social Security Administration relaxed its privacy policies and provided data on citizens to the FBI in connection with terrorism investigations.

Golly, I wonder what kind of "detailed personal information" gets one shuffled off to the "supression file"?

BeNow Inc

Operation Yellow Elephant

MORE
John "archy" McKay has additional commentary on this topic. Read Evil genius at its finest:

Back in my youth, during the days of Nixon paranoia, before libertarian meant right-wing fellow traveler, this kind of news would have sent us running for the hills to take advantage of that cache of canned peas and ammunition that we all had waiting. In those days, survivalism was an apolitical impulse, and we would have been happy to make common cause with those who believed that the name of the database was 666. Today, the libertarians (now with a capital "L"), the survivalists, and the 666 nuts are as likely to be on the side of the government as against it.

Gad, that brings back some memories. BTW: You can grow peas up out of the snow ya know.

Carolyn Chute's Wicked Good Militia

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Check your covad account, please. Night!

Tennessee, sure, but where exactly? Take a guess. I'll wait.


























Gaylord Entertainment Center.

Talk about the return of the repressed....

NOTE Inerrant Boy didn't actually want to be photographed with his delusional followers, so, like Frist, he participated via the Big Brother screen. Not a dry seat in the house! (Thanks to alert reader Dr. Sardonicus for the tip.)

Yes, you can always count on the House Republicans to stand up and git tough when America's vital interests are at stake. Iraq? No. Loose nukes? No. Keeping the Bill of Rights from being shredded? No. Universal health insurance? Naah, that's for fagotty Europeans (see here for the Southron Baptist perspective on Europeans).

No, the House Republicans aren't detail men. They're into The Big Picture. And what's uppermost on [cough] their minds?

Flag burning. Yes, they've passed another Amendment proposal:

The proposed one-line amendment to the Constitution reads, "The Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States." For the language to be added to the Constitution, it must be approved by two-thirds of those present in each chamber, then ratified within seven years by at least 38 state legislatures.
(via AP)

Now, call me crazy, but I always it was only possible to desecrate something sacred. And the dictionary backs me up: "desecration: n. blasphemous behavior; the act of depriving something of its sacred character; "desecration of the Holy Sabbath."

So, since we aren't a theocracy (right?), how is it possible to desecrate the flag? It's not sacred!

But leave that aside. It's really the "physical desecration" part that's got my head spinning, looking for loopholes and workarounds.

I mean, giving the Republicans the benefit here, they aren't prohibiting mental or imaginary desecration of the flag, or looking at artwork descrating the flag... So it's OK to think bad thoughts! Phew!

But suppose I put the flag in a glass fishtank, and then descrated the tank. Would that be physical desecration of the flag? I don't think so—the flag wouldn't be touched! Or suppose I focussed a camera on the flag, and then desecrated the image? Same deal. No harm, no foul! Or suppose I made a cake with Stars and Stripes frosting and then ate the cake? How could feeding myself be desecration? Jesus said: "not what goes into the mouth defiles a man, but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man." (Matthew 15:10-20)

And speaking of the Republicans:

Personally, I can't imagine a greater desecration of the flag than being right at the center of yet another winger circlejerk. Eh?

Many of you expressed a great deal of interest in my brief historical commentary on the subject of the Vietnam war - see below: Operation Yellowphant. Unfortunately I simply don't have time to respond to each and every one of your thoughtful enquiries and comments and questions and requests for home school history tutoring.

Fortunately, however, I can help you understand how I have come to some of my conclusions on matters discussed within that post and how i have come to be home-learned in important matters of history and economics and feminism and the Vietnam war and liberals and their liberalis homosexualis tyrannicus agenda. The simple truth is, if it weren't for the undying devoted companionship of my mentor, tutor, internets pen-pal and subway platform playmate Ted - Ted7000 that is, I wouldn't know the difference between a socialist and a soca band.

My friend Ted knows a lot of interesting true facts and other neat stuff about American history and and culture and politics and gender issues and peculiar sexual persuasions which drive the liberal world conquest juggernaught and, ultimately, henceforth, leach their ultimate toxic body-politic poisons into our national bloodstream. Sigh.

Ted, my lusty true fact spewing friend, is over fifty years old but he still looks like a gay teenage movie star [ Ted on Ted ] which allows Ted a great deal of access (if ya know what I'm sayin') to the engine rooms of various juggernaughts and bloodstreams and so forth.

But, anyway, what I wanted to re-emphasize with respect to my post on the true history of the Vietnam war and those who were denied access to its unfolding legacy (posted somewhere below) is that most of what I know about that unfortunate chapter in American history (including the liberal pussification of society in general) I learned from Ted who guided me like a patient headmaster leading a purblind orphan around a country fair. Every one of my Phd's in history, which are around here somewhere, can be credited in some respect or another to Ted's excellent guidance and encouragement and deliberate attention to true history facts. Thank you Ted, if it weren't for you I never would have known that Gen. Augusto Pinochet was a great raving liberal who supported Adlai Stevenson in 1956.

Anyway, in order to help you further understand the intricate crushing nature of liberalism and how it came to lay waste to our entire nation - including, as I myself have proved, barring Dick Cheney and Rush Limbaugh and Tom Delay and even our President George W. Bush hisself from serving their country in Vietnam - I've included a brief excerpt from Ted's latest important essay titled HETEROSEXUALITY IS NOW SEXIST?. What does that have to do with the Vietnam war you might ask? Well, you'll see...

Let-r-rip:

As the years went by though, the professors mellowed realizing that while men may not really be needed they were, nevertheless, here, at least until biological science could find a better way to produce sperm. So, rather than treating men them adventitiously, the way our gov't is treating the Sunni population of Iraq, it was better, they reasoned, to count them as in the human race (I for one am very thankful), and even worthy of love, so long as they were cooperative and it was a gender neutral love. Anything other than "neutral" was wholly unacceptable of course, because that was, of course, exactly what led to centuries and centuries of subjugation and male domination.

In practice though most of the professors do sheepishly and eventually revert to heterosexual mating patterns that evolved over million and million of years, but they do, nevertheless, feel a solemn intellectual obligation to prove their "street creds", sisterhood, and egalitarian ideals by having a lesbian affairs or two along the way. If they were children you'd write it all off to youthful indiscretion, but they are adults; adults who teach our children.

They have brave and bold new ideas but manage to get themselves all confused with their mighty IQs. But that is what liberalism is: a belief that if your huge ego can conjure it up, it ought to be reality. Sadly, all the liberal realities are very different, contradictory, and often very deadly. If we look at the great liberals of recent history: Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Hussein, Mussolini, Pol Pot, Kim Jong Il, and Robert Mugabe we see very clearly that the more rapid and profound change these vast egos wanted the more millions who wound up dead.

Were it not for conservative Republicans and their respect for conserving history, can anyone say how far our American liberals would go? They now have a huge gov't in place that delivers far more than the American Socialist Party of the 1920s every dreamed possible in a free country, and yet they still stand for nothing each and every election cycle but more and more concentrated power in Washington with no end in sight. They want the liberal machinery of power in place; they are psychotically attracted to it beyond all sanity simply because they perceive it as a manifestation of their huge egos. They pray one day it can be used as the vehicle or mechanism through which they can bring about the rapid and probably deadly change their massive egos compel them to seek. They are compelled to seek a comprehensive new social formula the way Einstein was compelled to seek a new physical formula.

Lost on them is the 10 years of depression and 5 years of world war that our big gov't blundered into. Lost on them are the lies that powerful American Presidents told for the privilege of fighting in Vietnam and Iraq. Lost on them are the social welfare programs of the 60's that amounted to near genocide against the Black population that was supposed to be helped. Lost on them is the Social Security program that steals 13% from every working American and gives them back far less than would have by putting the money in their mattresses. But, hey, that's what liberalism is: blind and huge ego totally oblivious to history. And isn't it an odd thing in a country specifically designed by Jefferson to be free of gov't rather than to embrace an ever more powerful gov't capable of ever more deadly liberalism?

There you have it! You can't master logic like that without some kind of highly evolved sperm wiggling its way into the mix. And lets face it...when will liberals begin questioning the "lies that powerful American Presidents" tell about fighting wars. Obviously that will never materialize any time soon. That's why we need Ted to help us. Therefore I intend to announce, very shortly, my plan to elect Ted to the US Congress in 2006. Ted2006! Vote for Ted, he may not be quite right in the head, but at least he ain't a feminazi Red.

And don't miss Ted's true imaginary conversation with a smelly European liberal.

It all somehow makes sense if you let it rattle around inside your skull for a while. Or maybe not.

*

The Death of a Thousand finally takes its toll on Dick Durbin:

"Under fire from Republicans and some fellow Democrats, Sen. Dick Durbin apologized Tuesday for comparing American interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp to Nazis and other historically infamous figures.
"Some may believe that my remarks crossed the line," the Illinois Democrat said. "To them I extend my heartfelt apologies."
His voice quaking and tears welling in his eyes, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate also apologized to any soldiers who felt insulted by his remarks."

A thousand tiny mindless insects, biting with a thousand tiny fascist talking points, finally shut him up and paved the way for the collective amnesia so essential to allowing Bush to ooze out of all responsibility for the abbatoir he has unleashed. Arise, ye patriots! Let your chests swell with pride at the mighty deed ye have accomplished:

"By last Friday, Durbin was trying to clarify his comments, yet the White House and top Republicans including Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist refused to relent. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, in an interview scheduled for broadcast Wednesday on Fox News radio's `"The Tony Snow Show," tried to equate the comment with actress Jane Fonda calling U.S. soldiers war criminals during a visit to North Vietnam in 1972.
On Tuesday, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley - a fellow Democrat - added his voice to the chorus of criticism, saying, "I think it's a disgrace to say that any man or woman in the military would act like that."

Meaning, I guess, that no further denigration of Lynndie England nor Charles Greider shall pass our lips, lest we be accused of thinking badly--merely thinking badly--of ANYone who wears a uniform. In fact, let's have all charges dropped and sentences commuted right now, and forget all this nonsense. Let's finally open up a good old-fashioned can of whupass on those Gitmo critters, and start yanking fingernails and gouging eyeballs straightaway. If we can do no wrong, then we can do anything.

And you can thank Hugh Hewitt for helping to crush Durbin's impertinent treason. He knew what you like. He knew what you hate. And he told you all about it so you didn't have to think too hard:

"The American electorate does not believe the conditions at Guantanamo are "torture." They do not agree that the criminal conduct of Abu Ghraib is illustrative of the American military. They do not worry that we are being overly inclusive about the population at Gitmo. They do not believe that any part of what America been about since September 11 is in any way connected with the Nazis, the Stalinists, or Pol Pot.
They are disgusted over this slander of the military, and they deserve a vote on whether Senator Durbin's argument deserves anything except complete and quick condemnation by responsible members of both parties intent on supporting the war, the military, and the country's defense."

Imagine my embarassment to discover that, since none of this reflects my own opinions, I must have left my American citizenship on the train last week. What will save me? Well, knowing the bovine American public's romance with inertia, it's unlikely that they are getting too worked up over Durbin's comments about this, fringe elements and embryophiles aside. But that doesn't stop Hugh, as he quotes from last Thursday's Al-Jazeera story on the Gitmo hearings, saying it:

"...reinforced the obvious and undeniable consequence of Durbin's recklessness: An enormous propaganda gift had been given by Durbin to jihadists everywhere, not to mention anti-Americans of every stripe."

The article in question, if read by a normal human being, actually does nothing of the kind, but rather even-handedly portrays arguments being put forward by detractors and apologists for the detainment camp. It doesn't matter...Hewitt's intent is to make clear that it's "anti-American" to object to one's nation's descent into tyranny, and he uses the bogeyman of the numberless enemy to scare us into silence about it. He quotes his soulmate from Arizona for backup:

"Arizona Republican Jon Kyl would not allow Durbin to slip away. Kyl blasted Durbin for the "consequences when enemies of the United States seize on even the flimsiest of things to take to the streets and riot . . . "
"Words have consequences." Kyl added. "It is irresponsible and it should not be engaged in, and it should not be countenanced."

In one magnificent blow for freedom, Kyl exonerates the decades-long policies of his masters and their precursors for any responsiblility for the current anti-American world climate, and implies that any criticism of them borders on traitorism. Not even Tom Daschle, on the eve of the war, was hounded by a maelstrom of frothing lunatics like this.

Later: Dogpile On Durbin: The Binge Drink of The Right

Greg Mitchell writing at Editor and Publisher wonders why Dana Milbank, who thought Conyers and his "trip to the land of make-believe" in the Capitol basement provided such comic fodder for his column, didn't find the reason behind the meeting nearly as interesting:

"Oddly, he seem less interested in the far more serious “make-believe” that inspired the basement session: the administration's fake case for WMDs in Iraq that has already led to the deaths of over 1,700 Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis. No, Milbank used the valuable real estate of the Post -- its only coverage of the event -- to mock Rep. John Conyers, who arranged the meeting, and his “hearty band of playmates.”"

He goes on to recall the even bigger joke that had them all rolling in the aisles last March, one year after the start of the Iraq war and 500 American lives later, when Bush had a good yuk at the expense of the dead while mugging at the Radio and Television Correspondents Association dinner--"I wonder where those WMDs could be?"--while the hacks in the audience laughed and laughed. After cataloguing the shameful list of comments before and after the event, he explains why he's remembering them:

"I was reminded of all this at the Thursday forum when former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, after cataloguing the bogus Bush case for WMDs and the Iraqi threat, looked out at the cameras and notepads, mentioned the March 24, 2004 dinner, and acted out the president looking under papers and table for those missing WMDs. “And the media was all yucking it up ... hahaha,” McGovern said. “You all laughed with him, folks. But I'll tell you who is not laughing. Cindy Sheehan is not laughing.”
This was the woman sitting next to him whose son had been killed in Iraq. “Cindy's son,” McGovern added, “was killed 11 days after the show put on by the president ... after that big joke.”
Dana Milbank, who seems to like a good laugh, did not mention this in his story the following day."

How much more transparent can they be, these Rovian lapdogs dutifully burying the bones of Bush's crimes?

Or is it just that they are so swollen with ennui and jaded by daily outrages that they no longer even recognize an immoral man playing ventriloquist with corpses slain at his own illegal whim? Unless, that is, the Republican filter explains it for them.

Operational HQ/06.22.05/CR/YR Enlistment Drive 2005 / Summer Jobs in Iraq!

Attention Young/College Republicans! Stand up for your right to work and serve your country with pride! Stop being ignored and persecuted and marginalized by the self-important, self-satisfied and effeminate mainstream media! Tired of rich elitist kids like John Kerry or goofy old liberals like George McGovern getting handed all those war medals and stuff like that over the years. Well, are ya?... sure you are.


Remember when a young gallant southern gentleman named Tom Delay tried to sign up for action in Vietnam and he couldn't do it because they had given all the good search and destroy missions away to poor people and illegal immigrants and black guys and other affirmative action types? Tom Delay couldn't even never get a foot in the war door back then. Or when President, I mean Vice President, heh... Dick Cheney would have certainly gone to Vietnam except that he was really busy at the moment and was faithfully doing his manly duty making Lynne respectable in a traditional family way and by the time he had a chance to pull his trousers back up and tie his boot laces back together the war in southeast asia was already all over?

Or when Rush Limbaugh tried to fling himself into the free fire zone and they told him he couldn't go to Vietnam because he might shit all over himself in a hot LZ or something like that? Jeezis. Rememeber?

Thats because the Vietnam war was a liberal sissy war and the liberals back then, like John Kerry and his commie girlfriend Jane Fonda, didn't want any young God fearin' manly patriotic Christian gentlemen Republicans with steely jaws and steady hands and normal hormonal drives and potentially lucrative employment possibilities going to Vietnam and shitting all over everyone and eventually winning the war for America and thereby embarrassing the snooty elitist liberal weirdo hippy crybabies like Daniel Ellsberg and Bill Moyers and Art Buchwald. If the Vietnam war had been a God fearin' Republican freedom loving capitalist war from the get go there would be an Applebees or a Cracker Barrel on every corner in Hanoi today and you wouldn't be able to sail your company yacht up the Mekong River without running over some vacationing missionary in a fish-n-ski or a bass boat or a floating meth lab. But no....

The 60's liberals wanted all the glory for themselves (even if some pretended not to) and they wanted dopers and hillbillies and welfare queens and guys named Tyrone Washington to win the war in Vietnam for Lyndon Johnson and the Texas Democrats. President Nixon finally put an end to all that bullshit with honor (thats why the liberals hated Nixon) even if he did have to pee and shit all over himself to get the job done.

Yes, as you may have suspected, i have several Phd's in history. They're around here somewhere.

Anyway...and that's why it's ok now to stand up and say I'm a Young College Republican and I'm going to Iraq, or wherever it is, to win the war for George W. Bu$h and the Texas Republicans and Jesus Christ and western civilization. Even if I have to pee or shit all over myself to do it. This ones for you Rush ditto-baby!

vox clamantis in deserto!.

So, Young College Republicans... stand up, be heard, be counted, be proud, urinate down your own pantleg and march right up to that enlistment station and take back that tour of summer duty that is rightfully yours. For more details on Operation Yellow Elephant (OYE) and how you can take back your birthright for God and country-club and the flat tax and the GOP and other reasons I may have neglected to mention above please report to the General immediately. See:

What is OPERATION YELLOW ELEPHANT?
The General can explain. See the following posts (if you haven't done so already) for further details:

Latest operational dispatch from The General.
more here
and here
and here
and here too.

Viva Las Vegas!

*

Or maybe the Boy Emperor just yanked on the leash round his neck:

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Tuesday he would keep pressing for a vote on embattled U.N. nominee John Bolton's confirmation after President Bush insisted that throwing in the towel was not an option.

Hours earlier, Frist, R-Tenn., told reporters he would not schedule another vote on Bolton ''at this juncture,'' having lost two since May at the hands of Democratic critics. They are demanding more information from the Bush administration on Bolton's tenure as the State Department's arms control chief before allowing his nomination to advance to a final vote.
(via Times)

Chortle.

Nice to see a man who "knows his own heart," in the felicitous phrasing of David "I'm Writing as Bad as I Can" Brooks.

Yep, Frist is sure looking like Presidential timber, alright....

Good things happen for Democrats when they stand up and fight:v

Responding to a precipitous drop in popularity, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Tuesday said he wants to seek compromise with Democrats on the state budget and on issues he has placed before voters for a November special election.

"I feel that there is an agreement to be had," he said at a Capitol news conference. "We can resolve this, and then we can go together to the special election - Democrats and Republicans alike.

"It's all about the will. Do we have the will to represent the people of California?"
(via AP)

What you mean we?

From the New York Times we get information we will never know:

WASHINGTON, June 19 - Law enforcement officials have made at least 200 formal and informal inquiries to libraries for information on reading material and other internal matters since October 2001, according to a new study that adds grist to the growing debate in Congress over the government's counterterrorism powers…

…The study does not directly answer how or whether the Patriot Act has been used to search libraries. The association said it decided it was constrained from asking direct questions on the law because of secrecy provisions that could make it a crime for a librarian to respond. Federal intelligence law bans those who receive certain types of demands for records from challenging the order or even telling anyone they have received it.

Keep reading, kids, LauWa is a librarian. She’s behind ya.

Frontline. Show called Private Warriors. About the contractors in iWaq. (They make at least three times what the GI's make.) Tonight. PBS.

Via The Hill, an announcement from that old constitutional amendment freak Ernest Istook (R-Okla)--who is still pissed that he can't get a flag-burning amendment passed, wants a constitutional amendment for school prayer, and wants to forbid federal funds for schools do not permit prayer. As soon as the Supreme Court hands down its decision on the public display of Roy Moore's Ten Commandments, possibly by next week, Istook, with the help of 45 co-sponsors, is ramming through a proposal for an amendment to "protect religious expression in schools and on other public property".

"Istook’s amendment, the “Pledge and Prayer Amendment,” could be the next chapter in an ongoing battle over the propriety of religious expression on government-owned property."

According to Istook's office:

"The Pledge and Prayer Amendment “would allow the display of the Ten Commandments and other historical religious documents on public property,” “allow greater freedom for students who wish to pray” and “allow students to recite the entire Pledge of Allegiance” — including the line “one nation, under God” — according to bullet points put out by Istook’s office."

This is Istook's second try, after an unsuccessful push to pass something along the same lines in 1998, and failing to get a 2/3rds majority (ah, those halcyon days!)

What do you want to bet that his definition of "other historical religious documents" won't be including Tibetan prayer flags and the Rig Veda?

UPDATE: And this is what happens when a non-Christian wants to inject "other historical religious documents" into the public space. (Thanks to Kevin from PA For Democracy for the tip.)

Go Howard!

Dean, in Boston on Monday for a fundraiser, told fellow Democrats that the party can win in traditionally Republican states.

"But we gotta be there and fight in order to do it. And believe me, we are going to fight back. I don't care if Dick Cheney likes my mother or not. We are going to fight back," Dean said to cheers and applause. "I think it's great that Dick Cheney went after me, to be honest. At least they notice there's a Democratic Party that's not going to put up with this stuff any more. So there's a lot we're gonna do."
(via AP)

It was the worst of times; it was the worst of times. It was March(ing to war) 18, 2003, and Tom Daschle, well-known enemy saboteur, was shooting his mouth off for the aid and comfort of the WMD-bristling Iraqis:

"I'm saddened, saddened that this president failed so miserably at diplomacy that we're now forced to war," Daschle said in a speech to the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. "Saddened that we have to give up one life because this president couldn't create the kind of diplomatic effort that was so critical for our country."

Outrage! Infamy! And this at a time when we now know George Bush was doing everything in his power to avoid war, everything to find a political solution and avoid bloodshed.

True patriots, like Republican National Chairman Marc Racinot, responded in the only possible way: with hyperbole:

"It is disheartening and shameful for Senator Daschle, who has previously advocated and authorized the use of force in Iraq, to now blame America first."

Not to be outdone was Dennis Hastert:

""Those comments may not undermine the president as he leads us into war, and they may not give comfort to our adversaries, but they come mighty close."

And from Michael Barone:

"Daschle's words can only be explained as the product of a kind of hatred, unbuttressed by any serious intellectual argument, likely to hurt the party of the speaker far more than the party of the president they were directed against."

And Tom DeLay, who should know, called it:

"Disgusting."

Yes, the party of Lincoln, as they like to style themselves, was all about shutting Daschle up, following up on the Ari Fleischer talking points, originally applied to Bill Maher, that "it's a terrible thing to say, and it unfortunate. And that's why...they're reminders to all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do. This is not a time for remarks like that; there never is."

Never mind that this selective uber-patriotism was never applied for one minute to Bill Clinton. Republicans are capitalists, and capitalists are all about expediency, that's the bottom line, what makes the world go round, their core committment going forward. Have to break a few eggs to make an omelet and all that, the eggs being dissenting heads, the omelet being a big ol' mess o' profiteering at home and abroad just covered in somebody else's blood.

Fast forward to June 20, 2005, and we find Dick Durbin has been threatening the Republic with mean words about torture, when everyone would like him to just shut up and let us all forget. Summer is here, and there's fun to be had, fun in the sun, which even the inmates at Gitmo are enjoying, so can't we all just get along? And if we can't all just get along, how's about we make sure Durbin's life gets so miserable that no other treasonous little gopher sticks his head up and starts yammering about human decency and atrocities and morality, because morality doesn't mean jackshit if it isn't about some 6-celled blastocyst you can get all gooey creaming yourself over about how you can grow it up to be just like you only with more money. And don't go bringing up that crap about how Rick Santorum compared the Senate Democrats' insistence on playing by the rules to Hitler, because it's not the same, Santorum being a godly, embryo-loving pillar of Christian rectitude and Durbin being a skank-like underminer of the Good Fight and a known Hater of Our Troops.

Among the more manly defenders of The American Way of Facism is Hugh Hewitt, who yesterday suggested that Durbin should be censured because:

"Not only did Durbin's remarks injure America's position in the world, provide an enormous propaganda victory to the enemy, and slander the United States military, they also represent an escalation in the political rhetoric of the left, which is designed to undermine the public's confidence in the military, the administration, and the war. The censure resolution will oblige every senator to go on the record about how they view the American military as we enter the long phase of the war."

Not to mention the satisfying chilling effect such a resolution would have on the few remaining brave souls who might still feel moved to speak out against the injustices they see, and the way it will glue the concept of respecting and caring for soldiers to the totally unrelated concept of avoiding any and all criticism of the fraud in the Oval Office and his murderous policies.

Next, we'll visit with Hugh for a bit and learn how Islamofacist terrorists and "anti-Americans of every stripe" were heartened by Durbin's secret code language of hate, and how it's the fat mouths of the Left, and Durbin's stubborn clinging to anti-fossil fuel rhetoric, that are endangering Americans, not our realpolitik and 50 years of economic exploitation and ruthless pragmatic expansionism belied by hollow humanitarian talk of freedom.

Can't wait!

Surely you remember the "Christians" at the Air Force Academy? The ones who called cadet Curtis Weinsteina "filthy Jew"? Where the chaplain urged cadets during basic training last year to warn fellow cadets that those not "born again will burn in the fires of hell"? (back)

Well, the Dems remembered, and tried to do something about it. Here's what happened:

The House passed a mammoth defense spending bill Monday evening, but only after a Republican congressman was forced to take back remarks accusing Democrats of "demonizing Christians."

The rhetorical warfare came as the House considered a proposal by Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., to put Congress on record against "coercive and abusive religious proselytizing" at the U.S. Air Force Academy.

Thank God! Ever since that airline pilot started proselytizing over the intercom during a flight (back) I've had the feeling that this whole thing about "sharing" faith was getting out of control.

Rep. John Hostettler, R-Ind., criticized Obey and Steve Israel, D-N.Y., who offered a similar condemnation of academy officials earlier this year on another bill.

"Like a moth to a flame, Democrats can't help themselves when it comes to denigrating and demonizing Christians," Hostettler said.

Democrats leapt to their feet and demanded Hostettler be censured for his remarks. After a half-hour's worth of wrangling, Hostettler retracted his comments.

Excellent! For once, the Dems call the Republicans, stand up, and refuse to be bullied.

Of course, if the theocrats were Christians, it would be possible to demonize them as Christians, but they aren't. I mean, real Christians don't lie all the time, right? Especially as a way to get the country into wars?

Republicans rejected Obey's amendment by a mostly party-line vote of 210-198.

The House instead approved by voice vote a Republican plan requiring an Air Force report to Congress on the steps it was taking to promote religious tolerance.

At issue is how Congress should respond to allegations of proselytizing and favoritism for Christians at the Air Force Academy.

The Air Force is investigating numerous allegations of inappropriate actions by academy officials, including a professor who required cadets to pray before taking his test and a Protestant chaplain who warned anyone "not born again would burn in the fires of hell."

Hostettler, a Christian [sic] and social conservative, made headlines last year when he was caught carrying a loaded handgun in a carry-on bag in the Louisville, Ky., airport. He pleaded guilty to carrying a concealed weapon and received a 60-day sentence, which he will not have to serve unless he has other criminal troubles before August 2006.

A loaded handgun in a carryon? WTF? Did Jesus say, "Blessed are the gun nuts," or what?

And all this crap is going down at the Air Force academy, in Colorado Springs, which is also a hotbed of theocratic activity (back). I hate to put on my tinfoil hat here, but the Air Force controls nuclear weapons. Do the theocrats believe in the chain of command? (And if so, why?) I mean, Dobson alone is bad enough, but a Dobson armed with nuclear weapons—the mind reels. Dr. Strangelove, here we come...

Skippy the Bush Kangaroo will turn 3 years old in July:

skippy the bush kangaroo will be turning three years old in about a month! more exciting (if you don't actually have a life), is the fact that we are about 82,000 hits short of a million visitors. wouldn't it be magical if we got our millionth visitor exactly on our 3rd blogiversary?

won't you please help skippy reach his life-long dream of a million visitors on his 3rd blogiversary by linking to this post? media works part 1...

Not only would it be magical but if you act now Robert Novak will disappear down a sulfurous crack in the earth's crust and Tom Delay will turn into a mealworm and be devoured by a chickadee. Plus Jesus will descend from the firmament riding a shimmering sunbeam and turn James Dobson's head into a giant pulsating boil which will explode in a ghastly puss-bath of gore and ooze right there on your national religious broadcasting tv station. And if thats not enough incentive to make skippy a millionaire I'll think of something else...something really disturbing, involving Preznit Make Believe and a cow pony with a huge swollen boner and and and... well, you get the picture... we have about a month to work on it.

Click the link above for radio skippy (bluegrass radio review interview.)

81,999 to go.

*

At Corrente, we are livid that once again, the expressions of humanity and patriotism voiced by a Democrat, who dared to speak out against abuses being done by and to our country, is being screamed down as a traitor and a quisling by the rabid Right, with the eager consent of the White House. I posted the following last Friday morning at my site before I went away for a couple days...and when I finally look at the news this a.m. I find things are well along to turning Dick Durbin into the next Julius Rosenberg. This is not the last you'll hear about this sitch, from me or the others here. This can't be allowed to go on. If it does, you can soon kiss your right to say ANYthing vaguely contradictory to the prevailing politgeist goodbye:


Friday, June 17, 2005

Sez the political traitor Senator Dick Durbin:

"When you read some of the graphic descriptions of what has occurred here -- I almost hesitate to put them in the record, and yet they have to be added to this debate. Let me read to you what one FBI agent saw. And I quote from his report:

On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18-24 hours or more. On one occasion, the air conditioning had been turned down so far and the temperature was so cold in the room, that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold....On another occasion, the [air conditioner] had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his hair out throughout the night. On another occasion, not only was the temperature unbearably hot, but extremely loud rap music was being played in the room, and had been since the day before, with the detainee chained hand and foot in the fetal position on the tile floor.

If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime -- Pol Pot or others -- that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners.
It is not too late. I hope we will learn from history. I hope we will change course."

While the White House and its political cronies wax white with foam over the recent remarks by about the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo, they seem blithely unconcerned over the implications of the recently publicized UK memos.

"Appalling!" "Beyond belief!" "Egregious misjudgment!" cried the Armies of the Rule of Law, from deep within the tender sensibilities of their fine-tuned compassion.

"Reprehensible...disservice to our men and women in uniform...should apologize," sputtered well-known human rights activist Scott McClellan about Durbin this a.m on NPR. Meanwhile, when asked about the "forum" on the Downing Street Memo held by John Conyers, Jr. yesterday, he said "Our focus is not on the past, it's on the future..." And don't fucking trouble me with this twaddle again.

Durbin doesn't need me to defend him, he has plenty of more eloquent folks doing that. But Chris Hedges, in his new book, "Losing Moses On The Freeway", has something to say about the idols of the state, and state religion, that seems particularly apt:

"Those who sanctify their own power deny this mystery (that is God). They promise that God can not only be known but also manipulated. False prophets, who say they can harness the power of God for us, lead us away from the worship of God into the corrosive idolatry of self-worship. They seek to speak not only for God, but for the nation, fusing religion and nationalism into a dangerous brew that brings us to kneel before the idol of the state...
We depend on our idols to give us order and meaning. We depend on our idols to define our place in the world. Idols give us a world that appears logical and coherent. Idols free us from moral choice. Idols determine right and wrong. Idols render judgment. We follow. We conform.
When we see the hollowness of our idols, how they have led us to waste time and energy, when we smash these false gods and peer at the uncertainty of life, those who continue to revere the idol turn against us. We are expelled from the cult, stripped of identifying power and left alone. It is easier to remain silent, to pay homage to a false god, even after this god is exposed as a fraud. Those who worship idols deal harshly with those who become apostates."

Durbin has become apostate, and the cult has begun its work.

I could almost feel sorry for Army and Guard and Reserve recruiters, the same way I take pity at times for telemarketers and spammers and the like. Sometimes people get desperate and take awful jobs to survive. But then I read shit like this....

(via Columbia SC State)

Army recruiters are changing their pitch.

Instead of selling benefits and jobs, they are trying to become mentors and counselors to prospects.

“We call it the Army interview,” said Lt. Col. David Dougherty, commander of the Columbia Recruiting Battalion.

Army studies show young people prefer a personal relationship with recruiters. The studies also show young people are more interested in being part of a team, want to serve others and have a deep streak of patriotism.

The new approach is being tried as the Army struggles to find enough recruits.

For the first six months of fiscal year 2005, which began Oct. 1, the [South Carolina] battalion signed 1,113 recruits to contracts, 45 more than during the first half of 2004.

Huh? They got half again as many kids suckered in and they're still under quota? How can this be?

However, the Army greatly increased its goal for South Carolina — a traditionally strong recruiting area — for this year. As a result of that higher number, the Columbia battalion missed its goal for the first half of this year — 1,599 contracts — by 30 percent.

Oh. Now I see. See intro graph about "sometimes feeling sorry for recruiters." Now back to our story....

... with an improving economy, some prospects have more options than they had three or four years ago. Then, joining the military seemed like the best path to a steady paycheck, benefits and college money.

In the mentor approach, a recruiter walks a prospect through options for the future and tries to show how the military might help in achieving those goals, Dougherty said.

The mentor approach also helps break the ice with parents, relatives, teachers, coaches, ministers and others who talk to a prospect about the decision to join the military.

Dougherty thinks the new approach is showing some benefits.

Yeah, yeah, sure, right. "Benefits" for who, exactly? would be my question. Oh, and Col. Bubba? You come near my kid with this shit and it ain't gonna be ice that gets broken, if you get my drift.

Evidently while I was away, WaPo's Dana Milbank got all snippy on John Conyers about his hearing last Thursday (as noted in farmer's previous post thanks to John Gorenfeld), provoking Conyers to write a letter to Milbank and its editor, that ended thusly:

"The fact that I and my fellow Democrats had to stuff a hearing into a room the size of a large closet to hold a hearing on an important issue shouldn't make us the object of ridicule. In my opinion, the ridicule should be placed in two places: first, at the feet of Republicans who are so afraid to discuss ideas and facts that they try to sabotage our efforts to do so; and second, on Dana Milbank and the Washington Post, who do not feel the need to give serious coverage on a serious hearing about a serious matter-whether more than 1700 Americans have died because of a deliberate lie. Milbank may disagree, but the Post certainly owed its readers some coverage of that viewpoint.

"Sincerely, John Conyers, Jr"

You'd think the Post might be interested in the fact that the UK memos may represent just one nail in Bushco's increasingly ornate coffin, what with Chuck Hagel observing (in public, mind you) that Bush is "disconnected from reality" and "we're losing in Iraq." Or with Bill Clinton finally strapping on a pair to say Gitmo needs to be either "cleaned up or closed down". Or Richard Durbin stepping out in the Senate to make a plea against the torture being conducted there (for which Mark Steyn of the Sin-Times kindly paints him as a traitor--ah, these are good times, folks). Or John McCain on Meet the Press daring to contradict Cheney (whose assertions that everything is going according to plan sound more like "Comical Ali" all the time)on the imminent decline of the insurgency) Or the NYTimes' Richard Stevenson putting it all together in a neat package for breakfast consumption. And when the MSM finally starts to get it, you know it must be obvious to a four year-old, as the bovine American public have proven.

There's more out there, but I have to get ready for work. You can find plenty of examples yourselves. Impeachment is now a word you can say without being laughed out of the room.

John Gorenfeld reminds us:

Conyers gets mocked for playing "dress-up" ... but the Republican chairman of the Armed Services Committee literally gave Rev. Moon a room for playing dress-up in, while refusing Conyers one.

*

...and smacks some silly-assed dittosquat upside the head along the way.

DarkSyd: via Ko's diary:

In Which I Take A Wingnut Apart

The Video of Conyers' hearing with Joseph Wilson, John Boniface, Ray McGovern, and Cindy Sheehan is out at Cspan.

Below is my response to a war apologist who doesn't want an Inquiry or a hearing or any other investigation into the events inside the WH leading up to the War. This fellow thought it befitting to call me a dumbshit and imply the same ole same ole; I'm a liberal, a coward, etc ad nauseum. It got kind of long and I thought it would make a good blog entry, and some of you might like it.

[...]

Is it a High Crime to engage in a conspiracy to deceive and mislead the United States Congress and the American people about the basis for taking the nation into war? Is it a High Crime to manipulate intelligence so as to allege falsely a national security threat posed to the United States as a means of trying to justify a war against another nation based on "preemptive" purposes? Is it a High Crime to commit a felony via the submission of an official report to the United States Congress falsifying the reasons for launching military action? Were contracts given out in an illegal way? Did it violate the RICO Act and Corporate malfeasance measures? Did any of that happen?

I want to find out. So should you. Everyone should.

If the evidence revealed by the Downing Street Minutes is true, if the Niger Document was known or highly suspected to be fake, if the aluminum tubes were known or highly suspect, if the integrity of curveball was known or highly suspect, then the President's submission of his March 18, 2003 letter and/or various reports to the United States Congress might violate federal criminal law, including: the federal anti-conspiracy statute, 18 U.S.C. § 371, which makes it a felony "to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose..."; and The False Statements Accountability Act of 1996, 18 U.S.C. § 1001, which makes it a felony to issue knowingly and willfully false statements to the United States Congress.

And that ain't even necessarily the best part. Much much more. Really, go read the rest of it - some of it may even surprise you. Black helicopters even make an appearance. What more could ya ask for? I got a real charge out of it myself.

Also crossposted at UTI

*

Biden (D-MBNA) is going to run for President.

Nice work, Karl.

NOTE Thanks to alert reader Sonoma.

It would be nice of someone would ask Scott "Sucker MC" McClellan about is, if only to watch him squirm:

In one of the memos, British Foreign Office political director Peter Ricketts openly asks whether the Bush administration had a clear and compelling military reason for war.

"U.S. scrambling to establish a link between Iraq and al-Qaida is so far frankly unconvincing," Ricketts says in the memo. "For Iraq, `regime change' does not stack up. It sounds like a grudge between Bush and Saddam."
(via AP)

Man, if Bush is going to use the troops in a grudge match ("He tried to kill my Dad"), then the least he could do is make sure they are enough of them, that they're armored, that they get paid, and that there's a plan to win the peace. But n-o-o-o-o-o!

NOTE Clearly , Whack is yet another case of Winger Projection Syndrome (back). After all, George "Mano a mano" Bush Junior has been possessed by rage against George Bush Senior for a long time.

We all know Bush likes to keep it simple. But Iraq is complex.

As in Oedipus complex.

Not that this wasn't already a story back in Septemer 2004, though in the Daily Telegraph, not the Times (here) Looks like the DSM is finally shaking loose a story the American press couldn't bring themselves to touch before Election 2004? I wonder why?

NOTE Here's the quote, from the Sidney Morning Herald of September 27 2002:

Saddam tried to kill my dad, says Bush
But there's no doubt his hatred is mainly directed at us," Bush said at a political fundraiser in Houston, Texas. "After all this is the guy who tried to kill my dad."

Watch winger operative David "I'm Writing as Bad as I Can" Brooks, more in sorrow than in anger, gently slip the stilletto in. He makes an ugly sight look almost pretty:

[In High School, Frist] dated the head cheerleader, and while he was in med school they were engaged to be married.

But while interning in Boston, he met another woman, spent a dinner and a night with her, and fell in love. Two days before his wedding, he flew back to Nashville and broke off his engagement. "Everyone listened carefully to what I said, all the lame explanations I had that were and were not the truth," Frist later wrote, "and they nodded and dealt with it and I went on my way."

I've always admired that anecdote. It took guts to break off the grand wedding that was in the works - to risk alienating everyone he had grown up with for the sake of the woman he had suddenly come to love. Furthermore here was a Bill Frist who knew his own heart.
(via NY Times)

Except, apparently, when he didn't. But hey, maybe Frist can get a TV deal, like Jennifer Wilbanks, that White Woman somewhere out there in Bobo's world, who staged her own kidnapping to escape her weddding.... Bet the theocrats really go for dumping a bride at the altar, eh?

These days he seems not so much the leader of the Senate conservatives, [nor, apparently, of the moderate Republicans] but someone who is playing the role. And because he is behaving in ways that don't seem entirely authentic, he is often trying just a bit too hard, striking the notes more forcefully than they need to be struck.

That is what happened during the Terri Schiavo affair. It's not quite fair to say that Frist diagnosed Schiavo from a TV screen, but he did put himself on the wrong side of the autopsy that came out last week. He did betray his medical training, which is the core of his being, to please a key constituency group.

So much for "Dr." Frist, as the Times persists in calling him. "Betray his medical training" is pretty strong stuff, though of course it doesn't rise to level of a blow job.

And now comes the hagiographical setup:

His memoir, "Transplant," is one of the most laceratingly honest books you could ever hope to read. As a boy, he wrote, his mother "worked hard to protect my sense of self-worth. If Woodmont Grammar School conducted a paper drive, she motored me about afternoon after afternoon, making sure I collected more newspapers than anyone else."

"Laceratingly honest" enough to betray his medical training. Par for the course, for a Republican. But I love the way Brooks carefully slips in the "motored" quote. Hey, did your Mom "motor" you? Or did she "drive" you? "Motored" isn't exactly a NASCAR word, now is it? So much for the authenticity...

And now comes the coup de grace:

Since 1961, more than 50 senators have run for president and they have all lost.

Frist too appears to have been gradually altered. Many who've known him say it's hard to square the current on-message leader with the honest young man of "Transplant," the stiff, ideological politician with the beloved community leader who made such a mark on Nashville.

Sometimes in their quests to perform greater acts of service, people lose contact with their animating passion. And the irony is that the earlier Frist, the Tennessee Republican, the brilliant and passionate health care expert, is exactly the person the country could use.

Translation: Frist's a loser. And the beauty part of Brook's indictment? He condemns Frist catapulting propaganda; for repeating the talking points of the Republican Noise Machine in which Brooks is such an essential cog.

'S beautiful [sob].

Yep, Frist should have delivered on all those winger judges. Instead, he got outmaneuvered by Harry Reid. So much for Frist's presidential ambitions, though of course he'll be the last to figure it out. Hopefully he'll keep fighting long enoug to weaken the Republicans significantly. Too bad, so sad....

Surely not! But Bush just floated a trial balloon:

For a time, many officials and analysts in Washington assumed that Gonzales, a longtime Bush confidant and his first-term White House counsel, had been ruled out as a candidate because he took over the Justice Department in February. But in recent days, several advisers with close ties to the White House said Bush appears to be considering Gonzales, after all.
(via WaPo)

Great work, Dems who voted for Gonzales! Yeah, I'm talking to you, Joe "I think he's a pretty solid guy" Biden (D-MBNA) (back) See how you should never, ever give Bush the benefit of a doubt?

Of course, we said a year ago (back) that Bush was just parking Gonzales at Justice. So how come the Beltway's so surprised and all now?

Anyhow, if you want to follow the trail of slime that Gonzales has left behind him, check these out:

• Bush can ignore laws passed by Congress says Gonzales


• Bush can rule by decree says Gonzales


• Bush, as Governor of Texas, need not abide by US international treaties says Gonzales


• Bush executes people based on sloppy Gonzales memos

To mention a few. Disgusting and appalling. And every Dem is going to have the fact that some Dems voted for this slug crammed down their throat. Eesh.

My wife has suspected this for more than a year:

A Bush-watcher website identified as TBRNews.org is reporting under the byline of "domestic intelligence reporter" Brian Harring that the Department of Defense is using a cynical tactic to mislead the public regarding the true death toll for American military personnel in Iraq. Harring claims he has an internal pdf. file from the D.O.D. which establishes that nearly 9000 Americans have died in Operation Iraqi Freedom, but that the official number has been held to 1713 by designating as Iraq deaths only those who perish on Iraqi soil. The remainder, he says, are military personnel who have died en route to Germany or in German hospitals-- casualties of the war, but not listed in the official death toll.
(via Jim Lampley at the Huffington Post)

Surely that's not true.

Right?

If this is true, these guys are done.

I'm talking impeachment, folks.

No, really. I'm not kidding.

Want to see the future?

It could very well be epic.

(found via Stumble Upon, more than slightly cool itself, if not nearly so scary.)

Great though my grudge against the New York Times may be, I am still not sure that this is the fate I want for them.

Buried deep in the Arts pages of the The World's Greatest Newspaper (not!) we find the following:

It's easy to tell they're Republicans, because of the lying:

E-mail messages obtained by investigators at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting show that its chairman, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, extensively consulted a White House official shortly before she joined the corporation about creating an ombudsman's office to ["]monitor["] the [cough] balance and objectivity of public television and radio programs.

Mr. Tomlinson said in an interview three months ago that he did not think he had instructed a subordinate to send material on the ombudsman project to Mary C. Andrews at her White House office in her final days as director of global communications, a political appointment.
(via Times)

Of course, that was a lie:

But the e-mail messages show that a month before the interview, he directed Kathleen Cox, then president of the corporation, to send material to Ms. Andrews at her White House e-mail address. They show that Ms. Andrews worked on a variety of ombudsman issues before joining the corporation, while still on the White House payroll. And they show that the White House instructed the corporation on Ms. Andrews's job title in her new post.

And it's easy to tell they're Republicans, because of the looting:

Under investigation are $14,170 in contracts signed by Mr. Tomlinson with an Indiana man who monitored the political leanings of the guests on "Now" when Bill Moyers was its host. And the investigators are looking at $15,000 in payments to two Republican lobbyists last year at the direction of Mr. Tomlinson and his Republican predecessor, who remains a board member.

And it's easy to tell they're Republicans, they're delusional: "The facts and the intelligence are being fixed around the policy:"

In a little-noticed [Why, I wonder?] speech on the floor of the Senate this week, Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota, said that in response to his request for the reports on the "Now" program, Mr. Tomlinson provided him with the raw data from reports.

Mr. Dorgan said that Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska, was classified in the data as a "liberal" for an appearance on a segment of a show that questioned the Bush Administration's policies in Iraq. Mr. Hagel is considered a mainstream conservative with a maverick streak and a willingness to criticize the White House.

Wow... Classifying Chuck Hagel as a liberal. No, stop it! You're making my head explode!

Lying, looting, delusion—that's today's Republican!

NOTE Thanks to alert reader Bob for the correction.

That's a lot!

MasterCard International reported yesterday that more than 40 million credit card accounts of all brands might have been exposed to fraud through a computer security breach at a payment processing company, perhaps the largest case of stolen consumer data to date.

A MasterCard spokeswoman, Sharon Gamsin, said an infiltrator had managed to place a computer code or script on the CardSystems network that made it possible to extract information. She would not elaborate on how long the breach might have lasted, on when the inquiry began or on whether any infiltrators had been identified. She did say that the breach occurred this year.

"The processing companies are hubs for millions of payment records," which could be infiltrated as information passes through, said Chris Hoofnagle, senior counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a digital rights group based in Washington. "It is the juiciest target for an individual who wants account numbers. It is a honeypot for identity thieves."
(via Times)

So, on the one hand, the credit card companies order the Republicans (along with DINOs like Biden (D-MBNA) to set us all up to be sharecroppers through debt peonage. And on the other hand, they don't protect our identities, so we can end up liable for debts we didn't contract.

But hey, it's all about margin, isn't it?

Sounds like a debt amnesty is in order; 40 million Americans might not owe what the credit card companies think they owe. Of course, that means a lot of Rich Fucks will lose some money but hey, if it's good enough for Africans and Argentinians, why not for American citizens?

There are times I wonder if we don't have the Bushco Regime figured all wrong. What are the odds that they're really closet Progressives, so dedicated to the cause of anti-imperialism that they've figured out that the only way to bring down the American military is to wreck it from within?

Because that's sure what they seem to be determined to do....

(via Greensboro NC News-Record)

Those bills continue to mount for both families, but they don't appear any closer to receiving the $1,500 to $1,700 that each says the government owes them than they were when Nathan Vosler and Bert Wray came home from Iraq in December with their outfit -- the 30th Enhanced Heavy Separate Brigade of the N.C. National Guard.

Vosler and Wray and hundreds of others members of the brigade have yet to receive thousands of dollars in expense and travel money owed them by the Department of Defense.

N.C. National Guard officials say that at least 400 troops are owed an average of $2,000 each, for a total of at least $800,000, but the numbers may be considerably higher.

...The GAO found in its study of eight selected Guard units (none from North Carolina) that "numerous" soldiers experienced "significant problems" due to delayed or unpaid travel reimbursements, "including debts on their personal credit cards, trouble paying their monthly bills and inability to make child support payments."

They were among more than 186,500 Army National Guard troops mobilized since Sept. 11, 2001.

The majority of the 30th EHSB shipped to Fort Bragg to train and await deployment to Iraq. About 1,200, however, including Vosler and Wray, were shipped to Fort Stewart, Ga., because there was not enough housing at Fort Bragg for the entire brigade.

Vosler, Wray and other members of the 30th EHSB spent almost five months at Fort Stewart waiting for their orders to Iraq. The facilities were terrible, they said. The Guard troops often had to eat MRE's, or military field rations, rather than prepared-from-scratch mess hall meals eaten by Regular Army troops, they said.

N.C. National Guard Sgt. Sidney Baker, who served with Vosler and Wray, said living conditions for the Guard at Fort Stewart were "extremely inadequate so far as sanitation and cleanliness were concerned."

"I've seen nicer conditions at shelter homes," he said. "The Guard is treated like the bastard child in the military." [snip]

The experience has left a bitter aftertaste regarding the military.

"There's no quicker way to destroy morale than to not pay a soldier," Bert Wray said. "A sergeant major was offering $15,000 to re-enlist. Not a chance."

Nathan Vosler has more than a year to go before his stint with the Guard is up, but he has no intention of extending. His opinion of the military has changed completely, he said. He just hopes he doesn't have to go back to Iraq before he gets out.

Reading this story I was irresistably reminded of an old poem, which Brautigan rather oddly called Shellfish:

Always spend a penny
as if you were spending a
dollar
and always spend a dollar
as if you were spending
a wounded eagle and always
spend a wounded eagle as if
you were spending the very
sky itself.

A 4:00 horror from Overly Alert Reader MJS:

The Bad Magician climbed inside The Glowing Box and could not see America. He changed his binary code and hopped a cable, then bounced off of a dish, then a satellite. The Bad Magician looked back at earth and found money going east. "I will make a television show about money flowing east," said The Bad Magician. Everybdody laughed because he was on a sit-com!

The money was going to Iraq to fund a Reality Series called "Let's Go Kill People And Make Ghosts." The President gave awards to contestants who went and killed people and made them into ghosts. Everybody laughed, then stopped laughing, because it wasn't a sit-com. Everybody changed the channel and watched Seinfeld reruns, and everybody laughed! Everybody was happy again!

The Bad Magician gathered together all the wires in heaven and made a lasso. He whipped them around and around and around and flung them around Washington D.C., and took its essence to a rodeo, and made it climb on his back, and he bucked, and he bucked, and he threw the essence of Washington D.C. onto the dirt, and everybody laughed! It was a sit-com after all!

The Bad Magician cancelled America and replaced it with old movies. It was time for Root Beer Floats and Popcorn and Scary Stories and Funny Stories and Sad Stories.

The Bad Magician fell out of a 19 inch TV in a small diner in Joshua Tree, California. He walked home.

Nobody ever woke up. They all watched TV instead, even though it was past their bedtime. The ghosts are everywhere.

For those of you living in the Philly area, which has become a veritable hotbed of political involvement (the forefathers would be proud!), and for the pack rats among you, check this out on Saturday:



This is to raise money for Montco's Social Security Birthday Party, 14 Aug. You'll find it just outside of Chestnut Hill, northwest of the intersection of Willow Grove and Cheltenham Aves. (Map here.)

Democracy For America is the organization that transformed from Howard Dean's original Dean For America. When he lost the primary, he plowed his remaining election funds into what became DFA, intending that it's members would use it to jump start grassroots political involvement. Montco DFA, for Montgomery County members and citizens, is working on the local levels to transform school boards, county commissions, municipal offices, all into the kind of organizations that work toward progressive political goals.

The purpose of the Birthday Party For Social Security is to raise awareness of the intentions of Bushco in privatizing SS, and encourage grassroots action to save it.

So if you're in the area, get on up there and buy a fan or something, and help make a difference.

And yes, they do hate your children.

If you were looking for evidence that the NYTimes covered the hearing on the Downing Street Memo yesterday, it was hard to find. In fact, they did have a story below the fold of the website, under the head "Antiwar Group Says Leaked British Memo Shows Bush Misled Public on His War Plans", which made it sound as if no government officials were involved at all. Though God knows, the reactionary-controlled House did its best to marginalize the entire procedure, as Knight Ridder notes:

"A hearing Thursday on a secret British intelligence memo that said President Bush was committed to waging war on Iraq months before he said so publicly ended with a request for Congress to open an inquiry into whether Bush should be impeached for misleading the nation...

Thursday's hearing on the memo was organized by Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee.
It was held in a cramped Capitol basement room and was attended by about 20 House Democrats and some anti-war activists. Republicans, who control Congress, refused to hold an official hearing or to participate, so Conyers termed it a "forum."

Among the attendees were Cindy Sheehan, whose son Casey died in Iraq, Joe Wilson (beloved husband of Valerie Plame), and former CIA analyst and founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity Ray McGovern

Among the House representatives were Charles Rangel, Barbara Lee, and Maxine Waters, who also announced the formation of the "Out of Iraq" caucus she would head. (Why does it seem only African-Americans are willing to stick their heads up and speak out on these anti-war issues?)

Following up afterward on the petitions and letter he had started, Conyers thoughtfully delivered them right to the crime scene:

"Conyers delivered petitions signed by 105 members of Congress and some 540,000 signatures sent via e-mail to a security gate at the White House early Thursday evening. The petitions urged Bush to thoroughly answer questions about the memo. MoveOn Pac helped Conyers collect the signatures."

Later, Scott McClellan was on hand to help the American people forget all that pointless old news:

"Asked about Mr. Conyers's letter and the British memo, Scott McClellan, the president's chief spokesman, described the congressman as "an individual who voted against the war in the first place and is simply trying to rehash old debates that have already been addressed."
"And our focus is not on the past," Mr. McClellan said. "It's on the future and working to make sure we succeed in Iraq.""

Our focus is on the future! No wonder Gore Vidal calls us the United States of Amnesia. A philosophy like that permits anything, because anything can be forgotten.

Well, we liberals were right. Again. Massive grovelling and apologies by the winger opportunists and media whores who used Terri Schiavo's living death for political gain may now begin. Fat chance.

We expect Republicans to bear false witness, of course, but rarely has their shamelessness been so apparent. Take Bill "Hello Kitty" Frist. Please. Catching Frist lying is so easy there's hardly any sport to it. You just quote him now, and then quote him then:

Frist now:

'I NEVER MADE A DIAGNOSIS'

"People said, 'Bill Frist you're making a diagnosis, Doctor, you're trying to wear your white coat on the floor of the United States Senate,'" Frist told reporters on Thursday.

"I never made a diagnosis. I wouldn't even attempt to make a diagnosis from videotape. I will ask questions and say before you withdraw food and kill somebody that you've got to make sure the diagnosis is right."
(via Reuters)

Frist then:

On the Senate floor in March, Frist several times discussed Schiavo's diagnosis, referred to his own experience as a transplant surgeon and quoted a medical textbook.

At one point he said, "Based on the footage provided to me, which was part of the facts of the case, she does respond."

Discussing the diagnosis of a persistent vegetative state, Frist added: "I question it based on a review of the video footage which I spent an hour or so looking at last night in my office here in the Capitol. And that footage, to me, depicted something very different than persistent vegetative state.

Frist also said that "when the neurologist said, 'Look up,' there is no question in the video that she actually looks up."

And what, during the whole flaming circus, whipped up by the wingers as part of a long-planned campaign to pack the courts with more theocrats, was Terri Schiavo's condition?

The medical examiners found Schiavo's brain "profoundly atrophied," only half the normal size, and said that "no amount of therapy or treatment would have regenerated the massive loss of neurons."

She was completely blind and could not have swallowed food or water safely on her own.
(via Herald Trib)

And the wingers couldn't let her die in peace. They had to have a spectacle. Disgusting.

And what of Terri Schiavo's parents? They (did they but know it) are the saddest spectacle of all. The Herald Trib again:

The findings will not satisfy Terri Schiavo's parents, who remain convinced that she interacted with them before her death and could have responded to treatment.

I can see how any parent would desperately wish to believe their child was still alive. But Terri's parents were trying to "create their own reality" (while, gruesomely, videotaping it for media distribution). They were projecting their desperate wishes onto the random twitchings of Terri's braindead body. Such projection seems to be a form of delusion particularly virulent among Republicans, doesn't it? The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Politial Disorders calls this a Persistent Delusional State, and there's a lot of it going around these days; exhibit A: Iraq.

Fortunately for Terri, the reality-based community stepped in. Let's hope, over the next few years, the country is so lucky.

Well, except for the fragging:

An Army National Guard staff sergeant has been charged with premeditated murder in a “fragging incident” that killed two senior officers at a U.S. base near Tikrit last week, the U.S. military said Thursday.
(via MSNBC)

Get up off your knees, Judy! And Howie—stop looking at your watch!

WaPo, to its credit, posted an online interview with Michael Smith, the reporter who broke the Downing Street Memo story. Here are the parts I found most interesting, but you should read the whole thing. It's an outsider's perspective (Smith says he is "not some mealy-mouthed left-wing apologist") on the surreality-based community that is DC under Bush these days:

[SMITH:] It is one thing for the New York Times or The Washington Post to say that we were being told that the intelligence was being fixed by sources inside the CIA or Pentagon or the NSC and quite another to have documentary confirmation in the form of the minutes of a key meeting [i.e., the Downing Street Memo] with the Prime Minister's office. Think of it this way, all the key players were there. This was the equivalent of an NSC meeting, with the President, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Condi Rice, George Tenet, and Tommy Franks all there. They say the evidence against Saddam Hussein is thin, the Brits think regime change is illegal under international law so we are going to have to go to the U.N. to get an ultimatum, not as a way of averting war but as an excuse to make the war legal, and oh by the way we aren't preparing for what happens after and no-one has the faintest idea what Iraq will be like after a war. Not reportable, are you kidding me?

Duh. Of course, the Republican Noise Machine exists to obscure the obvious (hard work, which is why they're so well paid for what they do).

And get this! Smith doesn't whine about the blogosphere, or call for a conference about blogger ethics. He welcomes the competition!

[SMITH:] We in the mainstream media are at a crossroads now. The Internet has opened up a large number of challenges to us. We can allow the web news sites to sideline us or we can impose our largely better honed skills and show that we are the best at what we do. U.S. journalists are world-renowned for their skills and attention to accuracy but you can be inaccurate just as much by ignoring something as you can by writing it up and getting it wrong.

There's more to come:

[SMITH:] [T]here are other facts you still don't know [like Hersh's tape of screaming boys being raped in the gulag?] and the media should be using these public documents as a base from which to find them out because it is those facts that will really damage Bush. Some of the media already are on the case. Knight Ridder went in very early on in this story and I see is still going. The LA Times and The Washington Post and lots of smaller papers have all been doing their bit. They need to keep going. If the administration, as it claims, did nothing wrong, it has nothing to fear from journalists looking for the facts.

Yes, one does wonder what, or how much, Bush has to hide.

On why Bush went to war (remembering He only started doing the freedom shtick in time for election 2004):

[SMITH:] I honestly believe it is more complex than [war for oil], but yes the control of the Middle-East as a whole, of which this is only a part, is about oil, no question. What we need are the memos that say that to make people realise it. But interestingly it was never mentioned in any of those leaked UK memos so as I say there were a lot of reasons for Iraq and it is more complex. I really do believe, as Peter Ricketts, the Foreign Office Policy Director says in one of the memos that have come back into vogue this week, "it looks like a grudge match between Bush and Saddam."

Nice! "He tried to kill my Dad."

Now Smith nails Howie the Whore:

Edinburgh, U.K.: What do you think of the argument reported in Howard Kurtz's article that Sir Richard Dearlove may have came to his conclusion [noted in the Memo's minutes] by reading the newspapers?

[SMITH:] This is the head of British intelligence, a man who has just had conversations with America's most senior intelligence and national security figures. He is reporting back at the highest level, to what is effectively a war cabinet and as I know to my own cost has no great regard for newspapers. He has made his own judgment, no-one better qualified to tell that meeting what was happening. No shadow of a doubt.

From drip, drip, drip to splash, splash, splash... I'd say it was time for another terror alert!

Williams Rivers Pitt from Progressive Democrats of America is live-blogging the House hearings on the Downing Street Memo being held this afternoon by John Conyers and Sheila Lee. Sample:

“House has constitutional duty…”

June 16th, 2005

…to investigate this matter and consider impeachment. A Resolution of Inquiry is required.”

“If the President has committed High Crimes in this matter, he must be held accountable. The constitution requires no less.”

That was an incredible presentation. Now come the questions… "


Good stuff. Keep checking in.

Thanks to Atrios for the link.

Froomkin:

BUSH: "Of course everybody talks baby talk to their pets."

Roker: "Sixty-three percent of people admit to kissing their dogs."

LAURA BUSH: "We kiss ours."

Menage a trois?! Ou quatre....

Roker: "Yeah? You're a part of that group?"

BUSH: "I wouldn't say on a regular basis. But yeah, I've been there."

Eeew....

Forget the Geneva Convention, the Constitution, international law, the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Forget all that, and don't let anyone suck you into a discussion of the fine points of the law. You don't need a judge to tell you this is wholly immoral:

"Delaware Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden asked Deputy Associate Attorney General J. Michael Wiggins whether the Justice Department had "defined when there is the end of conflict."
"No, sir," Wiggins responded.
"If there is no definition as to when the conflict ends, that means forever, forever, forever these folks get held at Guantanamo Bay," Biden said.
"It's our position that, legally, they can be held in perpetuity," Wiggins said.
Earlier, the committee's top Democrat, Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, said the United States may face terrorism "as long as you and I live." He asked Brig. Gen. Thomas Hemingway, who oversees military trials of Guantanamo prisoners, if that means America can hold prisoners that long without charges.
"I think that we can hold them as long as the conflict endures," Hemingway responded."

"In perpetuity". "As long as the conflict endures." Without charges.

Forget that many of these people were handed over to US troops because we paid the locals money to bring in warm bodies, and some of their only crimes were that they had gotten on the bad side of one of the warlords or their buddies.

Forget that the lack of parameters around the concept of "war on terror" is an expedient method of initiating and extending conflicts all over the world against whomever we may find convenient, without ever having to be made accountable for our actions, a new permutation of the cold war as the paranoia that never ends.

Forget that all Bushco's squirming under the charge of running a "gulag" hides the fact that this is how gulags begin, and that once this kind of power is exercised against a foe, it becomes that much more inevitable that it will one day be exercised against those identified as foes internally.

How does the concept of clapping a human being into a cell without charges, with no recourse to communication with the outside world and no one to speak for him, and no hope of ever being free again, how does this square with your concept of right and wrong, and what you may have been taught by the decent people in your life?

Now which side of the equation is our nation on? Will our representatives take back our power to do right? Can anyone who has watched events play out over the last 5 years really know?

Around here, we got these trees called Chinese Elms. They’re more like weeds than trees. In the spring they drop these little flat round seed pods in greater quantities than Bu$hCo can drop bad legislation into congress. And they grow fast—four feet or more in a month or two. As soon as you put water on a field, there they are. Anyway, point is, you can pull them up by the roots, but only when they’re young. And the sheep will eat them, so it’s good forage until the first hay cutting.

I would rather think about this than the fact that they’re going to build another coal-fired power plant a hundred miles or so from here. We’ve already got two of the polluting fuckers within a couple hundred miles. If any of you are Native, or concerned about Native issues, you might consider helping out Dine' CARE with some encouragement—they’re the grassroots Navajo environmental movement spearheading the effort to stop the plant. They’re trying to pull up the “Desert Rock” power plan early, like a Chinese Elm. Or send a strongly-worded message to the plant’s builder, Sithe Global Power - Desert Rock Energy Project explaining how wrong it is to continue to tear up the reservation for profit.

(Piggybacking on Riggsveda's post)

Brain damage "was irreversible, and no amount of therapy or treatment would have regenerated the massive loss of neurons."

Who could they be talking about?

From Florida medical examiner Jon Thogmarton on the release of Terri Schiavo's autopsy report:

"...his examination turned up no sign of abuse or trauma -- allegations leveled by Terri Schiavo's parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, against her husband and legal guardian, Michael Schiavo.
A report from a neuropathologist who served as a consultant to the autopsy said Schiavo's brain was "grossly abnormal and weighed only 615 grams (1.35 pounds)." That weight is less than half of that expected for a woman of her age, said the report written by Dr. Stephen J. Nelson. "By way of comparison, the brain of Karen Ann Quinlan weighed 835 grams at the time of her death, after 10 years in a similar persistent vegetative state"...
Schiavo's brain damage "was irreversible, and no amount of therapy or treatment would have regenerated the massive loss of neurons," Thogmartin said.
He said, the vision centers of her brain were dead, meaning she was blind. And his examination showed she would have been unable to take nourishment by mouth because of the danger she might aspirate the food."

No evidence of abuse, no evidence of foul play. The response of Schiavo's parents to this?

"The lawyer for the Schindlers said at a news conference today that the parents continue to believe their daughter was not in a persistent vegetative state and thus should not have had her feeding tube removed."

Ever since the Rodney King video made self-delusion a national past-time, more and more people have been navigating by the comfortable worldmaps inside their own heads, rather than seeing what's right in front of their eyes. Now Schiavo's parents, confronted by information on their daughter's condition that fails to support their own beliefs, simply choose to ignore it, and are joined and even encouraged in this sad shadow play by the vultures of life.

But why not? Hasn't the political and public reaction to the revelations of Abu Ghraib, Guuantanamo, and Bagram Air Base demonstrated that Americans have a talent for this that is nearly phenomenal? Eventually respect for the truth and the desire to seek it out must begin to wear thin, when you live in a world where no evidence is ever enough. You start to suspect that, ultimately, finding out what's real and sharing that with others is not only a waste of time, it could even get you hurt. You stop trying.

And maybe that is the point.

(Originally posted at It's My Country, Too.)

Much thanks to alert reader Mixter who, in a diabolical attempt to ruin my day, drops this bombshell:

"IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES FEBRUARY 17, 2005

Mr. HOYER (for himself, Mr. BERMAN, Mr. SENSENBRENNER, Mr. SABO, and
Mr. PALLONE) introduced the following joint resolution; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary

JOINT RESOLUTION
Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to repeal the 22nd amendment to the Constitution."

Here is the relevant part of the text of the 22nd amendment:

"No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once."

Sensenbrenner, you may recall fondly, was the dish that ran off with spoon in the middle of the Patriot Act sunsetting hearing, taking your right to representation with him. May we dare to suspect he has thoughts of a coup in mind here? Installing George as monarch? Or simply ensuring that the reactionary Right consolidates its power and never has to let go? Has this crossed anybody's radar in the MSM yet?

Terms limits were conceived as a way to safeguard against such possibilities. Check out U.S. Term Limits's website and find out more about why this should be everyone's concern.

What a day to be an American yesterday was.

First there was finding out how my freedom-loving government stood up for human rights by blocking an investigation into the massacre of hundreds of people by our pal Islam Karamov in Uzbekistan.

Then, after over 100 years of malicious neglect, the Senate can't even get all hundred of its members to get on board a sadly-belated apology for failing to pass anti-lynching laws. They refused to hold a roll-call so these creatures could hide their distaste for good old Christian reconciliation, but we think we know who they are).

And (they still can't get over this) more Americans felt Bill O'Reilly is a journalist than Bob Woodward. No doubt it was the lousy writing combined with all the falafel, though a judicious dollop of shouting down one's guests may have something to do with it---something perhaps Bill Moyers learned all too late, alas.

Then last night, speaking of O'Reilly, he and his heroes Bush, Rove, and Hannity had a lovely fund-raising dinner with a Christian porn star.

Republican madrassas were reported to be growing their own undead to fill future leadership seats.

And of course, the media continued to play guard dog to Bush's dishonorable reign by backpedalling, downplaying, burying, and misinterpreting both the first and second UK memos.

Yes, it was a bleak time to be an American, but there are brighter days ahead:

Lovable Roy Moore may throw a monkey wrench into future GOP aspirations of conquest, and Bill Frist is being justly tarred as the reason the pro-lynching sentators were able to hide behind a voice vote.

And there's CAT TOWN.

True life-like farmer stories:

It's a sunny day in the Butternut Valley and Farmer Bob is tending his spread. It's spring and all the little flowers and tree buds are being reborn after the angry blue winter. The bunnies are hopping from the woodlot looking for fresh little clovers and chance sexual encounters and Mrs. Farmer Bob is thinking of repainting the breakfast nook a cheerful semigloss sunbeam yellow.


Yes, its springtime in the Butternut Valley once again.

Here come two of the bunnies now. Hopping in the dewy fresh clover on this dewy early morning. The golden sun warms their cheerful twitching ears as Farmer Bob and his fat dog Tiller get ready to dig-in the tater tubers and pick some fresh June bearing strawberries.

Hi Farmer Bob! Hi Tiller!

Farmer Bob likes to mow the fresh green grass with his Colton-White ride-on twin bagger tractor mower with mulcher baffle. Farmer Bob also likes to drink vodka with real imitation lime mist diet soda while mowing the fresh green grass with his Colton-White ride-on twin bagger tractor mower with mulcher baffle. Even though its only 10:45 in the morning and Mrs. Farmer Bob has threatened Farmer Bob with an ugly separation and lawsuit and further emotional abuse if he continues to do so. Ha!, that Mrs. Farmer Bob, always making mischief. Hey, lighten up Mrs. Farmer Bob, this is not a day for hurtful naysayer negativity.

Afterall, it's the first nice sunny day since several powerful early spring tornadoes ripped through the valley bringing torrential downpours, hail the size of snowplow lug nuts, and flash flooding which caused 1.5 million dollars worth of catastrophic damage to the Henry Cabot Lodge Elementary Skool for Regional Fonicks. Even sucked Mildred Thompson's brand new used Eddie Bauer Edition Ford Explorer into Screeching Preacher Creek. Heck, even damaged the Tom Brokaw Home for Aging Greater Generations where three teenage interns were electrocuted while stealing an inkjet printer and some aerosol inhalants from a flooded basement storage room. Well dang, who needs more bad news? Besides, there will be plenty of time for gloomy thoughts when the local liberal crybabies begin whining and moaning and blubbering about that local public library closing it's doors. But never mind that, its too nice a day for angry petty partisan politics.

Here come the bunnies, hop-hop-hop... those bunnies are going straight for Farmer Bob's freshly sprouted patent protected garden greens. Uh oh! those naughty frisky bunnies.

Uh-oh again, Farmer Bob has had two too many lime mist tonics and has failed to connect the dots between here and there and pretty much everywhere else in between and has unfortunately steered his Colton-White Twin Bagger mower with mulcher baffle into a craggy drainage culvert located on the fringes of his modestly vast private property holdings. It looks like he's ok though.

Oops!, not so fast, the tractor has flipped over on Farmer Bob and crushed several of his vertebrae! Better call the EMT guys Mrs. Farmer Bob, thats a Briggs & Stratton Vanguard OHV engine, 8hsp and hydrostatic transmission, 46" cutting deck with side discharge, 27" turning radius, 53" wheel base and 3.5 gallon fossil fuel capacity, standard key start, ammeter, halogen headlights, bitchin' side-by-side gyroscopic twin cup-holders, disk brakes, high frequency reverse position audio warning signal, custom dual Advent Toby Keith Nashville Suburban country western music extreme outdoor entertainment system, and infinite speed selection... all resting right there smack dab on top of Farmer Bob's crushed and wheezing chest cavity.

Meanwhile the newly acquainted Mr. and Mrs. Bunny are real hungry and eating the tender clover growing near Farmer Bob's baby Purple Knight asparagus. Those naughty bunnies! Chance sexual encounters will give anyone a hearty appetite.

But not to worry. Farmer Bob, earlier this very morning, sprayed those particular unlucky clovers with several gallons of recently deregulated EcoClarity Final Solution[TM] RadiKill Weed Defoliation agent. The very same corrective environmental solutions U.S. sponsored death squads and private national security contractors working in Latin America have been hurling into small savage jungle villages for decades! Mr. and Mrs. Bunny should start to demonstrate severe neurological side effects any minute now.

Rrrr, rrrrrrrrrr, here come the emergency rescue guys, rrrr, rrrrrrrrr ...Yay! Everything will be ok now. Farmer Bob is still ok, he still hasn't drifted off into any kind of traumatic shock event or any feminine weakling thing like that. Thank God he was pretty oiled-up and wirey-like (if ya know what I mean. ;-) heh, when he landed in the rebar infested dead paupers culvert that he rents out to a local multinational funeral and burial service contractor. Whew! Over here EMT Mike! Over here EMT Doug!

Hey? Where did Tiller, Farmer Bob's undersexed dog, get off too?

Here he is! --- Uh oh, Tiller has latched on to EMT Mike's left thigh and is violently shaking EMT Mike back and forth like a sack of meat. No-no Tiller, don't do that... bad dog! Hurry, someone fetch the kink proof family garden hose!

Meanwhile, Mrs. Farmer Bob has gone to the kitchen to search for her Red Letter Edition of King James. Always planning ahead that Mrs. Farmer Bob.

Mr. and Mrs. Bunny are feeling uncomfortable too. Mrs. Bunny is convulsing wildly and Mr. Bunny is hallucinating like a dirty hippy from Eugene and it looks like a howling wall of severe supercell thunderstorms with mesocyclonic updrafts and hail the size of croquet balls is developing just to the west. There goes this sunny day. Shit. But the All America Winner Bush Celebrity Hybrid tomatoes with superior disease resistance will enjoy the refreshing rain. That's just the way nature is.

Luck has it! Farmer Bob appears to be OK! Whew, he's out of the culvert and still conscious. Yay!

Hey, where did Tiller go to now? Oh-no, he's run off into a stand of deer-tick infested honey locust at the first sight of the garden hose. But EMT Mike is ok, Tiller didn't sever Mike's femoral artery and the bleeding has been stopped by EMT Doug who expertly applied pressure to the bubbling gaping gore splattering wound. Nice work EMT Doug! Just all in a day's work for the heroes who are EMTs.

Here comes the sheriffs car now! Rrrrr, rrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Hi Sheriff Walt! Sheriff Walt knows Farmer Bob from the old days. They attended selective vocational training seminars together where they both learned how to file spurious property liens against the local librarian and some secualar humanists - and some other stuff like that - and Sheriff Walt once had a chance sexual encounter with Mrs. Farmer Bob in a motel room in Ocean City Maryland when they were restless young teenage romantics yearning to have a chance sexual encounter on Maryland's eastern shore.

"Is everything OK?" asks Sheriff Walt.

"Old Bob will be fine once we get him airlifted to the severe spinal injury emergency reception center in "Shining City" says EMT Doug, who is jostling Farmer Bob into the back of the EMT van. No problemo!

"Nice day, eh" says Sheriff Walt to Doug. "Bout time" says Doug. "But looks like it could get pretty rough in about 40 minutes".

"Ah, don't be such a gloomy Gus" chimes in Sheriff Walt "now where is Mrs. Farmer Bob anyway?"

"Here somewhere" shrugs Doug. "Anyway, I better get a movin', see ya at the Larry Pratt Legion of Jesus Handgun Raffle and Christian Survivalist Expo on Sunday!"

"You bet" shouts Sheriff Walt, raising a clenched fist in righteous solidarity.

"Mornin' Mrs. Farmer Bob" says Sheriff Walt, "sorry bout Farmer Bob's mishap but he should be good as new once them boys at ConAgra Community Freedom to Farm Hospital start-in to pokin' and fiddlin' and rearrangin' stuff around with him. How are you holding up?"

Mrs. Farmer Bob drops her head and begins to sob uncontrollably into her frilly farm woman apron.

Suddenly the phone rings. Its the Big TransNational Global Insurance Corporation (BTNGIC) headquartered in Hartford, Connecticut - and sometimes headquartered in Singapore - and sometimes headquartered aboard an Indian cargo freighter drifting around in the Arafura Sea - calling to remind Mrs. Farmer Bob that her insurance policy was canceled just last week due to a catastrophic outbreak of Dengue fever in Hungary's Bakony Forest and a big chemical fire at a vinyl windbreaker factory in Sumatra which tragically asphyxiated nine hundred children. The free market is a funny like that. Ya just never know where it'll pop up next.

Not to worry though! A new colorful glossy twenty eight page brochure outlining Big TransNational Global Insurance Corporation's latest policy updates and options and plans to restructure and relocate its key operating personnel to a brand new state of the art facility deep inside of a reacclimated synergy efficient state of the art former zinc mine located somewhere north of the Yangtze River is available for fast (PDF) download on the internets.

Mrs. Farmer Bob glances out the window at the eerie ochre colored sky and resumes sobbing into her apron.

Sheriff Walt reassures Mrs. Farmer Bob. He has a lot of experience dealing with traumatic situations and simple rural women folk from America's traditional heartland who require reassuring. Just like that David Brooks feller who lives in that trailer park near the Midtown Skyport and writes for that fancy newspaper.

"There there now," Sheriff Walt consoles. "Oh by the way, your son, the freshman at Southern Illinois University, has just been arrested for assaulting a secualar humanist with a claw hammer and threatening to set fire to the county courthouse in Pickneyville unless they agree to remove the gold fringe from the flag in the traffic courtroom. The FBI is holding on to him in Decatur. That's in Illinois you know. I thought you might like to know that," reassures Sheriff Walt.

"Now now, don't be upset Mrs Farmer Bob, I'm sure the FBI recognizes a little college prankster funnin' when they see it. Hey, remember that road-trip we took to Ocean City back in....," Uh oh, Mrs. Farmer Bob has collapsed in a heap on the tiled kitchen floor in an unflattering untraditional way!

Sheriff Walt reaches out a helping public safety officer hand. "Oh now now Mrs. Farmer Bob, you're hyperventilating, here, let me help you sit back up. Don't be a such dowdy rumpled unfeminine grumpus on such a sunny day," says Sheriff Walt sympathetically. "Everything will turn out just fine, you'll see. Character matters. Here now, let me help you up from that greasy unkempt floor of yours. After all, I came all this way out here to specially lend any comfort and compassionate kind words I can. It was such a nice sunny morning in the Butternut Valley and I thought the fresh air would relieve the stress I encounter daily as an important authority figure and compassionate example for young people. Say!, you've lost some weight haven't you?"

Rrrrrr..... rrrrrrrrrrr ..... Mr. Famer Bob is on the way to the severe emergency spinal reconstruction and neurological rehabilitation center in "Cupcake City" only a short 750 miles away. Rrrrrr....rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

A hair raising bolt of ground to air lightning streaks across the blackening sky and emergency storm sirens begin to blare their mournful ominous warnings in the distance. An annoying high-pitched electronic shriek comes from the TV at about the same moment the power goes out.

Mr. Bunny looks over at Mrs. Bunny. Her confused wet eyes are now lolling wildly about in her head. Mr. Bunny notices the warmth of the sunshine against his ears and tingling on his fur and wonders if Mrs. Bunny can feel it too. Then he closes his soft brown eyes for the last time as the raindrops begin to fall among the clover.

Meanwhile Tiller has put 6 miles between himself and Farmer Bob's crazy spread. He finds himself overcome by an intense fear of water as sheets of heavy cold rain begin to soak the warm freshly renewed earth. He begins to salivate and shiver uncontrollably. In a final moment of lucidity Tiller thinks back to the raccoon that he encountered near the tool shed only days ago. There was something not quite right about that raccoon he thinks; then he takes off in a loping snarling frothy stagger toward a glowing yellow school bus delivering small hopelessly economically unproductive low income elementary school children to a local emergency storm shelter located inside an abandoned tool and dye factory.

Sheriff Walt gently gathers a sobbing Mrs. Farmer Bob in his arms and rocks her back and like a tortured war orphan.

He listens quietly as the wind begins to peel the shingles off the roof of the modest single level modular farm home. He listens to the roar of the rain and the rapid metallic pelting of pea stone sized hail against aluminum siding and he the thinks about the way fate takes its toll on God's chosen people. He thinks about the awesome power of sensory deprivation interrogation tactics and his new bolt action Savage M-40 Varmint Hunter and he thinks he'd like to git hisself one of them John Deere Trail Gator high performance hydroformed steel frame all wheel drive vehicles with Clear Channel Outdoors all weather Sean Hannity Signature 24 hour talk-news radio satellite communications console.

He tries to remember if he rolled up the windows on the patrol car. He worries that homosexual marriage will lead to more frequent outbreaks of dangerous climactic change. Or is it climatic? Whatever. He wonders if the Gipper would share his concern for the future. He thinks that he may try to pick up some extra cash later in the summer by offering to help Mrs. Farmer Bob replace the roof on her potting shed. And he thinks about a motel room in Delaware or Maryland or wherever the hell it was - and claw hammers - and scowling elitist librarians sucking at the teat of the American taxpayer - and the stress of being an important compassionate authority figure.

And he thinks of fields of clover and the smell of fresh picked sweet corn and fresh mowed grass and traditional summer thunderstorms and fertile springtimes yet to be born, again, in the Butternut Valley.

- The Fertile End.

Great work. When I'm looking for True Patriots Who Stand Up for America, the House Republican caucus is where I look first. Nothing cheap about these guys, for sure.

And it's great to see how many sons and daughters of these True Patriots are fighting for Freedom in Iraq! Oh, wait....

The beautiful thing about a garden is the connection with the soil, and the fact that things grow from it. A seed, some nurturing, and the plant grows, makes flowers, fruit, veggies. The sheep and chickens grow, make eggs, make meat.

Thus it has ever been. Let the corporate bankers have their fucking cash-grabbing desk jobs. What I make I can eat.

Let them eat nukes.

We've been hearing lately about the attempt to hide the 12 or so pro-lynching senators over the last couple of days. This whole apology thing has gotten some folks in my state Missouri interested in talking about Missouri lynchings and their causes.

Here's an interview with a friend of mine, Gary Kremer, who is also the head of the State Historical Society in Missouri.

Yes, I'm not so happy to point out that one of the lynchings, the Raymond Gunn lynching, took place in my town, Maryville. The lynching of Ken Rex McElroy in 1981 also took place nearby in Skidmore. (Yes, yes, that's also the same little town that also had the bizarre story of the mother who was killed for her baby back in December.)

Anyway, I think it's good to review this sort of thing from time to time.

Gary makes some excellent points in his interview.

You should go listen to it.

One small step for man? In the NYTimes this a.m., "Cheney Calls Guantánamo Prison Essential":

"He added that it was a "myth" that detainees were tortured at Guantánamo."

But the in the final sentence that follows:

"A growing body of evidence has shown that a significant number of prisoners were subject to interrogations in which they were shackled to the floor for many hours, stripped or forced to urinate and defecate on themselves."

A small sign that reporters are remembering that their job is getting at the truth and informing the public as opposed to simply parroting the talking points handed them by the government?



But on the other hand we had this yesterday from Bush helpmeet David Sanger, writing about the second UK memo in the same paper:

"A memorandum written by Prime Minister Tony Blair's cabinet office in late July 2002 explicitly states that the Bush administration had made "no political decisions" to invade Iraq, but that American military planning for the possibility was advanced. The memo also said American planning, in the eyes of Mr. Blair's aides, was "virtually silent" on the problems of a postwar occupation."

Sanger helpfully translates the phrase "no political decisions have been taken" to mean that Bush had not at that time given the word to invade. I don't believe that is how the phrase "political decision" was being used, given the context of the memo, which 5 paragraphs earlier states:

"The US Government's military planning for action against Iraq is proceeding apace. But, as yet, it lacks a political framework. In particular, little thought has been given to creating the political conditions for military action, or the aftermath and how to shape it."

I read "political framework" here to mean specifically the means to sell the war to the public and to handle the aftermath of the invasion. In the next paragraph the memo then states:

" When the Prime Minister discussed Iraq with President Bush at Crawford in April he said that the UK would support military action to bring about regime change.."

and in the next:

"We need now to reinforce this message and to encourage the US Government to place its military planning within a political framework, partly to forestall the risk that military action is precipitated in an unplanned way by, for example, an incident in the No Fly Zones."

I read "political decision" as "putting military action within a political framework", which in this case doesn't mean Bush hadn't decided he was going to invade Iraq. It means he hadn't thought too closely yet about how to go about making it happen. The very fact that Blair was assuring Bush in April 2002 that he would support Bush's military action tells you all you need to know about whether a decision had been made. That and the pages of any progressive paper or magazine at the time who heard Bush's war drums. All this at the same time that Bush's boy Bolton was engineering the removal of a stubborn obstacle to creating a political excuse for the war.

Thanks to the Freeway Blogger:

Think Michael Kinsley will ever notice?

A little hagiography [kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss] on "Thrillionares" from the New York Times:

Mr. Allen, who became a co-founder of Microsoft, is responsible for SpaceShipOne, the pint-size manned rocket that won the $10 million Ansari X Prize competition last year as the first privately financed craft to fly to the cusp of space - nearly 70 miles up.

I'm assuming SpaceShipOne doesn't run Mr. Allen's software...

Mr. Allen is not the designer; that is Burt Rutan, the legendary aeronautical engineer with the sideburns that look like sweeping air scoops. He is not one of the test pilots who made the competition-winning flights; they are Michael Melvill and Brian Binnie. Mr. Allen is, instead, the one who gets little glory but without whom nothing is possible - he is the guy who signs the checks. And he did what the rich do: he hired good people.

Well, um, not all the rich, eh? Say, is Kenny Lay still on the street? No, don't tell me. It'll only spike my B.S.S.

The SpaceShipOne flight made him the best-known member of a growing club of high-tech thrillionaires, including the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who find themselves with money enough to fulfill their childhood fascination with space. Rick N. Tumlinson, co-founder of the Space Frontier Foundation, a group that promotes public access to space, said the effort had become a geeky status symbol. "It's not good enough to have a Gulfstream V," he said. "Now you've got to have a rocket."

Hey! That rocket is almost as big as my dick!

Many self-professed "space geeks" say the possibility that entrepreneurs like Richard Branson of the Virgin Group may help regular people see the black sky - well, regular rich people, at least [ha ha!] - has drawn away much of the excitement that government-financed human space efforts long enjoyed.
(via NY Times)

In a country where what, 50 million don't have health insurance? Give me a fucking break.

Not guilty on all ten counts.

What on earth will we have to talk about now?

Look! Over there! Another White (Southern) Woman kidnapped!

March 18, 2001

BIOGRAPHY

Christian Bailey

Christian Bailey is a principal of Lincoln Capital and manages their Lincoln Futures Fund. That fund has returned 187% since its inception in December 2000.

Previously, Bailey was the Founder and CEO of Express Action, a provider of international trade logistics solutions. Express Action handles all the complexity of international import duties, taxes, regulations and customs clearance online, making an international order just as transparent and simple as a domestic one. This allows buyers and sellers to participate globally in exchanges, e-procurement and web-enabled supply-chains. After founding the company and recruiting the core team, Bailey secured $15M in first round venture and debt funding and led the growth of the company during its first year. He had been previously been working actively with the Internet since 1991 and acted as an advisor to several of the earliest European e-businesses.

Before founding Express Action, Bailey was head of the Emerging Companies Group at Linck Corporate Finance PLC, where he funded and helped develop high-growth technology companies. Before joining Linck, he was Founder and CEO of ITG, a computer services company with a global supply-chain which was acquired in 1998. He also worked at Kleinwort Benson before their acquisition by Dresdner Bank and in Barclays Bank's International Corporate Group.

Bailey is an FAA-certified helicopter and airplane pilot and holds a BA and a MA in Economics and Management from the University of Oxford.

July 21, 2001

BIOGRAPHY

Christian Bailey

Christian Bailey serves as President of Lincoln Asset Managment LLC whose principal fund has returned 184% since its inception in December 2000. Prior to founding Lincoln Asset Management, Bailey traded derivatives for his own account with a consistently successful track record for over eight years.

In addition to trading, Bailey has also committed to entrepreneurial and organizational roles. After graduating with a BA in Economics and Management from the University of Oxford, Bailey founded three companies over four years. The last one, Express Action Inc, successfully raised $15M in first round debt and equity funding and grew to 45 employees under Bailey's leadership. The company was subsequently acquired.

Bailey gained experience on the money market and derivatives desks at Kleinwort Benson before their acquisition by Dresdner Bank. He also worked in Barclays Bank's International Corporate Group.

Bailey also enjoys the opportunity to apply risk management and judgment in the world of aviation and is an FAA-certified helicopter and airplane pilot.

Lincoln Asset Management link: Lincoln Asset Management. NOTE!: Clicking through the link which is displayed on the page I've linked to here (Lincoln Asset Management) will take you to an old Lincolnam.com page -- however -- the text there seems to only render in gibberish when attempting to load.

Past "Christian Bailey.com" posts: The earliest entry being March 18, 2001. The last entry being July 2004. The greatest body of posts appear to be blog posts (links to daily news items, techno news, etc...) made during 2003: from Feb 01, 2003 thru Dec. 12, 2003.

Full listing of previous Christianbailey.com pages (via the Wayback Machine) can be viewed here: archived "christianbailey.com" pages


August 2004 | Baghdad:

FBO DAILY ISSUE OF JULY 25, 2004 FBO #0972
MODIFICATION

R -- Iraq Private Sector Growth and Employment Generation, ECON II

Notice Date
7/23/2004

Notice Type
Modification

NAICS
541611 — Administrative Management and General Management Consulting Services

Contracting Office
Agency for International Development, Overseas Missions, Iraq (CPA) USAID-Baghdad, Department of State, APO, AE, 09335

ZIP Code
09335

Solicitation Number
267-R-00-04-00188

Response Due
8/15/2004

Archive Date
8/30/2004

[...] 20036, Contact: Christian Bailey, Vice President, Telephone: +1 (202)595-1330 x29 Office, Cell: +1 (866)406-8469, Fax: +1 (202)595-0208, Email: christian.bailey@iraqex.com, Fullah Bldg, Third Floor, Kindi Street, District 211, Harthya, Baghdad, Iraq, Telephone: +964(790)144-0207, www.iraqex.com; [...]

Place of Performance
Address: Iraq country-wide
Country: Iraq

Record
SN00629075-W 20040725/040723211526 (fbodaily.com)

Source
FedBizOpps.gov Link to This Notice
(may not be valid after Archive Date)

Full text of FBO "point of contact" info excerpted above can be found here: FedBizOpps.gov

UPDATE/MORE/2003
Lincoln Asset Management Group:

Alternative Investment News
March 1, 2003
SECTION: No. 3, Vol. 4; Pg. 12
IAC-ACC-NO: 98882123
LENGTH: 168 words
HEADLINE: New York firm launches defense sector LBO fund; Manager News; leveraged buyout; Brief Article

BODY:
Lincoln Asset Management Group, a New York-based hedge fund firm, has launched a leveraged buyout fund focusing on the defense and intelligence sectors. The firm rolled out the Lincoln Orion Fund this month, said Christian Bailey, managing director. Lincoln had been pre-marketing the fund and has obtained commitments of $ 100 million from six institutional investors, whom Bailey declined to name. The investors include two private equity funds of funds, three corporations and one foreign investor, he said. The fund will be capped at $ 300 million.

The fund will buy companies in the defense and national security industries in the U.S., Bailey said. "Timing is extremely good to look at defense companies. There is huge demand from the Department of Defense and the intelligence community," he noted.

The minimum for investment is $ 1 million with a 1% management fee and 20% performance fee. Lincoln manages $ 100 million in assets in a global macro hedge fund and a macro fund of funds.

IAC-CREATE-DATE: July 26, 2003

2004/Iraqex: ABANA / Arab Bankers Association of North America:

Controller - Iraqex Jobs
Posted by Marie-Thérèse Abou-Daoud on 12/03/2004
About the Company

[...]

Iraqex was formed with the backing of Lincoln Asset Management Group with the assistance of a cadre of investors, to pursue private sector opportunities in Iraq. Iraqex brings a unique combination of expertise in collecting and exploiting information; structuring transactions; and mitigating risks through due diligence, legal strategies and security. Iraqex has developed subsidiaries and private equity investments in Iraq spanning commercial real estate! , manufacturing, metals, transportation, and communications.

Iraqex recently won the three-year contract to provide all Public Relations, outreach, and media monitoring & analysis for Coalition Forces across Iraq. This is a major project with vital importance to achieving success in the goal of brining the Iraqi people elections to choose their own future.

Iraqex benefits from strong relationships in Iraq, the U.S. and internationally. In Iraq, it has cultivated relationships with the Iraqi national government, municipalities, tribal leaders, prominent families, and the business community. Iraqex has a thriving network of offices from Basra in the South to Zakho in the North and employs over 300 Iraqis. In the U.S., Iraqex enjoys select relationships in Congress, the Administration, OPIC, ExIm Bank, and the U.S. Department of State.

More information is available at www.iraqex.com.

(-- Thanks SJ --)

Discussion of Billmon's post here: Moon of Alabama (thanks for the link RossK)

More via Billmon at Whiskey Bar: Blowback

...and from Xan (see below): Soon They Will Love Us, And Throw Flowers

...and via "redjade" (All Other Places) on topic at IndyMedia: US Psychological Warfare Effort to be Outsourced

*

Republicans are like aphids and squash bugs. Voraciously after what you try so hard to grow. Just an observation.

But they can be squashed. Oh, yes.

Apologizing for over a century of refusing to protect one's citizens and presiding over countless deaths, tortures, and maimings, is one of those things that we ought to expect from a such a clutch of "moral values" fans as we have in the Senate, so I guess this is a good thing, on the whole.

But excuse my irrepressible cyncism if I wonder whether this recent poll on their approval rating has anything to do with it.

29%? That's almost French Revolution-quality popularity. The rabble may yet be roused, non?

Reuters is reporting that the Bush administration is divided over whether or not to close down Guantanamo. Aside from puzzling over exactly WHO amongst those freedom lovers might be rankling over maintaining what is fast becoming the world's most populated albatross, I can guess who wants to keep it open. How about this for a clue:

"Vice President Dick Cheney says there are no plans for now to shutter the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay where terrorism suspects are held.
''The important thing here to understand is that the people that are at Guantanamo are bad people,'' he said.
''I mean, these are terrorists for the most part. These are people that were captured in the battlefield of Afghanistan or rounded up as part of the al-Qaida network,'' he said in an interview to be aired today on Fox News Channel's ''Hannity & Colmes.''"

That's your hard-core news show right there, isn't it, policy wonks? Dick "Go fuck yourself" Cheney won't tell the American people to whom he answers what he did in his energy policy meetings, but he'll shower Sean Hannity with interview largesse. And don't worry about those prisoners, 'cause they're "terrorists for the most part." He expands:

"'We've already screened the detainees there and released a number, sent them back to their home countries,'' Cheney said in the interview taped Friday. ''But what's left is hard core.''"

Hard core. And that includes the 14 year old:

"Lawyers representing detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, say that there still may be as many as six prisoners who were captured before their 18th birthday and that the military has sought to conceal the precise number of juveniles at the prison camp.
One lawyer said that his client, a Saudi of Chadian descent, was not yet 15 when he was captured and has told him that he was beaten regularly in his early days at Guantánamo, hanged by his wrists for hours at a time and that an interrogator pressed a burning cigarette into his arm.
The lawyer, Clive A. Stafford Smith, of London, said in an interview that the prisoner, who is now 18 and is identified by the initials M.C. in public documents, told him in a recent interview at Guantánamo that he was seized by local authorities in Pakistan about Oct. 21, 2001, a few months shy of his 15th birthday, and taken to Guantánamo at the beginning of 2002."

So basically this kid spent almost his entire teenage years in Guantanamo. Must give him a warm fuzzy feeling when he casts a gaze northward.

I feel safer already, Uncle Dick.

Watching carefully Friday night and into Saturday for the Dreadful Data Dump, this rather caught my eye. Must have been the name "Lincoln," who knows. We start here at the WaPo

The Pentagon awarded three contracts this week, potentially worth up to $300 million over five years, to companies it hopes will inject more creativity into its psychological operations efforts to improve foreign public opinion about the United States, particularly the military.

"We would like to be able to use cutting-edge types of media," said Col. James A. Treadwell, director of the Joint Psychological Operations Support Element, a part of Tampa-based U.S. Special Operations Command. "If you want to influence someone, you have to touch their emotions."

He said SYColeman Inc. of Arlington, Lincoln Group of the District, and Science Applications International Corp. will help develop ideas and prototypes for radio and television spots, documentaries, or even using text messages, pop-up ads on the Internet, podcasting, billboards or novelty items.

Hmm. Time to Google. First thing I learn is that this is is LincolnGroup.com, and absolutely not to be confused with the Lincoln Group .org, a perfectly respectable outfit dedicated to the study of Father Abraham. But back to our search...Nosing around turns up the name of Christian Bailey as a high muckety-muck at the Lincoln Group that's getting the Big Baghdad Bux.

What gives Mr. Bailey the level of expertise needed to get these Bux to make the Iraqi people love us like the ungrateful bastards are supposed to? I mean, there were Other people Who Wanted In On This Gig, but they didn't get it. Mr. Christian did. Why?

Well, he:

--Has Experience.According to ODwyer, apparently a PR firm about PR firms. They didn't really want me to read this, but Google Cache can be talked into just about anything, the slut. Note the date here:

Sept. 30, 2004

U.S. FORCE TAPS
PR HELP FOR IRAQ

The U.S.-led military force in Iraq has awarded a seven-figure PR contract to Washington, D.C.-based Iraqex, a year-old business clearinghouse company formed specifically to provide a swath of services in the war-torn country.

Iraqex was set up by Lincoln Alliance Corp., a D.C.-based business "intelligence" company that handles services from "political campaign intelligence" to commercial real estate in Iraq.

Christian Bailey, an executive at Iraqex/Lincoln, told O'Dwyer's his company has established four offices in Baghdad and other outposts, including an additional operation in Basra. He said Iraqex began handling PR work for private entities in sectors like manufacturing and finance within the country last year and has established close ties with 300-400 members of the Iraqi media.

Bailey declined to get into specifics on the work because of its nature, but said more information would be forthcoming from Iraqex.

The company, which submitted a proposal of $5.5 million for the first year of the sweeping PR and advertising contract, beat five other firms. A contracting officer for the military did not disclose the competitors to this website or in an e-mail to the losing bidders.

Recent polls suggest support for the Coalition is falling and more and more Iraqis are questioning Coalition resolve, intentions, and effectiveness. It is essential to the success of the Coalition and the future of Iraq that the Coalition gains widespread Iraqi acceptance of its core themes and messages."

Yeah, things have perked up so much since Christian's been on the job, no wonder they gave him another shot o' the old green gold.

--He is Not Unattractive, Although a Bit Young (scroll down, he's the 7th picture IIRC.)

--He's a Brit by the sound of him. The interview is an entirely dreary thing about the joys of the venture capitalism biz, but he does give a bit of advice: Go to parties and meet people, and maybe they will give you adventurous capital. And wouldn't you just be amazed to learn next that...

--He's in the loop on the best Washington parties, sez the NY Sun:

A certain mystique has surrounded Jennifer 8. Lee ever since, as a teenager, she added a number to spice up her common name.

It followed her to the New York Times, where she became a staff reporter at age 24. And it’s trailed the 27-year-old to Washington, D.C., where Ms. Lee has become better known for her parties than for her peculiar byline.

“There’s that tradition of grand dame hostesses in D.C. I think Jenny’s like the 21st-century version,” says Christian Bailey, 28, a buyout fund manager whose taste of the social scene at Ms. Lee’s swayed him to move to Washington from New York.

But, you know, there's the party, and then there's the Partei. And gosh gee whiz, you thought Corrente had descended into a trashy gossip rag, right? Read here, o ye doubters:

"Lead21.org"

Since its inception in Fall 2001, Lead21 has been doing its part to cultivate the next generation of business leaders committed to building a dynamic future for the Republican Party. Lead21 has always prided itself as an organization built by dreamers, doers, and difference-makers. We created a thriving community of emerging Republican entrepreneurs and professionals in the blue state capitals of New York City and San Francisco. As we matured as an organization, Lead21 broadened its focus toward deployment of its members to make a lasting impact on election outcomes...

When the 2004 election cycle gained momentum, Lead21 members were ready, willing and able to help. Among us, we have Lead21 members who served as Delegates, Alternates and volunteers to the 2004 Republican National Convention, demonstrating a passionate commitment toward re-electing President Bush. Lead21 NYC Co-Chairs – Christian Bailey and Maxine Friedman, in conjunction w/ Convention Co-Chairs - Scott Johnson, Natalie Lui, and Sarayu Srinivasan – organized Lead21’s trip to the GOP Convention in New York City.

Yup. The guy's got every qualification you could ask for to run a multi-million dollar psy-ops/PR/propaganda gig, or at least produce novelty items. Let a hundred flowers bloom, Chris. They need the petals for the parade.

MORE on topic - via corrente: Christian Bailey dot com

First rule of Rethuglican politics: You can use your own money to get yourself started in the stealing-and-preaching business, but once the dough starts to roll in from the suckers you must promptly pay yourself back. Ex-Dr., now Sen Frist (R-PiousFraudulency) is, I fervently hope, about to get his stethoscope in a wringer:

(via Atlanta Journal-Constitution, sorry, registration, but other Knight-Ridder places will no doubt have it shortly. Hey, maybe even a Gannett rag like the Nashville Tennessean will pick it up someday? (pause to guffaw, snicker, snort, etc.):

Hundreds of thousands of dollars Frist's supporters had given him to run for the Senate were dwindling at a rapid rate. Much of that money was lost in a stock market investment that experts say was out of line with the way candidates traditionally invest campaign funds. Frist's campaign also took on more than $1 million in debt so that it could repay Frist for interest-free loans he made to his campaign six years earlier.

And then, in a decision experts say violated federal campaign regulations, Frist filed reports with the Federal Elections Commission that made it difficult for his contributors and political foes to determine just how bad off his campaign finances were.

Now the most likely scenario is that Frist himself (or one of his "people": I like to call them Fristians myself) arranged to leak this to the Urinal-Constipation. That way they can pay the usual little wrist-slapping fine and afterwards can dismiss all queries as "old news" which "Tennesseans didn't care about then" (tragically probably true) "and the American people don't care about now." I wonder if Lil' Scotty McLiar's been signed up as campaign press pimp in chief yet?

So why is Joe Biden (D-MBNA) talking about needing a draft?

Bush lied his way into Whack. Then he didn't get the troops armor. Parents get this (finally), and so they discourage their kids from going into the military. That's why there's a 40% shortfall in recruiting.

So, Bush is drowning—who knew he couldn't swim?—and Biden wants to throw him a lifeline? WTF?

NOTE When is one of the Big Boys in Blogpac going to threaten to raise money to get Biden back in line? It worked with Whiney Joe (D-FUX News).

By now many of you have read of the new, improved UK Memo that came on the heels of the original Downing Street Memo. My blog-sibs will have more on that in the near future.

But listen: what could be worse than having something like this drop in your lap and nobody cares? Well, how about someone you might trust, someone influential with lots of bandwidth and readership, who tells the world through numerous outlets that the people who care about this are crazy conspiracy theorists who needn't be taken seriously, since none of this proves anything. From my own site:


6/12/05

What could be more cutting than the discovery that someone you have respected for years, someone you defended against attacks by others who felt he was a rudderless punk, this person has pretty well single-handedly undercut one of the most important revelations the left has been able to use since Bush was appointed Dauphin by his daddy's buddies? Granted, he's not fuzzy lovable, and he has an acid tongue, but for years I overlooked his New Republicitis. I wonder what his predecessor and successor Lewis Lapham has to say about Michael Kinsley these days?

Well, Kinsley has shot his keyboard off, no doubt in the service of "balance", and unleashed a spray of indiscriminate fire across the bow of the LA Times:

"After about the 200th e-mail from a stranger demanding that I cease my personal cover-up of something called the Downing Street Memo, I decided to read it. (By mentioning 200 e-mails, I do not intend to brag. I'm sure Tom Friedman got many more.) It's all over the blogosphere and Air America, the left-wing talk-radio network: This is the smoking gun of the Iraq war. It is proof positive that President Bush was determined to invade Iraq a year before he did so. The whole "weapons of mass destruction" concern was phony from the start, and the drama about inspections was just kabuki: going through the motions.
Although it is flattering to be thought personally responsible for allowing a proven war criminal to remain in office, in the end I don't buy the fuss. Nevertheless, I am enjoying it, as an encouraging sign of the left's revival. Developing a paranoid theory and promoting it to the very edge of national respectability takes ideological self-confidence. It takes a critical mass of citizens with extreme views and the time and energy to obsess about them. It takes a promotional infrastructure and the discipline to settle on a story line, disseminate it and stick to it.
It takes, in short, what Hillary Clinton once called a vast conspiracy. The right has had one for years. Even moderate and reasonable right-wingers benefit from a mass of angry people even further right. This overhang of extremists makes the moderates appear more reasonable. It has pulled the center of politics, where the media try to be and where compromises on particular issues end up, in a rightward direction. Listening to extreme views on your own side is soothing even if you would never express them and may not even believe them."

Gosh, thanks for the broadbrush libel, Michael. Oh, I'm not quoting any more of it, it's full of snarky disdain and ho-ho-ho condescension. But what prompted this unplanned post was finding this poison in the op-ed pages of the Washington Post. And not only in WaPo, but with a weathervane for it on the front page.

So I'm at mithras' blog, and I go:

"Well, the density and incuriousness of the American public is enough of an obstacle without Michael Kinsley (who used to edit Harper's and had some credibility until he decided to mud-wrestle with Susan Estrich) popping off in the pages of the LA Times about how the blogosphere's Loony Left has gotten its panties in a bunch over some no-news memo that doesn't prove a thing about Bush's intentions, and how we poor deluded fools are weaving conspiracy theories out of information that was in plain sight clear back in 2002. His piece drips with such disdain and scorn that I woudn't be surprised if LGF and the RNC sticky-post it on their front pages for the next two weeks.
With ex-liberals like Kinsley purging the ranks of us "fringe elements", who needs Karl Rove?"

And he goes:

""

Which is about all there is left to say.

Oh, I'm sorry. I meant wusses. Damn.

In the Corrente mailbag, we find a letter from one Rick Pearlstein:

May I offer you all a thought on the flap over Dean's comments? I'm with the chairman. This is why:

"We talk about southern culture, blue-collar culture, NASCAR culture --
which overlaps, in complicated ways, with evangelical culture. Certainly one tenet they all share is this: When somebody punches you in the gut, you don't smile, stride halfway between his position and yours, and say that maybe the guy has a point. Behaving like that is precisely what has made the Democrats look so unsympathetically unfocused and confused to so many people."

(via The American Prospect)

Damn straight. You listening, Joe Biden (D-MBNA)?

A Presidential election is not a dinner party...

NOTE If you want to go all PC on me for the head, please, in your outraged comment, cite another Dem blog quoting Lifting Belly. OK?

Get a load of this thumbsucker from one Alan Ehrenhalt on the mysterious phenomenon of "Clinton Hatred">

MILLIONS of Americans despise Bill Clinton. They have done so since he became a presence in national politics in the early 1990's, and they continue to do so today, more than four years after his retirement from public office.
Skip to next paragraph

The passion of the Clinton haters is a phenomenon without equal in recent American politics. It is not based on any specific policies that Clinton promoted or implemented during his years in office. It is almost entirely personal. In its persistence and intensity, it goes far beyond anything that comparable numbers of people have felt about Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan or either of the presidents Bush. It surpasses even the liberals' longstanding detestation of Richard Nixon. The only political obsession comparable to it in the past century is the hatred that a significant minority of Americans felt for Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
(via Times Book Review)

Hmmm... I wonder what possible connection there could be?

n this respect the phenomenon is all the more puzzling. ... Viewed in historical perspective, Clinton-hatred is not easy to explain ... If, as Harris believes, Clinton was in the most important ways a competent president -- and certainly not a combative or ideological one -- then the conundrum of Clinton-hatred remains essentially unsolved. ...

Wait for it...

[Clinton] was the tangible symbol of the Baby Boom... The generational issue is surely not the only explanation of Clinton hatred, but it may be the most persuasive one anybody has presented so far. Ultimately there will be others.

Gosh. You know, I can think of one of those "other" explanations, and I'm not even a perferssor or a talking head:

The Clinton Haters were funded to hate, you dimwits!

Really, such innocence as these guys display... Just can't be innocent, can it?

Out of office forever, that is.

The words of The Great One himself:

Vice President Dick Cheney slammed Democratic Party boss Howard Dean as "over the top" in a television interview to air on Monday, saying Dean had helped Republicans more than Democrats.

"I think Howard Dean's over the top. I've never been able to understand his appeal. Maybe his mother loved him, but I've never met anybody who does," Cheney told Fox News Channel.

"So far, I think he's probably helped us more than he has them. That's not the kind of individual you want to have representing your political party," Cheney said.
(via Reuters)

Boy, I'm sure glad our country has Men like Dick "Dick" Cheney—ever willing to extend the right hand of good fellowship to even his political opponents in the form of helpful advice...

No, but seriously folks, it never ceases to amaze me when this kind of crap is considered newsworthy: Republicans, whether in office or just part of the Republican Noise Machine, tell the Dems what they have to do to be winners again... And the press actually prints it.

Go figure.

Remember John Conyers, the Detroit Congressman who put together the letter to the White House demanding an explanation for the Downing Street Memo, got 88 fellow members of the House to sign it, and delivered it into the black hole of Bushland where it was never heard from again?

For some reason that resounding silence failed to satisfy him, so he put together an entire website dedicated to getting to the bottom of this mess. And this time he's got a petition up attached to a new letter demanding action, only this time if Bush ignores it, he'll be ignoring half a million citizens who will have signed it. That's how many signatures Conyers wants, and he's pretty close: about 496,000 so far. Here's part of the text of the letter:

"As a result of these concerns, we would ask that you respond to the following questions:
1)Do you or anyone in your administration dispute the accuracy of the leaked document?
2) Were arrangements being made, including the recruitment of allies, before you sought Congressional authorization to go to war? Did you or anyone in your Administration obtain Britain's commitment to invade prior to this time?
3) Was there an effort to create an ultimatum about weapons inspectors in order to help with the justification for the war as the minutes indicate?
4) At what point in time did you and Prime Minister Blair first agree it was necessary to invade Iraq?
5) Was there a coordinated effort with the U.S. intelligence community and/or British officials to "fix" the intelligence and facts around the policy as the leaked document states?

These are the same questions 89 Members of Congress, led by Rep. John Conyers, Jr., submitted to you on May 5, 2005. As citizens and taxpayers, we believe it is imperative that our people be able to trust our government and our commander in chief when you make representations and statements regarding our nation engaging in war. As a result, we would ask that you publicly respond to these questions as promptly as possible."

All right. If you haven't done it yet, get over there and do your civic duty.

The Cleveland Press | The Shelby Publishing Company | Shelby, North Carolina | W. J. Cash ... Managing Editor | Subscription ... $2.00 per year (1928).

From The Cleveland Press, November 6, 1928:

THE MOVING ROW
"We are no more than a moving row of fantastic shapes that come and go."

BY J. W. CASH

Tomorrow we shall know whether Al Smith or Herbert Hoover will be President for the next four years. Whatever the outcome, the election will, in perspective, be no more than a dogfall, an incidental victory in the battle joined. There will be nothing final about it, nothing decisive. For, I think, the campaign has been no more than a prelude to the coming storm, the struggle which must, I believe, inevitably engross American politics for the next quarter century, at least.

In the beginning, the campaign resolved itself into chaos. But, at the end, certain things begin to grope to the surface of the formless whirl, lines begin to fix themselves amidst the dizzying confusion, new armies arise, new standards are raised. And these lines, these armies, I am convinced,--fluid, unfixed as they yet are--are those which will be limited, set, consolidated during the next four years.

It is probably not too much to say that the traditional Democratic and Republican parties are on their last legs. The names will be retained--but that will be all. What we are probably about to witness is the formation of parties on strictly drawn lines of Conservatism and Liberalism. It is, perhaps, fitting that the Democratic Party, inheritor of the tradition of Jefferson, should become the Liberal party, that the Republican Party, heir to the Hamiltonian tradition, should be the Conservative. Yet pure chance has probably been the deciding factor. The movement has been long coming. There was Bryan, whose liberalism in the fields of politics and economics gradually died out after the beginning of the war to give place to the Bourbon reaction of Harding and Coolidge. And there was Roosevelt who conceivably might have made the Republican Party the Liberal one had it not been for the war.

First of all, we shall probably be witness to a great battle for the control of the Democratic Party. That will mean the inevitable shifting of that part of the South which is militantly dry--if, indeed, it be so and stands by its convictions--to the Republican Party. For if Smith is elected, it is very clear that the Democratic Party is fore-ordained to carry the banner of modification of the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act. If he is not elected, the outcome will probably be the same. The party is already identified with the issue and the greater part of the Democratic voters of the country probably wish it to be that way. That being true, it is inevitable that the Democratic Party be the party of Liberalism in social legislation, the sworn enemy of cramping laws, the sworn champion of individualism in personal habits.

By the same token, the Democratic Party will carry the flag of anti-clericism. Dr. Edward Martin, editor of Harper's, points out that one of the most potent things which has emerged in the campaign has been a determined protest against the meddling of the Methodist boards with Congress and the blackjacking of that body with threats by the Anti-Saloon League. The breach between the bishops and the Democrats is unlikely to heal. Clearly, then, it will fall upon the party to fight the battle of absolute separation of Church and State, in spirit as well as in letter. That means losses in the South, but it means also that the political complexion of the East will be completely changed.

Ironically, the Republican Party is placed in the position of having to fight the battles of the present liquor laws whether it desires it or not. It has gained powerful allies. But as the price, it will have to defend paternalistic legislation in the social field while battling it in the economic field. As the champion of laissez-faire, of private ownership, it will appeal to the South, which is yet so young in industry as to retain all the traditional Conservatism of early Nineteenth Century England. But the Democratic doctrines of public ownership of natural resources will appeal powerfully in the East and the Progressive West. The belief that laissez-faire is a brutal dogma, that Big Business must be limited to preserve Small Business and the worker--flourishes in the old industrial regions.

Again, the cleavage is likely to be, more or less, on rural and urban lines. The man in the streets in the cities is naturally a Liberal in economic matters and, because irritating contact has taught him to value his individualism, one in the social sense also. The farmer is traditionally a Conservative. That is, of course, only partly true, as witness the case of the Progressive in the West. But wide spaces and little interference cause the farmer to care for abstract liberties, makes him an advocate of paternalistic legislation in the social field. Particularly is that true in questions having directly or indirectly to do with morals.

So--I think that we are going to see the final break of the things that have been. The Bloody Shirt, the Negro issue, the Grand Old Party, the Glories of Democracy--all the old watchwords, I think, are going to be cast aside. In short, we are going to quit battling over straw men and go after the things that really matter to us. I expect the East, not the South, to become the stronghold of the Democratic Party. I expect the West and part of the South, at least, not the East, to become the stronghold of the Republican Party. Because of the possible opportunity of the Negro to exert a balance of power, we may yet see the ultimately ironic spectacle of the Republican Party raising the standard of "white supremacy!"

I think sectional lines are breaking up. I think we are coming to think in national terms and to fight, therefore, over national issues. I think we shall presently have a referendum on liquor control, though it may be that it will be successfully headed off. I think we will come to a showdown on the questions of how far a majority may go in forcing its opinions, its morals, on a minority, of whether we shall have government ownership of national resources or private. It is altogether possible that we may see far-reaching changes in the basic structure of our Government, in the woof of our political thinking.

Kind of eerie isn't it?

This post is dedicated to officer "nick": Office of Political Correctness/Ministry of Scoldpottle/Code-Word Enforcement Division. Who, one can only hope, will come flapping into the threads, feathers-a-flouncing, blue smoke wafting from his tailpipe, and bluster and boo-hoo and generally produce cockeyed denouncements, leveled at some yet unforseen horror or another, for one excitable reason or another, assembled from whatever sinister transgressions he may glean from the above reproduced text, ultimately twisting whatever it is that sets his pants-a-fire into a full throttle five alarm galloping bugaboo. Keep hope alive!

*

Wish I'd thought of this:

Bush is my shepherd; I dwell in want.
He maketh logs to be cut down in national forests.
He leadeth trucks into the still wilderness.
He restoreth my fears.
He leadeth me in the paths of international disgrace for his ego's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of pollution and war, I will find no exit, for thou art in office.
Thy tax cuts for the rich and thy media control, they discount me.
Thou preparest an agenda of deception in the presence of thy religion.
Thou anointest my head with foreign oil.
My health insurance runneth out.
Surely megalomania and false patriotism shall follow me all the days of thy term,
And my jobless child shall dwell in my basement forever.
(via UFOH1 at Kos)

Of course, Bush promised New York $20 billion in recovery money, so we should have seen this coming:

The feds are expected today to take back $169 million in misused and unspent 9/11 relief money meant for victims of the terror attack, congressional officials said.
(via NY Daily News)

Oh, wait, that sounds reasonable. The money was "misused." And what was the mis-use?

Read on. Seven paragraphs down, here it comes:

A Government Accountability Office report found that $44 million was improperly spent by New York bureaucrats who failed to follow guidelines, sources said.

The money was meant to be used for administrative costs, but much of it ended up compensating victims instead.

I'm speechless.

NOTE Thanks to alert reader grannyinsanity.

The world is their gated community, and you don't get to live there:

It is a perennial conundrum for any self-respecting Malibu millionaire: how to stop the public from unrolling their gaudy towels on the beach in front of your house and cluttering up the view of the ocean from the infinity pool.

The answer this year, it seems, is as simple as it is drastic. The association representing owners of the 108 palatial homes that front Broad Beach - one of Malibu's most exclusive locations, where the residents include Goldie Hawn, Steven Spielberg, Dustin Hoffman and Danny DeVito - has caused uproar by using bulldozers to remove the beach.

Tonnes of wet sand were pushed from the publicly owned area up to the high tide mark, creating a huge barrier.
(via Guardian)

And, naturally, Rich Fucks lie without shame about what they're doing, and why:

Marshall Grossman, a Broad Beach homeowner and lawyer, told the newspaper that the intent was not to block public access, but to restore the sandy dunes in front of the homes that were eroded during storms last winter. "When that happens, homeowners bring their own sand back to the dunes, or bring in replacement sand from outside. It doesn't interfere with public access, because the dunes are simply restored to what they were."

Right...

Oh, wait. The Richness of Rich Fucks is ordained by God, so nothing they do can be Fucked. I know, because James Dobson told me so. But I forgot. I'm so sorry. I take it all back.

Sure hope Pelosi and Biden ("D"-MBNA) don't trash Dean on Press the Meat tomorrow:

WASHINGTON (AP) - Howard Dean said Saturday that positive responses from supporters have reinforced his determination to keep talking tough despite suggestions from some congressional Democrats that the party chairman should tone down his rhetoric.

``People want us to fight,'' Dean told the national party's executive committee. ``We are here to fight.''

Damn straight. Especially since being bend-over, nice-guy stooges (back) hasn't served the Beltway Dems real well.

Over the past week, Dean described Republicans as ``pretty much a white, Christian party'' and said many in the GOP ``never made an honest living.''

Dean's only mistake? He didn't go far enough. If Dean weren't so damn polite and mild-mannered, he would have said "so-called Christian," and would have said "never made an honest living, and a lot of them make dishonest ones. Take Tom DeLay—please!"

Several Democratic lawmakers distanced themselves from their chairman.

When will they figure out that if they don't do that, there's no story? The Republicans are masters at playing "Let's You and Him Fight," and the Beltway Dems, like the stooges they are, fall for it over and over again. Even Donnie Fowler gets that:

One of Dean's predecessors at the DNC, Don Fowler said, ``The controversy over this statement or that statement is a blip and only a blip.'' But Fowler complained about leading Democrats who aired their gripes last week. ``Even if they don't like it, they should have enough sense not to make those comments,'' Fowler said.

Oh no! Howard Dean is telling the truth again!

At the session in a downtown hotel, Dean accused Republicans of trying to suppress the vote, selling access to the White House for lobbyists and basically being dishonest with the public.

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

``The reason the Republicans are in trouble is because there are so many cases where they say one thing and do something else,'' Dean said.

And the bottom line:

On political fundraising, the DNC trails the Republican Party by more than 2-to-1 despite Dean's reputation as a potent fundraiser. The Democrats have raised almost $19 million so far this year.

Dean said he is bringing in $1 million weekly. Records show the DNC took in $13.8 million over the first three months of 2005, compared with $8.4 million during the same period in 2003, the last year without a federal election. Terry McAuliffe was party chairman then.

Nice little slant with that "despite," eh? The relevant comparison is not Dean to Republicans—the Republicans, as the party of Rich Fucks, will always do better at raising money than Democrats. The relevant comparison is in the next paragraph, where Dean is trouncing the competition, Beltway-beloved Terry McAuliffe.

Dean has given more than $1 million from the DNC to state parties. He said the DNC plans to share some of the money Dean raises for the national party when he is in a state. Both of these moves are winning him support from state party leaders.

A 50 state campaign. Builds for the future, instead of letting consultants figure out which swing states to try to win.

But when a DNC member joked that the best way to get the chairman's attention was to ``jump up and down,'' a grinning Dean fired back: ``That's my job.''

The crowd of Democratic activists burst into applause.
(AP via Guardian)

When you know you're under the Republican boot, you scream. If you're not screaming, you're not paying attention.

Mimus Pauly (A Mockingbird's Medley) tagged me on another one of these tag-game things and so I feel obliged to respond. This particular tag-it round is kind of like a marketing survey and is pretty long so I'm not going to answer many of the questions because, well, I don't want to, and because I don't answer marketing surveys if I can help it. And because I don't think anyone really cares - for instance - what my three favorite hobbies are (I don't even care what they are) or what my three "everyday essentials" (whatever that means) might consist of. And for the most part this tag-it match has little or nothing to do with with the usual roll and reel of socio-political harangue we normally escape to here.

So, not to be a complete no-show on this one, I plucked five questions from the list and answered those, hopefully, for the benefit of your amusement. What the hell, it's just the weekend. Begin the silliness:

Three things you are wearing right now:
1: snowmobile boots 2: performance enhancing visionwear 3: my cowboy lesbian Texas jockstrap holster with 1858 New Army Nickel Gold Engraved .44 caliber pistols.

Three favorite songs:
1: songs of innocence 2: songs of experience 3: songbirds

Three things that scare you:
1: The Angel of Death. 2: Nancy Grace 3: The possibility that 1 and 2 may be the same thing.

Three careers you have considered/are considering:
1: Selling nylon hosiery door to door. 2: Make BIG $$$$ selling hamsters! The new wonder animal from Syria. 3: Playing the Hawaiian guitar on the radio.

Three places you want to go on vacation:
1: Ireland 2: Europe 3: That place in Arkansas, I think it's in Arkansas, where some guy is entombed inside the thumb of the big giant fiberglass Jesus.

There ya have it. What did you expect me to be wearing? You can read more on this topic, browse the complete list of questions, or learn what others are wearing by visiting MP at A Mockingbird's Medley.

*

I've been off-line for most of the week, so everyone but me may already know about this one.

But if you haven't visited The Poor Man recently, make haste.

Among the kittens and an essential piece of analysis by The Medium Lobster, you will find one of the most brilliant, enlightening pieces of both parody and satire it has been my pleasure to read in lo those many years since I first understood that little boys were different from little girls, surely the essential basis for irony. (Or not; have to think about that one.)

The editors' focus here is on "The Corner," that gathering place for the brightest minds of that Olympian virtual publication, National Review online, and the The Poor Man's editors have looked into that heart of darkness so that you don't have to. This is the essential "Corner," for smarties. (Don't pass up the internal links, either.)

And at the end of a week of many seminal revelations about the Bush regime, if you're asking yourself why I'm pointing you toward humor, it is a well-known fact that laughter is energizing, angst enervating.

Go forth and be renewed. (And don't miss the featured posts by Julia and Ted Barlow.

PS: Has anyone figured out how you get back to The Poor Man's Home page, once you follow the permanent link to a particular post? If so, please advise in comments.

More from The Department of Red Meat:

[Harry] Reid has apologized for calling Bush a "loser," but in Rolling Stone, when the magazine interviewer noted the apology, the senator emphasized, "But never for the 'liar,' have I?"
(via Oxford Press)

Now there's a Dem who knows how apologize! Are you listening, Joe Biden (D-MBNA?)

Look! Over there! Howard Dean told the truth again!

Pulling the plug on the mikes during a hearing? WTF?

NOTE Image in the public domain from Adrian Pingstone at Wikipedia.

Piggy-backing on Riggsveda's post (below), the story is that a Republican committee chair repeatedly cut off Democratic witnesses, turned off the mikes, and stormed out of the hearing, gavel in hand.

So, how does Pravda on the Potomac cover the story?

Here's the headline on page 1: "Patriot Act Meeting Disrupted". Not a breath, not hint of the idea that the Republican chair of the meeting was doing the disruption! [UPDATE: Izvestia on the Hudson does the exact same thing: "Hearing on Patriot Act Ends in an Angry Uproar" But why? Gosh, what a setup for a "he said/she said"!]

And here's WaPo's headline on the inside (page A04, not too bad): "Panel chairman leaves hearing. Still nothing unusual, right? I mean, if the panel chair didn't leave the meeting, it would go on forever, right? [UPDATE The Times re-uses the leaving-reader-clueless "Angry Uproar" headline on the inside.]

And now the story. To his credit, Mike Allen gets the story into the lead:

After repeated criticism of the Bush administration, the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee yesterday gaveled a hearing to a close and walked out while Democrats continued to testify -- but with their microphones shut off.

As [Banana Republican] Sensenbrenner left, [Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.)] continued talking and was applauded after saying that "part of the problem is that we have not had the opportunity to have hearings on all these other administration policies that have led to abuses."

"The other thing that I wanted to say -- and that I will say at this point, even though the chairman is not going to listen," Nadler said.

Then his voice faded out. "I notice that my mike was turned off," Nadler said, speaking up, "but I can be heard anyway."
(via Wapo)

Testify!

UPDATE And David Kirkpatrick the Times reporter, again, actually gets the story into the lead:

A hearing on the antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act degenerated into chaos on Friday, as Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. called Democrats "irresponsible," gaveled the session to a premature close and stormed out of the room.
(via Times)

So, again, "premature" would imply that the "uproar" was the responsibility, well, of the ruling Partei, eh? Not a hint of that in the headlines from The World's Greatest Newspaper (not!)

Of course we, as Democratic (though unrepresented) taxpayers, paid for that microphone.

So in what sense is pulling the plug on the Dems and walking out "leaving" a meeting, as the story headline has it? Doesn't that headline obscure, rather than summarize the story? And doesn't A1's passive "Disruption" obscure the essential point that the chair of the heading was the one doing the disruption?

It's almost like there's a defense in depth against covering anything the Dems might do, isn't there? If a reporter actaully writes the story, the editors, if they don't spike it, obscure the point with headlines (which the reporters don't write, remember). And the editors are the managers, so if the paper systematically screws up, it's down to them, not the reporters. The reporters will be working stiffs, soon enough, when the corporations finish gutting the newsrooms...

UPDATE WaPo's reasonable ombudsman, Michael Getler, is here. Barney Calame, the untested Times ombudsman—though how could he possible be worse than the foppish elegant Little Danny Okrent—is here.

Piggy-backing on Lambert's two previous posts regarding the Sensenbrenner "Fuck you and the representative horse you rode in on" outrage, here is a link to two clips at Dem Bloggers so you can actually witness this political travesty. Click both clips for the full monty. Traffic may be heavy, so you may have to wait after clicking for them to start, or you may need to goose them along as they buffer by hitting the play button a few times. Well worth it, though.

Thanks to the ever-vigilant eRobin at Fact-esque for the heads up.

[For background, back]

NOTE These contests seem to draw a good response. I think I'm going to have to invent The Department of Red Meat...

The traditionally heroic Corrente writer formerly known as farmer has been reading too much—or just enough—Lynn Cheney, and now insists (back) on being addressed as "the lesbian cowboy."

So, in honor of TCWFKf's, um, emergence, I'd like to reprint the following lines from Gertrude Stein's great poem, Lifting Belly (A tip of the Ol' Corrente Hat to, yet again, The New Yorker. Janet Malcolm's terrific, revelatory article on Gertrude Stein is not online, so reward good behavior at your local newsstand.)

But herewith:

Lifting belly what is earnest. Expecting an arena to be monumental.
Lifting belly is recognized to be the only spectacle present. Do you mean that.
Lifting belly is a language. It says island. Island a strata. Lifting belly is a repetition.

I want to tell about fire. Fire is that which we have when we have olive. Olive is a wood. We like linen. Linen is ordered. We are going to order linen.
All belly belly well.
Bed of coals made out of wood.
I think this one may be an expression. We can understand heating and burning composition. Heating with wood.

I say that I need protection.
You shall have it.
After that what do you wish.
I want you to mean a great deal to me.
Exactly.
And then.
And then blandishment.
(via Tyke O'Brien dissertation)

But does this mean no more Mr. P-Niss blogging?

NOTE I can't find the full text online. Alert readers?

Yet again the Republicans demonstrate that they'll do anything to deny the 50% of Americans who don't vote for them any voice (though we do get to pay our taxes for the privilege of having them silence and abuse us):

The Republican chairman walked off with the gavel, leaving Democrats shouting into turned-off microphones at a raucous hearing Friday on the Patriot Act.

Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., chairman of the panel, abruptly gaveled the meeting to an end and walked out, followed by other Republicans. Sensenbrenner declared that much of the testimony, which veered into debate over the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, was irrelevant.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (news, bio, voting record), D-N.Y., protested, raising his voice as his microphone went off, came back on, and went off again.

"We are not besmirching the honor of the United States, we are trying to uphold it," he said.
(via AP)

Damn straight.

And the way the Republicans rushed out, you'd think they have guilty consciences, or something. Oh, wait, they're wingers....

Hey, but let's look at the bright side! At least Sensenbrenner didn't try to bring the new civility to Washington, DC by have the Dems arrested, the way Bill "Fruitcake" Thomas did...

UPDATE Thanks to alert reader tommywonk for correcting "Senator" to "Representative", or "Rep." Let me clarify the all this by adding a usage example: "Rep. Sensenbrenner, R-Rich Fucks."

Remember our old pal Baghdad Bob? You know, the Iraqi Information Minister? We used to make fun of him, for being a Little Detached from Reality and also Just Making Shit Up.

He's got competition, as Juan Cole points out in his elegantly understated style. Yeah, it's at Salon; sit through the damn ad, it won't kill you and at least it ain't registration. From P. 2:

As journalist Sarah Whalen pointed out in the Arab News, the increasingly effective guerrilla war has vindicated Baghdad Bob. "Baghdad Bob" (his real name was Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf) was the spokesman for the Iraqi regime who issued an endless stream of ludicrous pronouncements about how the mighty Iraq army was turning Baghdad into a mass grave for Americans, and so on. Today, many of his predictions, such as the one that the Iraqis would hurl "bullets and shoes" at the invading U.S. military, not bouquets of roses, have come true. But if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Sahhaf has been honored on a higher plane. His rhetorical strategy, of simply denying reality, has now been taken over by his arch-nemesis, George W. Bush.

BTW, this would be a good weekend to remember the old line "Keep Watching the Skies!" You got the White Girl du Jour still missing in Aruba, Jacko's jury still out (with, I hear, 2200 reporters standing out in the heat to cover it), and a friggin' tropical storm getting ready to hit the Gulf and connected inland regions including me. Count on a Friday/Saturday Data Dump of massive proportions, although what could be a whole lot worse than the shit that's already out there is enough to inspire early drinking.

The Washington Post reports that yesterday the House Subcommittee on labor, health and human services, and "education", expressed its dedication to early learning and equal educational access for all economic classes by voting to slash 25% of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's budget, a quarter of which will be aimed at children's educational programming, like Sesame Street and that Margaret Spelling bete noire, Postcards From Buster. As WaPo says, this will be the most drastic cut in the CPB budget since it was created by Congress in 1967. It could result in the death of the programs many of us grew up with, and learned from. Even Nixon couldn't kill it. But Nixon was no 2005 Republican yahoo with control of all 3 branches of government and a propaganda arm any totalitarian regime would die for. But not to worry. It should only affect liberals, minorities, the rural, and the poor:

"Small public radio stations, particularly those in rural areas and those serving minority audiences, may be the most vulnerable to federal cuts because they currently operate on shoestring budgets.
"This could literally put us out of business," said Paul Stankavich, president and general manager of the Alaska Public Radio Network, an alliance of 26 stations in the state that create and share news programming. "Almost all of us are down to the bone right now. If we lost 5 or 10 percent of our budgets in one fell swoop, we could end up being just a repeater service" for national news, with no funds to produce local content.
Stankavich, who also runs a public radio and TV station in Anchorage, said public radio is "an important source of news in urban areas, but it's life-critical in rural areas," especially in far-flung parts of Alaska unserved by any other broadcast medium."

No, this has nothing at all to do with Republican hatchetman Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, who has been making murderous noises about the agency put under his watchful eye. Nothing to do with a bloated budget that can make room for a bridge in Alaska to nowhere that no one will use, but needs to hack kids' programs that help them learn to read.

"Rep. Ralph Regula (R-Ohio), the subcommittee's chairman, said the cuts had nothing to do with dissatisfaction over public radio or TV programs. "It's pretty simple," he said in an interview. "The thinking was, there's not enough money for everything. There are 'must-do,' 'need-to-do' and 'nice-to-do' programs that we have to pay for. [Public broadcasting] is somewhere between a 'need-to-do' and a 'nice-to-do.'
The subcommittee had to decide, he said, on cutting money for public broadcasting or cutting college grants, special education, worker retraining and health care programs. "No one's out to get" public broadcasting, Regula said. "It's not punitive in any way."

But college grants WERE cut. Oh, I forgot. After all that money they lost in Iraq, it has to be made up somewhere, doesn't it? And kids don't need to read in order to shoulder a gun and kill someone, when all is said and done.

A story torn from the headlines....

...well, the headlines at Common Dreams, anyway. But it is an inspiring story, one that reminds us that there is no one narrative of "the West." And it comes from my most favorite cowgirl, broadly defined, a true daughter of the West, Anne Lamott.

If there is one institution in the life of the nation that has consistently functioned as an avenue of opportunity open to all, a great equalizer, if you will, in the sense that its rewards are bestowed almost exclusively on the basis of the merits of one's own efforts, is there anyone who would dare deny that institution is the public library? I think we can all agree about that, even, or maybe especially, our red-state brothers and sisters. (I exempt from this formulation those paid and unpaid propagandists who proudly hail themselves the Vast Rightwing Conspiracy.)

On the other hand, the triumph of the spirit of Proposition 13 and Ronald Reagan's philosophy of government - that government is the problem, not the solution - had the effect of curtailing state and local revenues, even as more and more unfunded mandates were piled onto their shoulders in the name of Federalism, one of which results was the closing of public libraries all over America, along with the curtailing of what hours the remaining libraries were open, as well as all kinds of library programs. Here in Los Angeles, where oddly enough, the libraries most likely to be closed were in poorer and minority neighborhoods, the result could be seen in the long lines of young folks waiting to use the computers at our splendid downtown library, now their only access to a resource most middle class students take for granted, after they'd made a long, expensive trip to get there on LA's truly terrible public transportation system.

During our recent recession, and even now that it is supossedly over, George W. Bush has done even more than his hero, Reagan, managed to do, to tax the strength of state and local government, and painful cuts in vital programs are still being made all across America.

This year, that baneful need, to find some way to cut a budget that would otherwise outstrip tax receipts, came to Steinbeck country, i.e., Salinas, California, where the powers-that-be, in their desperation, I assume, decided to shut down all of their public libraries, the first community anywhere in America to take such a decision. Until, that is, "the word went out," as Anne Lamott describes it:

This is how many tribal stories begin: Word goes out to the people of a community that there is a great danger or wrong being committed. This is how I first found out that Salinas was going to be the first city in America to close its libraries because of budget cuts.

Without getting into any mudslinging about whether or not our leaders are clueless, bullying, nonreading numbskulls, let me just say that when word went out that the city's three libraries were scheduled for closure -- the John Steinbeck, the Cesar Chavez, and the El Galiban --a whole lot of people rose up as one to say this does not work for us.

And who didn't this work for? Well, in case you've never been through central California:

Salinas is one of the poorest communities in the state, within one of the richest counties in the country, the locale of so many of Steinbeck's great novels: Think farm workers, fields of artichokes, garlic, faded stucco houses stained with dirt, ticky-tacky housing tracts, John Ford, James Dean's face in ''East of Eden," strawberry fields, and old gas stations.

Now think about closing the libraries there, closing the buildings that hold the town's books, all those bound stories about people and wisdom and justice and life and silliness and laborers bending low to pick the strawberries. You'd have to be crazy to bring such obvious karmic repercussions down on yourself. So in early April, a group of writers and actors fought back, showing up in Salinas for a 24-hour ''emergency read-in."

My sad '60s heart soared like an eagle at the very name: an emergency read-in. George W. Bush and John Ashcroft tried for three years to create a country that the East Germans could only dream about, empowering the government to keep track of the books we checked out or bought, all in the name of national security. But they hadn't counted on how passionately we writers feel about saving the world, or at any rate, the worlds contained in the skinny, silent spines of books.

The whole article is similarly wonderful, and I'll provide you with the link momentarily. Before I do, I just want to quote one or two more of Lamott's paragraphs, so that Corrente will be ennobled by their presence in our midst:

We came together because we started out as children who were saved by stories, stories read to us at night when we were little, stories we read by ourselves, in which we could get lost, and thereby, found. Some of us had grown to become people with loud voices, which the farm workers and their children of this community all of a sudden needed. And we were mad. Show a bunch of writers a sealed library, and they see red. Perhaps they are a little sensitive, or overwrought, but they see a one-way tunnel into the dark. They see the beginnings of fascism.

A free public library is a revolutionary notion, and when people don't have free access to books, then communities are like radios without batteries. The entire flow of communication is bricked off. You cut people off from incredible sources of information -- mythical, practical, linguistic, or political -- and you break them. You render them helpless in the face of political oppression. We were not going to let this happen.

Okay, here's the link, now go and read the whole thing and be inspired.

If any of our alert readers have similar stories about the closing down of local cultural institutions, please tell us in comments, or in an email. And let us know about any local newspapers we should be surveying in trying to get a solid picture of what is happening on the ground, locally and specifically, which is where and how most of us live our various American experiences.

As farmer points up in his earlier post, Lynne Cheney links the ideas of patriotism and right-thinking (“moral values”) with uncritical approval of the state and glossing over the more embarrassing aspects of our history. And she has the pull to make changes that impact the educational system and affect how our kids apprehend that history. Instead of growing up to understand the complex dynamics that collided over the centuries to create what the US has become, and maybe being able to correct problems where they find them, Lynne would rather they become good little mommies and daddies who mind their own business, maintain the economy with plenty of consumption, and stay the hell out of the business of governing the nation. Which makes her somewhat the philosophical sister of the man who helped engineer the current educational system, Alexander Inglis, discussed in my own post below.

There is nothing new about wanting to show your country or its deeds in the best possible light, but the whitewashing of one’s history usually runs in harness with the creation of an alternate image, founded in myth, spread by clichés and buzzwords, and buttressed against erosion by the demonization of those who may disagree. In his wonderful book, “Death Sentences (How Clichés, Weasel Words, and Management-Speak Are Strangling Public Language)", Australian satirist and former speechwriter Don Watson took on this issue when he noted how the German government of the Nazi era crafted how the Germans were to see themselves, as a people (all italics are Watson's):

“To establish as fact the myth of German superiority, the Third Reich’s propagandists pursued two mutually reinforcing themes: the inferiority of certain others, and the delightfulness of themselves.”

He goes on to highlight some of the common phrases they used to that end: peace loving, fun loving, young, with an irrepressible will in direct opposition to the elites. “The phrase as a people might not be a lie”, he says, “but it smells like one”. Here’s the good stuff, 2 pages later:

“Propaganda, as the Canadian philosopher John Ralston Saul says, is ‘the negation of language. It destroys memory and therefore removes any sense of reality.’ Abuse the language and you abuse the polity. If you construct a collective character and a mythic history and paint over them with invented virtues, you also abuse the people: you demean them and deny them their own history.
Myths are tempting to those who are in a position to manipulate their fellow human beings, because a myth is sacred, and what is sacred cannot be questioned. That’s where their power comes from. They simplify and provide meaning without the need for reason. They stifle doubt and provide relaxation and comfort. It is about here that they meet clichés, which are myths of language…
The Americans saying they lost their innocence on September 11, 2001, is a myth, and also a cliché. As Philip Roth said, the Al Qaeda attack produced an orgy of narcissism. Narcissism naturally spawns myths, myths of character and history, of good and evil. September 11 produced a torrent of American myths. The United States innocent? After slavery? After a Civil War? After the Puritans? After four hundred years, they’re still innocent?…
It can only be fantasy, ignorance, or mischief—or a cliché that has lost its meaning through overuse and can be anything you want to make of it. It’s one of those clichés that might as well be called a lie. It contradicts what is known and what ought to be known; it does not help us understand a tragedy but rather diminishes it. It insults our intelligence. We may as well claim descent from Teutonic knights as claim to be innocent. As public language, it is the equivalent of airbrushing.”

It doesn't help us to rob our kids of their history, Lynne. But it does keep them docile and malleable, preventing them from serving their country by improving it while prepping them as cannon fodder.

And that's really what it's all about, isn't it?

John Taylor Gatto, people!


Since this seems to be shaping up as Corrente's special week-long education edition, let's think about the great meat-grinder, as Pink Floyd envisioned it, that has utterly masticated the public mind and pushed us all out into the same big bowl where we lie suitably stupefied, awaiting our rescue at the hands of the most recent politico-media creation, who will lie to our faces while convincing us of our duty to approve his theft of the last of our nation's principles. Or, as the Heads asked, "My God, how did I get here?"

I beg your indulgence as I cross-post this piece I did at my own site, and which only a couple days ago I linked to in comments. Not everyone has seen it, and it still has relevance, and not just because the state has begun choking off education funds to poor and middle-income people. What's more important, it introduces John Taylor Gatto and Alexander Inglis, both of whom you should get to know in order to understand what education is in this country and how it became what it is. Follow the link to read the piece discussed, and to get to more of his writing. Here it is:



12/31/04

In a December 23, 2004 NYTimes article,"Students to Bear More of the Cost of College" Greg Winter notes that, thanks to George Bush's compassionate conservatism, at least 1.3 million recipients of Pell Grants, the fed's main low-income college scholarship, will be getting less money next year, and almost 90,000 will get nothing at all. Now, this is a grant of about $4000 a year, max, and is often given in lesser amounts. Given the average cost of college, ($12,841 for public and $27,677 for private facilities,) even the maximum Pell isn't going to go too far. And this at a time when education costs have become so overwhelming that current graduates will be living with a crushing and almost life-long debt, a problem that The Village Voice examined in a series of articles last week.
The "domino effect", Winter predicts, will render grants and loans from states and institutions even more difficult to obtain. This means there is a greater ikelihood of personal loans being taken out for college, and we all know what has happened to the banking and loan industries in the tender years since Reagan released the sharks to do their worst on the poor of America.

What happens when education is no longer within reach of the poor, or even the middle-class? Why, you get Coolie America, a ready-made serving class without recourse or hope, glad to get what ill-paid, benefitless work it can, dulled by exhaustion and lack of opportunity, and clueless as to what the world may offer beyond one's day-to-day experiences. How perfect for the growing retail/service economy that relies increasingly on the availability of employees who will accept the bare minimum of workplace amenities, and will place no burdens on their management, no inconvenient unions, no fair labor demands! How else to compete with the sweatshops of the world but to create sweatshops of our own, and an uneducated gamma class to toil in them?

But you don't have to go as far as denying higher education to people in order to soften them up for cooliehood. We've got the American education system for that, and it's had scores of decades to dumb down the children it absorbs. We've seen the result coming to full fruition the last 30 years, and nowhere in the developed world do you find the hatred and fear of intellect and learning that you do in the United States. Book-bannings and -burnings, accusations of "elitism" hurled against political candidates who make the mistake of speaking a foreign language or having a liberal education, knowledge held in suspicion by people who are proud of their benightedness both in the countryside, where it becomes painted as "city liberal", and in the inner city, where it is labeled "acting white".

Into all this comes John Taylor Gatto, a firebrand trouble-making radical, whose writings on education are informed with years of teaching experience, and inspired by a great anger at the results of a system he believes has been created specifically to dumb down and pacify its millions of participants. His "AGAINST SCHOOL: How Public Education Cripples Our Kids, and Why", was published in Harper's in 2001, and he makes the point that historically, dating as far back as the beginning of the 20th century, public education was conceived as a way to induce in students conformity and an acceptance of a pre-disposed role in society, and to isolate and nurture those few identified as the elite, whose education would be higher, and who would become the future "caretakers" of the rest of their poor befuddled contemporaries. In fact, the author he cites as one of the architects of the American education philosophy, Alexander Inglis, could have been the very inspiration for Huxley's Brave New World:

"Inglis breaks down the purpose - the actual purpose - of modem schooling into six basic functions, any one of which is enough to curl the hair of those innocent enough to believe the three traditional goals listed earlier:
1) The adjustive or adaptive function. Schools are to establish fixed habits of reaction to authority. This, of course, precludes critical judgment completely. It also pretty much destroys the idea that useful or interesting material should be taught, because you can't test for reflexive obedience until you know whether you can make kids learn, and do, foolish and boring things.
2) The integrating function. This might well be called "the conformity function," because its intention is to make children as alike as possible. People who conform are predictable, and this is of great use to those who wish to harness and manipulate a large labor force.
3) The diagnostic and directive function. School is meant to determine each student's proper social role. This is done by logging evidence mathematically and anecdotally on cumulative records. As in "your permanent record." Yes, you do have one.
4) The differentiating function. Once their social role has been "diagnosed," children are to be sorted by role and trained only so far as their destination in the social machine merits - and not one step further. So much for making kids their personal best.
5) The selective function. This refers not to human choice at all but to Darwin's theory of natural selection as applied to what he called "the favored races." In short, the idea is to help things along by consciously attempting to improve the breeding stock. Schools are meant to tag the unfit - with poor grades, remedial placement, and other punishments - clearly enough that their peers will accept them as inferior and effectively bar them from the reproductive sweepstakes. That's what all those little humiliations from first grade onward were intended to do: wash the dirt down the drain.
6) The propaedeutic function. The societal system implied by these rules will require an elite group of caretakers. To that end, a small fraction of the kids will quietly be taught how to manage this continuing project, how to watch over and control a population deliberately dumbed down and declawed in order that government might proceed unchallenged and corporations might never want for obedient labor."

Eliminate meaningful education, eliminate the means to get one, and remove the books and other human communications that could enable one to get an education on one's own. Demonize the mere idea of being educated, and the people themselves will do the rest. The fat cats can sit back and let the money roll in, while the endless supply of coolies keep coming down the pipeline.

And so it goes, as Vonnegut used to say.

or westward ho the civilization!

"STORIES." Via FOX News (where else):

Transcript: Lynne Cheney on American History | Sunday, December 26, 2004

STORIES
Transcript: Cardinal McCarrick on Christ
WASHINGTON — The following is a transcribed excerpt from 'FOX News Sunday,' December 26, 2004.

WALLACE: Let's talk about family values, which played a big role in this campaign. In the exit poll on Election Day, people were asked, what's the single biggest issue in how you decided your vote? And 22 percent of Americans said moral values.

It was a big surprise to a lot of us in the punditocracy, as they say. Twenty-two percent said moral values, more than chose the war on terrorism, Iraq, the economy, health care. What do you think those people were saying?

CHENEY: Well, I think it's something very, very broad. I got a wonderful letter from Bea Himmelfarb (search). I think of Bill Kristol as her son. This is a wonderful, scholarly woman. She wrote me about my book, "Washington Crossing the Delaware," and said, you know, I think when people were talking about moral values they were talking about patriotism, they were talking about love of country.

I think, to put it even more generally, they were talking about an uncynical approach to our nation and to our national story. There is in the mainstream media -- there has been, I think, in our political life, a real corrosive kind of cynicism, a notion that anytime anything goes right you have to sort of turn your nose up at it and say, "Well, it really wasn't all that great," a kind of undercutting cynicism.

And I think part of that moral-values question related to that, related to the idea that we ought to be able to say, this is a great country. We have made amazing progress in achieving human freedom for ourselves and for people around the world.

Recently I listened to Lynne Cheney (author of wild west lesbian cowboy stories) explain further this corrosive cynicism. In this instance Lady Cheney was cooing and burbling forth on the earlier noted "amazing progress in achieving human freedom for ourselves and for people around the world.", but mostly for ourselves, whoever ourselves is, Lynne Cheney didn't get into specifics. And who needs bother with cranky specifics when you're spilling historical ambrosia all over the dashboard. Not Lynne Cheney, she writes bodice rippers and used to work in a traditional woman's senior fellow shelter at the American Enterprise Institute. God bless you Mrs. Cheney.

By the way, nick, if you're reading this, I am not suggesting that all cowboys are lesbians. Oh hahaha, hell, yes I am. In fact, I myself am a lesbian cowboy. From now on I insist that you all stop calling me "the farmer" and address me henceforth as "the lesbian cowboy." Ok then, now that we've settled that, lets move along.

What was I talking about here? Oh yeah... In this or that case recently Lynne Cheney was reminding listeners that the progress of civil rights - "freedom for ourselves and for people around the world." - etc... and all that. Which in Lynne Cheney's pitch was a good thang, and deserved further emphasis as a condition of a good history education, dontcha know, and who can argue with that.

However, L. Cheney, (praise be unto God) then went on to explain that such, any such, naysayer negativity talk on behalf of (well, you know who) with respect to (well, you know what) was a corrosive and cynicism-like thang --- like you know that part where Big Time Dick (who is Lynne's lesbian chow wagon lover) just so happened to turn up his nose at such corrosions and cynical manipulations as extending the Civil Rights Act and springing Nelson Mandella from the cooler --- both clearly designed by (well, you know who) to defeat the moral and patriotic resolve of your average everyday history customer and ultimately, no doubt, destroy Western Civilization itself. What will we tell the children?

Well, we won't tell them jack shit about why there was a civil-rights movement in the first place apparently. Because that would be corrosive and nose turning. And we won't tell them that a whole lot of Lady Lynne's friends and trail buddies were the reason why America had a civil-rights movement in the first place. Which of course, if you remember the civil-rights movement, was a reaction against a decades old ingrained strain of bigotry sunk deep like a screw worm into the cultural body politic of particular mysterious segments of the nation and those mysterious segments of the right-wing of the Republican party and their poker buddies in the Dixiecrat Dem lost cause ward. Please don't ask me to explain that crap any further...

Just forget that, because, as my new internets pen-pal nick reminds me in comments, unraveling such ugly historical roots (despite being "deceptively easy", apparently) will prove "ultimately fruitless."

"Patriotically embarrassing episodes" will not be televised:

Ten years ago–October 20, 1994 to be exact–brought a screaming headline to the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal. Under the title “The End of History,” Lynne Cheney, former head of the National Endowment for the Humanities, maligned the National History Standards that she had funded (along with the Department of Education) as a “grim and gloomy” monument to political correctness. She pronounced the standards project a disaster for giving insufficient attention to Robert E. Lee and the Wright brothers and far too much to obscure figures (such as Harriet Tubman) or patriotically embarrassing episodes (such as the Ku Klux Klan and McCarthyism).

Ms. Cheney, it will be remembered, asked the National Center for History in the Schools at UCLA to coordinate the writing of the standards that Congress had mandated in 1992. The standards were developed over thirty-two months in Los Angeles and Washington with teacher task forces working with academic historians, school administrators, and other history educators. Though approved by a national council, half of whose members were her appointees and endorsed by thirty major professional and public interest organizations, the standards were dismissed by Ms. Cheney as having no redeeming value. Her attack sparked a fierce media debate as the nation prepared for the November 1994 election. ~ Read more: Lynne Cheney's Attack on the History Standards, 10 Years Later (HNN) - By Gary B. Nash - Mr. Nash is Professor Emeritus, UCLA.

Of course the Ku Klux Klan is a rather embarrasing patriotically charged episodic American anomaly. It's a good thing it only lasted ten or fifteen years or who the heck knows it may have had some impact on that civil-rights movement stuff down through the years. And really, do we need to waste valuable quality time explaining an embarrasing chapter like the KKK to America's bright eyed and bushy tailed future generations of go-getters yearing to breath free-booter laissez faire economic quackeries in cheesy repeat after me business schools. I don't think so! Robert E. Lee freed the slaves! And don't you forget it neither.

"in every part of the country, school children are dancing and jumping rope, activities that do not involve competition, instead of playing games like dodgeball, from which a winner emerges."

That of course marked Lynne Cheney's famous Dodgeball Emancipation Movement. Which of course (God willing) will go down in the history books right next to the civil-rights movement and the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment as another one of the greatest accomplishments of modern enlightened man. The Equal Rights Amendment, if you recall, had it passed, would have required proud patriotic American uber-man to shake dry his large grisly wiener over a urinal while cowboy lesbians giggled like ninnies from the adjacent stalls. You remember the ERA debate right? Of course you do. It's a good thang that the ERA didn't pass because the last thing I want is some cowboy lesbian or Susan Sarandon standing beside me eyeballing my patriotic steely resolve leathernecked wiener while I pee into a porcelain enamel tank. But wait!, I am a cowboy lesbian myself! Which is why....when this blogging crap becomes pretty gawd-awful boring (like right now especially) I think it would be cool to be playing dodgeball with a half dozen scantily clad lesbians all shaking their balls at me. And then after we were done running around and taking cheap shots at each other with each others balls we would drive to Philadelphia and kill some pathetic loser ice cream vendor while quoting from Focault's Madness and Civilization and after that go to a hotel room and shower and play some other games like that dancing game Lynne Cheney mentioned and that smoking ro..., I mean jumping!, heh, I mean jumping rope game, too, yeah, sure... and then...and then, they (the competitive lesbians that is) would feed me quaaludes and we would all drink whiskey sours and watch a winner emerge. Or whatever. But of course that really has nothing at all to do with American history does it? I din't think so. And I trust that none of you will repeat this in front of your civilized western children (even if they are cowboy western lesbian children).

Having put up half the money, she believed she was entitled to the history standards she wanted, guidelines that would exalt traditional heroes, put a happy face on the American past, and broadcast the triumph of western civilization. As Steven J. Ross, chairman of the Department of History at the University of Southern California put it in an op-ed essay in the LA Times on October 13, "Destroying books that disagree with one's vision of history will never take us closer to truth and freedom." John Hergesheimer, a much honored teacher in Whittier, California, took up pen in a letter to the editor of the LA Times to express his dismay “that the routine update of a useful and positive United States government handbook for parents could be hijacked and turned into the personal vehicle for the right-wing views of one person–even if she is the wife of the vice-president.” ~ HNN

Hey, while we're on the subject of the traditional heroes... uhmm... didn't Ronald Reagan and Col. Rhett Ralston liberate Onofre Beach during WW2? I think they did. I heard about it from Andrew Sullivan. Who is not a lesbian or even a cowboy as far as I know but rather a kinda pudgy balding loafer-light bloke from England. So who would know better than he about important Anglo Saxon-like traditional historical heroes? And why isn't Ronald Reagan's liberation of Onofre Beach being taught in 3rd grade western civ history lessons? It's an outrage! Someone get me Lady Cheney on the phone! Right now, BIG TIME!

You there! Gail. Unhand that unbroached maiden and drop the Colt 44 engraved Navy replicas and fetch me the cordless 2.4 gig Uniden and another whiskey sour from the minibar!

*

Roll over, Will Shatner, and tell Pat Boone the news: Paul Anka covers "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on his new album, "Rock Swings."

Snippet here (iTunes required).

We now return to our regularly scheduled Bush bashing.

(And fixed embarrassing screwup of Shatner's name.)

Brief items this a.m. because time is tight and I truly don't want to detract from farmer's fascinating post previous.

Michael Jackson gets the vapors over the impending verdict to be delivered by his jury. Is there any better evidence that the rich in this country are funneled through one legal system while the poor get another? Can you imagine Joe Schmoe from E. 115th St. being allowed the perks and special consideration Jackson has gotten all through this trial? Hell, no, he'd be waiting in Rykers, fending off a cellmate named Feemo.

Elsewhere, Howard Dean defends himself yet again from charges that he's being outrageous, after having made the absurd comment that the Republican party is primarily white and Christian. Well, of course it's not, Howard. Anyone with eyes to see could tell that by watching the footage of the RNC last year. Personally, when I hear the letters GOP, I invariably think: black Muslims.

In Africa, women are being asked to wear a Rube Goldberg-like variation of the vagina dentata, not so much to prevent rape as to mark the rapist after the attack. Somewhat like those paint capsules that explode all over a bank robber's clothes for easy identification, only just on the penis. And with claws. Seems rather lacking on the preventative aspect side, to me.

Ah, the Human Comedy.

The Lost Cause will rise again or The Great Revival of Southern Attitudes.

Quick post. I haven't been posting much myself because I'm pretty much in the same muddy situation RDF is in at this point. It's just that time of year and tomorrow I will be thrashing about in the sun erecting Agribon/AG19 floating party tents over my eggplants and Ancho/Poblano chile peppers. Because everyone loves eggplants gone wild! And ancho peppers love a hot sweaty party tent! And... ya know. Just thought I'd share that sexy agricultural catering tip with ya. Especially if you're trying to grow eggplants north of the Mason Dixon line.

Among other things. But, aside from all that I'd just like to throw this post up as quickly as possible...

Anyway, what follows are excerpts from W.J. Cash's original American Mercury essay published October 1929 (HL Mencken editor). Tom's post below: Why not now?, as well as kelley b's regionally topical comment to Tom's post reminded me of it. And in part as a respone to Tom's question below: "So why the disconnect between historical reality and what I had to slog through every day at the reading?" And in part as a response to the historical tendency of too many American's to disappear under the amber waves of sop-bath historical narrative and self aggrandizing patriotic foam.

THE MIND OF THE SOUTH ~ BY W. J. CASH - The American Mercury October, 1929.

ONE hears much in these days of the New South. The land of the storied rebel becomes industrialized; it casts up a new aristocracy of money-bags which in turn spawns a new noblesse; scoriac ferments spout and thunder toward an upheaval and overturn of all the old social, political, and intellectual values and an outgushing of divine fire in the arts—these are the things one hears about. There is a new South, to be sure. It is a chicken-pox of factories on the Watch-Us-Grow maps; it is a kaleidoscopic chromo of stacks and chimneys on the club-car window as the train rolls southward from Washington to New Orleans.

But I question that it is much more. For the mind of that heroic region, I opine, is still basically and essentially the mind of the Old South. It is a mind, that is to say, of the soil rather than of the mills—a mind, indeed, which, as yet, is almost wholly unadjusted to the new industry.

Its salient characteristic is a magnificent incapacity for the real, a Brobdingnagian talent for the fantastic. The very legend of the Old South, for example, is warp and woof of the Southern mind. The "plantation" which prevailed outside the tidewater and delta regions was actually no more than a farm; its owner was, properly, neither a planter nor an aristocrat, but a backwoods farmer; yet the pretension to aristocracy was universal. Every farmhouse became a Big House, every farm a baronial estate, every master of scant red acres and a few mangy blacks a feudal lord. The haughty pride of these one-gallus squires of the uplands was scarcely matched by that of the F. F. V’s of the estuary of the James. Their pride and their legend, handed down to their descendants, are today the basis of all social life in the South.

Such romancing was a natural outgrowth of the old Southern life. Harsh contact with toil was almost wholly lacking, as well for the poor whites as for the grand dukes. The growing of cotton involves only two or three months of labor a year, so even the slaves spent most of their lives on their backsides, as their progeny do to this day. The paternal care accorded the blacks and the white trash insured them against want. Leisure conspired with the languorous climate to the spinning of dreams. Unpleasant realities were singularly rare, and those which existed, as, for example, slavery, lent themselves to pleasant glorification. Thus fact gave way to amiable fiction.

It is not without a certain aptness, then, that the Southerner’s chosen drink is called moonshine. Everywhere he turns away from reality to a gaudy world of his own making. He declines to conceive of himself as the mad king’s "poor, bare, forked animal"; in his own eyes, he is eternally a noble and heroic fellow. He has always displayed a passion for going to war. He pants after Causes and ravening monsters— witness his perpetual sweat about the nigger. (No matter whether the black boy is or is not a menace, he serves admirably as a dragon for the Southerner to belabor with all the showiness of a paladin out of a novel by Dr. Thomas Dixon. The lyncher, in his own sight, is a Roland or an Oliver, magnificently hurling down the glove in behalf of embattled Chastity.)

Even Rotary flourishes primarily as a Cause, as another opportunity for the Southerner to puff and prance and be a noble hotspur. His political heroes are, typically, florid magnificoes, with great manes and clownish ways—the Bleases and the Heflins. (It is said sometimes, I know, that they are exalted only by the rascals and the dolts, but, on a basis of observation, I make bold to believe that, while all decent Southerners vote against them, most do so with secret regret and only for the same reason that they condemn lynching, to wit: that they are self-conscious before the frown of the world, that they are patriots to the South.)

[...]

How this characteristic reacts with industrialism is strikingly shown by the case of the cotton-mill strikes in the Carolinas. Of the dozen-odd strikes which flared up a few months ago, not one now remains. All failed. New ones, to be sure, are springing up as a result of the unionization campaign which Thomas F. McMahon, president of the United Textile Workers of America, is waging in the region. But the U. T. W. A. failed in similar campaigns in 1920 and in 1923 and, in the light of recent history, I see no reason to believe that the present drive is likely to be any more successful.

Yet the peons of the mills unquestionably have genuine grievances, in the absolute. Wages rarely top $20. The average is from $11 to $14, with the minimum as low as $6. The ten-hour or eleven-hour day reigns. It is true that, as most of the mills own their own villages, houses are furnished the workers at nominal rentals. But, save in the cases of Cramerton, N. C., the Cone villages at Greensboro, and a few other such model communities, the houses afforded are hardly more than pig-sties. The squalid, the ugly, and the drab are the hallmarks of the Southern mill town. Emaciated men and women and stunted children are everywhere in evidence.

But the Southerner sees and understands nothing of this. Force his attention to the facts and he will, to be sure, appear for the nonce to take cognizance of them, will even be troubled, for he is not inhumane. But seek to remind him tomorrow of the things you have shown him today and you will discover no evidence that he recalls them at all; his talk will be entirely of the Cone villages and Cramerton and he will assume in all discussions of the merits of the case that these model kraals are typical of the estate of the mill-billy. The whole cast of his mind inhibits retention and contemplation of the hard facts, and he honestly believes that Cramerton is typical, that the top wage is the average wage. That is to say, he can honestly see only the pleasant thing. That is why, quite apart from antinomian considerations, the Southern newspapers almost unanimously denounced the accurate stories of the strikes printed by the New York World and the Baltimore Sun as baseless fabrications, inspired purely by sectional malice.

[...]

Moreover, the mind of the Southerner is an intensely individualistic mind. There again, it strikes back to the Old South, to the soil. The South is the historic champion of States’ Rights. It holds Locke’s "indefeasibility of private rights" as axiomatic. Its economic philosophy is that of Adam Smith, recognizing no limitations on the pursuit of self-interest by the individual, and counting unbridled private enterprise as not only the natural order but also the source of all public good. Laissez-faire is its watchword.

The Southerner is without inkling of the fact that, admirably adapted as such a philosophy was to the simple, agricultural society of the Jeffersonian era, it is inadequate for dealing with the industrial problems of today. He has never heard of the doctrine of the social function of industry and would not understand it if he had. He cannot see that industrialism inevitably consolidates power into the hands of a steadily decreasing few, and enables them, if unchecked, to grab the lion’s share of the product of other men’s labor; he cannot see that the worker in a machine age is not an individual at all but an atom among atoms—that he is no longer, and cannot possibly be, a free agent. Under the Southern view, even a cotton-mill is an individual. If a peon cares to work for the wage it chooses to pay, very well; if he doesn’t, let him exercise a freeman’s privilege and quit. But for him to combine with his fellows and seek to tie up the operation of the mill until his wages are raised—that, as the South sees it, is exactly as if a lone farm-hand, displeased with his pay, took post with a shotgun to bar his employer from tilling his fields.

The lint-head of the mills, indeed, is the best individualist of them all, and for this there is excellent reason. Often enough he owns a farm, his ancestral portion in the hills— rocks, pinebrush, and abrupt slopes, but still a farm, well adapted to moonshining. If he is landless, there are hundreds of proprietors eager to secure him as a tenant, an estate in which he will not have to work more than three months out of twelve. As a result, there is a constant flow back and forth between the soil and the mills. Thus the Southern peon is not, in fact, and as an individual, as irrevocably bound to the wheel of industry as his Northern brother, since he may always escape to churldom. The equally valid fact that, because only a handful can escape at any given time, the mass of his fellows are held irretrievably in bondage is lost upon him. He is always, in his own eyes, a man apart. He exhibits the grasping jealousy for petty personal advantage, the refusal to yield one jot or tittle for the common good, characteristic of the peasant. If, by a miracle, he is ambitious, his aspirations run, not to improving his own status by improving that of the class to which, in reality, he is bound, but to gaudy visions of himself as a member of the master class, as superintendent or even president of the mills. His fellows may be damned.

[...]

Whichever party best combines causes and monsters and clinches its claim to the banner of God will win. Party labels may or may not be changed. In any case, I believe, the mind of the South will remain the same. [excerpts above - WJ Cash / The American Mercury, October, 1929]

Sound familiar? Twelve years later Cash would publish TMS (based on the original AM contribution) in book form (Alfred F. Knoft, 1941 - 429 pages). Cash deals extensively with the South's capacity for fabulous romanticized historical narrative, but, I think, the characteristics and examples Cash gives in 1929 and later in 1941 can safely be applied to a great extent even today.

The Mind of the South will rise again.

The Mind of the South is still in print and you can get your hooks on a copy via the usual outlets. I reccomend reading the book as opposed to just the original essay since Cash articulates his points to a far greater degree in the book than in the original essay. Cash also takes his swings at the greedy northeastern moneybags who exploit the South for its self deluded cheap labor plantation economics. So pick up a copy from your local bookstore, or wherever you buy books,... etc... etc...

The Mind of the South

More on WJ Cash (including the original TMS 1929 American Mercury manuscript) here: WJ Cash.org

*

I haven't mentioned it before but I've spent the last week grading Advanced Placement U.S. History exams on the campus of my alma mater, Trinity University in San Antonio.

I've been grading a Document-Based-Question (DBQ for short) for the last three days that deals with the Revolution and its immediate aftermath.

Here's the text of the question:

To what extent did the American Revolution fundamentally change American society? In your answer be sure to address the political, social, and economic effects of the Revolution in the period from 1775 to 1800.

Following the question are several different documents from the period and the student is to construct an answer using those documents and their knowledge of the subject.

What I've found fascinating is what the students have been saying in their responses. The overwhelming majority (80% at least) of the essays contend that the Revolution led to "major" (or "fundamental" or "big" or "enormous" or "wonderful") positive changes politically, socially, and economically. Reading these essays has been like a lesson in American triumphalism and historical wishful thinking.

The students tell me the political system after the revolution was great! The society was immediately improved by the Revolution! Everyone could vote! Women's lives improved! Taxes dropped! And that, of course, led to incredible economic growth that made America a world economic power overnight!

In short, what we're getting from the best high school students in America is the usual mythological meta-narrative about the Revolution. It's the historical version of the arrogance Americans still have about their country today. These students argue that America is the best country in the world and always has been. The American success story started immediately after the Revolution. America was the best place to live ever since 1776, as soon as we broke away from those nasty Brits! It was always sunny and warm and wonderful and bountiful from that point onward.

As you can imagine, all 950 of us historians and A.P. teachers at the reading are pretty aghast at the gushing spasms of historical sweetness we've been reading.

The reality, however, for Americans from 1775 to 1800 was actually quite different. The students are even provided with hand-picked documents that make just that sort of case quite convincingly.

What was it really like? Well, when the Revolution ended, the American economy went into a tailspin that was quite an awful thing to behold. Trade dried up for quite some time (several years), there was a shortage of currency, and things were not at all wonderful for people who made their living off of trading or growing or making anything.

America's problems were compounded by the fact that, in the wake of the Revolution, states quickly raised taxes incredibly in an attempt to pay off the states' rather considerable war debts. They raised taxes so high that most of their citizens simply could not pay them, not that they had the currency to do so anyway. Taxes most certainly did not drop, quite the contrary thing happened. In contrast to the students' triumphal meta-narrative, Americans after the Revolution paid much higher taxes than they would have if they had stayed in the British empire.

In fact, in some states like Massachusetts farmers even began losing their farms to foreclosure proceedings because they couldn't pay these taxes. The situation in Massachusetts was the cause of Shays' Rebellion, the precipitating event that led to the writing of the U.S. Constitution.

So, as far as the economy is concerned, the Revolution led to big change all right -- and about all of it was for the worse.

Okay, so was there any political and social change? Well, not really. The country was still run, through property qualifications for voting and officeholding, by the same small bunch of elites that had run it during the colonial era. (This wouldn't change for most Americans until the 1820s and 1830s.) These elites made quite sure that number one was taken care of first. This was not a wonderful time to be a woman or a slave or any sort of poor person in America.

For at least three decades, Americans openly questioned whether the Revolution was the right move to have made and a large portion of a generation passed on to the Great Beyond thinking it may have been a big mistake.

So why the disconnect between historical reality and what I had to slog through every day at the reading?

I don't know that I have some simple or easy answer to that. It's not the teachers' fault, folks. The teachers have tried their best to teach their students the proper and correct history. Worse yet, I see the same phenomenon in my own classes. I teach them about how difficult the Revolutionary War and its aftermath was -- and I get the same sort of triumphant narrative in my essay exam responses as well.

Is it just that Americans don't like to entertain any sort of doubts about their leaders -- past or present? Are these students and their parents just that subservient to their leaders? To the rich and powerful in general? Can they not begin to make themselves believe that people could doubt the wisdom of the great Founding Fathers?

We've certainly seen this sort of phenomenon in American society lately. How long did it take for Americans to wake up and see the great disaster in Iraq unfolding right before their eyes? How long before they do something about it? Does American culture nowadays just teach blind subservience to wealth and power -- until the situation gets so obviously horrible that you can't draw another conclusion except that it's a disaster?

A couple of centuries ago Americans really were quite willing to be critical of their government and to wonder aloud about whether their leaders were doing the right thing.

Why can't Americans do that now?

What changed?

They just keep losing—or should that be "losing"—your dollars.

More stench rising from the Republican one-Partei state in Ohio:

Columbus - A politically connected investment firm lost $215 million in Bureau of Workers' Compensation money, triggering an agency shake-up, a wide-ranging criminal investigation and calls by Democrats for Gov. Bob Taft's recall.

Losses by the Pittsburgh-based MDL Capital Management dwarf the estimated $10 million to $13 million missing from BWC's rare-coin investments and raise new questions about the abilities of former bureau administrator Jim Conrad, who initially soft-pedaled information that surfaced about the losing investments.
(via Plain Dealer)

Say, what about that $8 billion the Republicans "lost" in Whack? (back) The $8 billion they're killing your kids to get their hands on?

And, oh yeah, I'm sure anxious to turn my guaranteed Social Security check over to these guys. I can hardly wait....

What were we saying about the Bush regime's manipulation of scientific evidence? Oh, yes, the Union of Concerned Scientists had a problem with the rigorousness of their scientific method. You can imagine, then, how they must feel about this latest revelation:

"A White House official who once led the oil industry's fight against limits on greenhouse gases has repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that play down links between such emissions and global warming, according to internal documents.
In handwritten notes on drafts of several reports issued in 2002 and 2003, the official, Philip A. Cooney, removed or adjusted descriptions of climate research that government scientists and their supervisors, including some senior Bush administration officials, had already approved. In many cases, the changes appeared in the final reports.
The dozens of changes, while sometimes as subtle as the insertion of the phrase "significant and fundamental" before the word "uncertainties," tend to produce an air of doubt about findings that most climate experts say are robust.
Mr. Cooney is chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the office that helps devise and promote administration policies on environmental issues.
Before going to the White House in 2001, he was the "climate team leader" and a lobbyist at the American Petroleum Institute, the largest trade group representing the interests of the oil industry. A lawyer with a bachelor's degree in economics, he has no scientific training."

Nor would he need any, in a political climate as fogged by ambition, greed, and lies as this one.

Jeralyn at TalkLeft reports the recent development at your local Acme/Albertson's/SaveOn (where I happen to shop):

"Albertsons Corporation agreed to accommodate its pharmacists' right to refuse to fill prescriptions that violate their religious or moral beliefs. The accommodation came on the heels of a lawsuit filed by attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) and the Christian Legal Society (CLS) against Albertsons and Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich on behalf of pharmacist David Scimio.
Blagojevich imposed an "emergency rule" stating that a pharmacist "must dispense ...without delay" contraceptives, including so-called emergency contraceptives such as the "morning after" pill, despite the state's right-of-conscience act.
Steven H. Aden, chief litigation counsel of CLS's Center for Law and Religious Freedom, said the right of conscience is an important component of religious liberty. "Pharmacists should not be forced to fill prescriptions for the 'morning after' abortion pill," he said, "if it violates their conscience."
Shortly after ADF and CLS filed suit, Albertsons distributed a memo to all its Illinois pharmacists stating it would accommodate their right of conscience by permitting them to refer prescriptions to which they conscientiously object to another Albertsons pharmacist orto a competitor."

Among the ADF's "ministerial allies" is the mighty dachshund harrower James Dobson's Focus on the Family (big surprise there).

Jeralyn notes the implications of allowing clerks to decide who they will serve in quoting from a letter to the editor of the Salt Lake City Tribune, whose author cautions that she was denied service by an Albertson's pharmacist simply for trying to get a an anti-alcoholism drug prescription filled:

"As I handed my prescription for antabuse and naltrexone (anti-craving drug) to the pharmacist, I saw his face change and harden. He informed me that he didn't carry that drug (never looking me in the face) and that I needed to go somewhere else as he tossed the prescriptions back at my pathetic self. I will never forget how I felt that day or how I almost let a self-righteous, judgmental pharmacist change my life. I can't imagine what he would do if someone wanted the Plan B pill. Pharmacists fill prescriptions, they are not a customer's moral conscience. If they can't take the heat, they should get out of the pharmacy."

Yes, that's what you want, isn't it, you craven hypocritical "fishers of men"?

Well, you know the whole world has gone topsy-turvy when you can quote Glenn Reynolds over at Instapundit because he gets it, too:

"Over at The Corner we're seeing a rather large number of abortion-related posts today. In this one (which really goes beyond the abortion issue) Kathryn Jean Lopez decries a poll showing that 80% of Americans think that pharmacists ought to have to fill prescriptions for contraceptives even if they're personally opposed to birth control.
Of course, this only matters because pharmacists enjoy a government-created monopoly on the dispensing of prescription drugs. Just take that away, and the problem disappears, too. In the meantime, like others who enjoy government monopolies, they are forced to make some concessions to public convenience. That doesn't strike me as an overwhelming imposition, but if the pharmacy profession feels otherwise, I'll be the first to support a move to eliminate its privileged position."

Yes, indeed. Give those scripts to someone who'll be happy to have a paying job, and watch them get filled.

He denies it, the Red King said. Leave out that part. Yeah, sure.


At last! (Kos, which has links to the nightly news videos).

You remember the Downing Street Memo? The one that documents how "the intelligence and the facts were being fixed around the policy"?

Apparently Bush is looking blotchy again. I wonder why?

UPDATE



Here's Bush answering a question (fancy that!) about the Downing Street Memo. Any experts here in primate facial expressions? Bush doesn't look like a happy camper to me.

If there’s light posting from me for awhile, it’s not because I don’t have anything to say, I’m just suffering from a bad case of having to get these veggies coming up out of the ground. Nothing personal. Onward to a great garden in the fall of ’05 and a sweep of both houses in ’06. Until then…

Bush's war on the old, the sick and the weak continues apace, assisted by those activist liberal judges on the Supreme Court:

"Federal authorities may prosecute sick people whose doctors prescribe marijuana to ease pain, the Supreme Court ruled Monday, concluding that state laws don't protect users from a federal ban on the drug.
The decision is a stinging defeat for marijuana advocates who had successfully pushed 10 states to allow the drug's use to treat various illnesses.
Justice John Paul Stevens, writing the 6-3 decision, said that Congress could change the law to allow medical use of marijuana."

Like that's going to happen. Right off, there was this from John "Correct Thought" Walters, Minister of Propaganda for National Drug Control Policy, who said:

"Our national medical system relies on proven scientific research, not popular opinion. To date, science and research have not determined that smoking marijuana is safe or effective."

As opposed to, say, ingesting Vioxx? Remember, this is the administration whose political manipulation of and quashing of scientific data for its own ends became so intolerable that the Union of Concerned Scientists had to register a formal protest. The people who put a faith healer in charge of women's health policy. Yes, I'm sure that concern for the scientific method is exactly what motivates these fine folks.

But let me not to the inconsistency of true hypocrisy admit impediments. There's also this gem from Stevens, writing for the majority:

"Our cases have taught us that there are some unscrupulous physicians who overprescribe when it is sufficiently profitable to do so."

Indeed. Based on this criterion, I suggest we immediately suspend all prescription-writing, until such time as exacting scientific methodology and research can guarantee that no such slovenly overprescribing will continue.

But what's odd about the dissenting votes is who is behind them: Rehnquist, who got his start intimidating black voters away from the polls, in bed with Clarence "Lumpy" Thomas, who never heard of discrimination. O'Connor brings up the rear guard, as befits a woman in the brave new world of progressive conservatism, making little token mewling sounds about states' rights that you and I know she has never really believed, at least not since she sided against them on behalf of her boy Bushie in election year 2000.

Round and round we spin, lovin' the spin we're in, under that old black magic that's turning our country into a vat of fools and curs. Or is it curds and whey?

It's all so confusing.

(Cross-posted from yesterday's piece on my own site.)

This drives me nuts. Biden on Gitmo:

"This has become the greatest propaganda tool that exists for recruiting of terrorists around the world. And it is unnecessary to be in that position," said Joseph Biden (D-Del.).
(via AP)

As a policy proposition, Biden is right, of course.

But look at the language: "This has become..." It's the passive voice! And in the passive voice, there's no accountability! How did it "become"? Why? Who is responsible? Was it magic? Did it just happen?

C'mon, Senator! Use the active voice! Assign some blame! Let me try:

Bush's torture policies have backfired. Bush has turned Guantanomo into the greatest propaganda tool that exists for recruiting of terrorists around the world.

See how easy it is?

As Hillary says:

"I mean, c'mon, toughen up, guys, it's only our Constitution and country at stake," she said. "Let's get some spine."
(via Times)

Start showing some spine by using the active voice!

Lizzie "Fluffer" Bumiller, Girl Reporter, is at it again. She lets the following pass without comment:

"The idea of people expressing themselves in opposition in government, then getting a beating, is not our view of how a democracy ought to work," Mr. Bush said. "It's not the way that you have free elections."
(via NY Times)

Oh my. "Free elections," from the Chief Weasel who stole Election 2000. But let that pass. After all, I've gotten over that a long time ago.

What really spiked my B.S.S. was this: "The idea of people expressing themselves in opposition in government, then getting a beating, is not our view of how a democracy ought to work."

As usual, Bush insults as by assuming we have no memory at all. Remember people getting beaten up at Republican rallies during election 2004? Of course you do. (And if you don't, see especially here, for the smirk, but also here, and here. Then, of course, there are the people the Republicans get fired from their jobs. Or google "MBF watch" in the search box above.) Do you remember Bush saying one single word condeming his thugs? Of course not. And silence means consent. Bush sees it, and says nothing. That means he want it to happen.

The question I keep asking myself is this: Is Bush a liar, or has he gone so far beyond lying that He actually believes what he says?

NOTE We'll give Bush a free pass on His use of The Royal We ("not our view"), too.

Has David Bossie rented himself out to the Canadians? Or is doctoring tapes just a part of the Conservative DNA? Just when the Liberals seemed headed for a no-confidence vote in the midst of the so-called "sponsorship scandal" (no cutesy "-gate" suffixes here), the Conservatives seem to have overreached, first by releasing a tape showing one of their own apparently chatting about favors in exchange for going over to the Liberal party, and now with the revelation that the tapes themselves appear to have been altered:

The Tories released the recordings to bolster their claims that the Liberals had offered Mr. Grewal and his MP wife, Nina Grewal, government appointments if they agreed to switch sides in the crucial May 19 confidence vote in which the government survived by one vote....

Yesterday, Jack Mitchell, a U.S. forensic audio expert who conducted a preliminary review of portions of the originally released recordings, said they had been altered. He said he did not believe the changes occurred in the digital-copying process.

"These tapes have been edited. This is not a maybe. This is not something that's unexplained. This is not, 'Oh, this is odd.' This is a definitive statement. The tapes have been edited," Mr. Mitchell said.

He said he could not say with certainty how the alterations occurred, or conclude definitely that it was done intentionally.

However, Mr. Mitchell said that he not only found instances of possible edits, including sections where it appeared that phrases had been added to the recordings, but also a telltale repeat of a brief snippet of conversation that was repeated exactly.

"The entire thing repeats exactly. It's not the speaker repeating his phrase. This repeats exactly in the same way, with the same rhythm, with the same timing, with the same noise signatures. This is impossible," he said.

(via Globe and Mail)

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. In my mother country, doctoring evidence of malfeasance is no barrier to career advancement, just so long as long as you pick on Democrats. Hell, you can even be a member of the MSM.

Reader Mrs. T (love your pierogies!) asks a reasonable question in the comments at the last post:

"What do you guys think of the idea that people that don't have school age children shouldn't have to pay for public schools? Or the idea that you could choose how to use your tax money and have the ability to put it toward a private school, which would make it MUCH more affordable for single moms/dads etc?"

I think this is an important question, and how we view education in this country depends on what we do with it in the next couple generations. More than that, the kind of work force we will have, and the quality and amount of innovation, creative endeavor, and scientific breakthrough we can expect from those who come after us will absolutely reflect how we answer this question, and how we back up that answer with our money and public will.

My personal feeling is that kids are a national resource, just as much as minerals, timber, and a clean environment. We are all affected for better or worse by the legacy we leave our children. The poorly educated may become a drain on the national economy because they can't afford health insurance or to maintain the neighborhoods in which they live. They may fall into crime, costing money for their upkeep after they are imprisoned, or they may be unable to buy many of the things our consumer economy depends on the marketing of. Their need to take bottom-level jobs drags down the general standard of living and the incentive for employers to pay more throughout the economy.

Because the maintenance of a national resource is the responsibility of everyone who benefits from or is affected by it, the education of citizens is the duty of a decent government and of the individuals from whom that government derives its authority. (Laughable words during the reign of the Dauphin, I know.) That's a public duty, and it means public education. When public education is abandoned, which is what Grover Norquist has in mind, only the rich will be able to afford a decent education. Right now, conservatives are playing with the concept that public education is no longer a right of US citizens. Perhaps life or liberty may be on the chopping block next, if we wait long enough.

And if you think your tax money, diverted from your paycheck into a private account for private education, will suffice to buy one, you're sadly delusional. Private schools, even parochial schools, are vastly more expensive than the average percentage of tax one pays toward education, on local, state and federal levels combined. I know, because once upon a time I cherished the idea of getting my kid out of public school, and found it far beyond my means.

Add to this the further elimination of financial aid sources, and it will become even more important to have a healthy income to get an education. When we are talking about a need so fundamental to life--the access to a decent education--we are talking about a right so basic that to abandon our responsibility as citizens to provide it is just the first step toward the utter abdication of any sense of community whatever.

But that's my opinion. What's yours?

The NYTimes reports today that, thanks to changes in government formulas calculating how much students and their parents should pay toward college before receiving financial aid, this year fewer people than ever will be able to afford higher education:

"The Department of Education says that any changes to the formula are driven by a legal obligation to keep it current, reflecting what families can truly afford to pay. For example, the administration determined that more of a parent's assets must be counted toward college expenses this year because it predicted better economic circumstances, including substantially lower inflation. Under that scenario, the administration argues, families need to save less money for retirement...
Some economists consider the administration's economic assumptions deeply flawed. The department's estimates for inflation were, in fact, far enough off that it has now revised the formula it will use for the 2006-2007 school year, much to the benefit of families with assets. But the latest round of changes will not help parents in the coming school year."

Add to this the fact that last year Bush successfully lobbied Congress to reduce the eligibility for Pell grants so drastically that over 92,000 low-income students are now no longer able to qualify for them, and we have the makings of a whole generation of gamma slaves, fit for nothing but the simplest and lowest-paid tasks, and of course, much less likely to challenge the status quo.

But, as eRobin over at Fact-esque points out, we can count on WalMart to help the kids out.

Atrios and a couple of bloggers have recently blogged about the phenomenon of "gradegrubbing." They describe how annoying and agressive some students have gotten about grades and their sense of entitlement, etc.

For those of you who didn't know, I'm a history professor at a very typical directional state university. I must admit that, while I have students who complain about grades and come by to talk about them, I really haven't had the sort of extreme experiences these other professors are describing.

In fact, I'm actually pretty hard line on grades. I'll change one if there's a mathematical error or I've made some sort of mistake or if a student genuinely makes a good case (which has happened a couple of times in the last eight years but that's about it) but I really don't do it much.

And what sort of grades do I give? Well, I average about 5-7% A grades every semester in my 100-level surveys. I also tend to give Ds and Fs to about 30-35% (sometimes more, sometimes less depending on the class) of my students as well.

There's no grade inflation in my class at least.

Anyway, I don't know maybe it's just that I teach a different type of student from the private or pricey school student who very well may feel like they're "entitled" or they have "paid" for a particular outcome.

I just haven't had such experiences so far.

I just felt obligated to weigh in on this.

UPDATE For my readers that are curious, a "directional university" is a regional university with the name of the region of the state in the name, like, um, say "Southeastern Montana State University."

My own state has quite a few of them at the moment, although there used to be more of them. Several rather large regional universities are now taking on the names of prominent politicians or other more impressive sounding names.

The current hip thing is to try to become [insert state name here] State University so that you can argue you've transcended your "regional" status and become a statewide university.

Have they really? Well, not usually, but it certainly sounds more impressive and it's all about perception these days, isn't it?

Alert reader MJS extends Deep Throat's classic injunction:

Following [the] money is how one truly understands most political stories. Forget sides, Left vs. Right, blah, blah, blah: follow the money. Where is the money going? Where did it come from? How is it moved? Who benefits?
(via MJS, back)

Turns out scientists have trained monkeys to follow the money. From the NY Times new column, Freakonmics (and read the whole thing, it's fascinating:

In a clean and spacious laboratory at Yale-New Haven Hospital, seven capuchin monkeys have been taught to use money [by Keith Chen, a behavioral economist]

The first set of experiments concerned altruism:

Two monkeys faced each other in adjoining cages, each equipped with a lever that would release a marshmallow into the other monkey's cage. The only way for one monkey to get a marshmallow was for the other monkey to pull its lever. So pulling the lever was to some degree an act of altruism, or at least of strategic cooperation.

The tamarins were fairly cooperative but still showed a healthy amount of self-interest: over repeated encounters with fellow monkeys, the typical tamarin pulled the lever about 40 percent of the time. Then Hauser and Chen heightened the drama. They conditioned one tamarin to always pull the lever (thus creating an altruistic stooge)...

that would be a Beltway Dem, or the kind of (so-called) liberal who doesn't care about outcomes (see Daily Howler)

and another to never pull the lever (thus creating a selfish jerk).

That would be the typical Republican.

The stooge and the jerk were then sent to play the game with the other tamarins. The stooge blithely pulled her lever over and over, never failing to dump a marshmallow into the other monkey's cage. Initially, the other monkeys responded in kind, pulling their own levers 50 percent of the time. But once they figured out that their partner was a pushover (like a parent who buys her kid a toy on every outing whether the kid is a saint or a devil), their rate of reciprocation dropped to 30 percent -- lower than the original average rate.

And that's how the Republicans have behaved, as soon as they figured out that Dems will just take it.

But there's hope for change:

The selfish jerk, meanwhile, was punished even worse. Once her reputation was established...

which the reality based community (unlike the SCLM) is working very hard at right now

.... whenever she was led into the experimenting chamber, the other tamarins ''would just go nuts,'' Chen recalls. ''They'd throw their feces at the wall, walk into the corner and sit on their hands, kind of sulk.''

which, again, is what we're doing; nailing, as it were, the 99 feces to the White House door.

But now we get to the money part:

When he and Santos, his psychologist collaborator, began to teach the Yale capuchins to use money, he had no pressing research theme. The essential idea was to give a monkey a dollar and see what it did with it. The currency Chen settled on was a silver disc, one inch in diameter, with a hole in the middle -- ''kind of like Chinese money,'' he says. It took several months of rudimentary repetition to teach the monkeys that these tokens were valuable as a means of exchange for a treat and would be similarly valuable the next day. Having gained that understanding, a capuchin would then be presented with 12 tokens on a tray and have to decide how many to surrender for, say, Jell-O cubes versus grapes. This first step allowed each capuchin to reveal its preferences and to grasp the concept of budgeting.

Then Chen introduced price shocks and wealth shocks. If, for instance, the price of Jell-O fell (two cubes instead of one per token), would the capuchin buy more Jell-O and fewer grapes? The capuchins responded rationally to tests like this -- that is, they responded the way most readers of The Times would respond. In economist-speak, the capuchins adhered to the rules of utility maximization and price theory: when the price of something falls, people tend to buy more of it.

Since, so far, the monkey's don't save, there's no monkey wealth. But suppose Chen trains the monkeys to make money (perhaps, as MJS suggests, in the dark...).

And suppose some of the monkeys become rich, relative to the other monkeys. My question is:

Will the rich monkeys be more Godly than the poor ones?

Alert reader MJS suggests that liberals will look at the facts to find out:

To say that in politics "there are two sides" is to cede so much turf as to find yourself outside of reality, because if there really are only two sides to everything than there are also two sides to that observation, and two more sides to observing that observation...2 x 2 x 2 x 2! There are then also two sides to not having two sides, which are not hidebound to having just the two sides, so there are more than two sides to having two sides. It get very Lewis Carroll-like when you extrapolate homilys to their most distant destinations...

Reducing the conventions of political thought to Hostess Cupcake packages is for the Straussians, becasue they have something to sell you. People who sell things make a lot of money with the "Good/bad" dicohotomy: hair bad? Buy this product. Breath bad? Buy this product. Arabs attacked the U.S.? Go kill Arabs.

I guess a truly liberal counter to such conservative approaches would be in opening all the packages and revealing what is inside, looking at the substance of what is inside, discussing, asking questions. To be liberal is to not just recite dogma, but to get the flashlight out and really examine the "whatness" of a thing!

Forget easy generalizations and you have something approaching freedom of thought: many successful businessmen profit by reducing the complexity of our politics and our world into easy-opening cans. It's almost a battle of consciousness vs. unconsciousness, clarity vs. the opaque, transparency vs. the darkened.

What was the message that got Hansel and Gretel (Woodward and Bernsteing) out of the forest and back into town? Following bread crumbs has its charm (and tragic flaws) but following money is how one truly understands most political stories. Forget sides, Left vs. Right, blah, blah, blah: follow the money. Where is the money going? Where did it come from? How is it moved? Who benefits?

And guess what: Money is made everywhere but it really breeds in the dark.

A liberal government can serve as a corrective to abuses of the market, to abuses of labor, the environment, the buying public. If one is comfortable with a society as a kind of theme park where all the guests have to do is stay inbetween the stanchions and form uniform lines and don't ask questions, then throw your weight towards fascism.

My two bits, anyway...

[Audience sits in stunned silence, then applauds.]

And to think I thought that Schwarzenegger wasn't a typical Republican. Surely Maria tamed him? Surely, at last, we have a Republican—the Terminator—who's going to stand up for the little guy?

Why, why, am I so naive?

When wealthy contributors write checks to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, they often get a few canapes and a drink — and a secret telephone number that grants them access to his closest advisors and even the governor himself.

Twice a month, donors can become insiders' insiders — invited to participate in conference calls featuring information about Schwarzenegger campaign strategy that his political enemies would love to have. In turn, donors who dial in can give the governor advice.
(via LA Times)

Best of all, the Times has excertps from a transcript. (Wonder who the Republican mole is? Apparently there still are a few responsible ones...)

And here's one little gem:

'I'm sure you are aware the [Assembly] speaker and Democrats proposed a $3-billion tax increase. I think it will affect anybody who is on this call.' [Sipple, Republican operative, Referring to a plan to raise taxes on individuals making more than $143,000 a year]

Touching concern...

UPDATE Alert reader Julia gives us the lowdown on Sipple.

You know me, I'm a trusting soul, not paranoid at all, but it does occur to me that Big Media has had very bad luck with bombshell Bush stories—especially ones that are true in essence, but have story details wrong. (OK, we didn't flush the Koran like ABC said, we urinated on it (through a ventilator...) And don't get me started on Bush AWOL, and CBS vs. Paul Lukasiak (google)).

In two cases now (CBS, ABC), there's been a bombshell story, true in essence, from a mysterious source, followed by a big buildup from us ("At last! Our story breaks through!"), followed by a humiliating retraction from Big Media, followed by a wingerly circlejerk. It's almost like the signature, the modus operandi, of a disinformation campaign. I wonder whose it could be...

And now we have what looks like a third case of the same signature. The bombshell: That in the buildup to Iraq "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy". The buildup: Happening now... And the London Times (the source of the Downing Street memo) is owned by Rupert Murdoch....

I'd hate for Lucy to snatch the football away from Charlie Brown again, know what I mean?

It's really a hall of mirrors, isn't it? Maybe Murdoch wanted to nail Blair so bad that any collateral damage to Bush was not relevant to him. Then again, the reporting operations at ABC and CBS have suffered so drastically from corporate cuts that they can hardly be called newsgathering organizations. So their immune systems are far less capable of resisting disinformation campaigns than newspaper. And the London Times is, at least not yet, a tabloid, so...

So I hope I'm wrong. But I'd hate to see the author of the Downing Street Memo retract, after a horse's head appears in his bed....

Via Buzzflash, an interesting development in the Bolton force-feed: in 2002 he engineered the removal of a UN family agency head whose actions threatened to expose Bush's allegations of Iraqi weapons for the sham they were, and whose proposed plan to send chemical weapons inspectors to Iraq could have ruined the intelligence fakery on which the eventual invasion depended:

"John R. Bolton flew to Europe in 2002 to confront the head of a global arms-control agency and demand he resign, then orchestrated the firing of the unwilling diplomat in a move a U.N. tribunal has since judged unlawful, according to officials involved.
A former Bolton deputy says the U.S. undersecretary of state felt Jose Bustani "had to go," particularly because the Brazilian was trying to send chemical weapons inspectors to Baghdad. That might have helped defuse the crisis over alleged Iraqi weapons and undermined a U.S. rationale for war.
Bustani, who says he got a "menacing" phone call from Bolton at one point, was removed by a vote of just one-third of member nations at an unusual special session of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), at which the United States cited alleged mismanagement in calling for his ouster."

Bustani himself revealed some interesting, and by now familiar, Bolton tactics:

"In June 2001, Bolton "telephoned me to try to interfere, in a menacing tone, in decisions that are the exclusive responsibility of the director-general," Bustani wrote in 2002 in a Brazilian academic journal.
He elaborated in an interview with the French newspaper Le Monde in mid-2002, saying Bolton "tried to order me around," and sought to have some U.S. inspection results overlooked and certain Americans hired to OPCW positions. The agency head said he refused. "

In March 2002 the US went public to get rid of Bustani, and succeeded in April by threatening the OPCW with the withholding of operating funds. All this, mind you, at a time when Bush repeatedly assured the American public that he was doing everything possible to get Iraq to comply with weapons inspections and to avoid having to go to war. And only 3 months later, the Downing Street memo stated that the US saw "war as inevitable".

Later, when Bustani appealed the termination to the Administrative Tribunal of the International Labor Organization in Geneva, where UN agencies go with personnel issues, the tribunal ruled in Bustani's favor, stating his removal was unlawful and awarding him damages.

So Bolton was complicit in the warping and cover-up of information related to the invasion of Iraq in order to facilitate the Bush administration's plans to wage an illegal war, and he used his by now well-known bullying tactics to accomplish that, against a head of an agency that is a family member of the UN, where Bush now wants to appoint him as the representative of our nation.

Do I have it right?

They've got David "I'm Writing as Bad as I Can" Brooks!

I turned to the Times editorial page just to see if Brooks could write a whole column about Watergate without using the words "crime" or "criminal." Do you think he passed the test? Take all the time you need. That's enough, right? Of course.

But Brooks does emit this little crotte of snark ("Life Lessons From Watergate"):

Places like Washington and New York attract large numbers of ambitious young people who have spent their short lives engaged in highly structured striving: getting good grades, getting into college. Suddenly they are spit out into the vast, anarchic world of adulthood, surrounded by a teeming horde of scrambling peers, and a chaos of possibilities and pitfalls.
Entering the world of the Higher Shamelessness, they begin networking like mad, cultivating the fine art of false modesty and calculated friendships. The most nakedly ambitious - the blogging Junior Lippmanns - rarely win in the long run, but that doesn't mean you can't mass e-mail your essays for obscure online sites with little "Thought you might be interested" notes.

They create informal mutual promotion societies, weighing who will be the crucial members of their cohort, engaging in the dangerous game of lateral kissing up, hunting for the spouse who will look handsomely supportive during some future confirmation hearing, nurturing a dislike for the person who will be the chief rival when the New Yorker editing job opens up in 2027.

And of course they are always mentor-hunting, looking for that wise old Moses who will lead them through the wilderness and end their uncertainty. They discover that it's socially acceptable to flatter your bosses by day so long as you are blasphemously derisive about them while drinking with your buddies at night.

This is now a normal stage of life. And if Bob Woodward could get through something like it, perhaps they will too.

For that is the purpose of Watergate in today's culture. It isn't about Nixon and the cover-up anymore. It's about Woodward and Bernstein. Watergate has become a modern Horatio Alger story, a real-life fairy tale, an inspiring ode for mediacentric college types - about the two young men who found exciting and challenging jobs, who slew the dragon, who became rich and famous by doing good and who were played by Redford and Hoffman in the movie version.

Woodward was nervous once, like you.
(via NY Times)

Ready for your closeup, Mr. Brooks?

Just because Josh Marshall has John Edwards opening for him at TPM cafe, and Kos and Atrios have millions of readers, many of them "diggers" doing actual research, instead of regurgitating talking points from the Republican Noise Machine... Well, that's no reason for Brooks to feel he's losing his place at the top of the greasy pole, is it?

Or maybe it is.

"Nervous," eh? I'd say this is a classic case of WPS (Winger Projection Syndrome).

Poor, poor David Brooks. He's a shop-soiled, aging diva, long past his sell-by date. Maybe if he lost some weight ....

On-the-record omments before the Radio-Television and News Directors Association (via Froomkin):

[BUSH] I’m a crier, and I weep a lot.
(via RTNDA transcript)

Bush also comes out against a draft. Say, have those recruiting figures cocme out yet?

Otherwise, it's just pathology on parade. That slippery little scut is as slick as a door-to-door Bible salesman.

NOTE Froomkin goes on to write, although these are news directors, they (with one exception) didn't cover the story at all. And, oddly, though the comments were on the record, only "excerpts" were put on the RTNDA site. I wonder why?

UPDATE Alert reader Cole points out:

bush crying?
Isn't the condemnation of a show of tears what was used to destroy the presidential run by Muskie a few years back!?

IOKIYAR!

Know what I like about our local fishwrapper? I mean, aside from the fact you can wrap meat in it and train pups with it, and so forth? Because sometimes they publish a “wow” piece.

Today’s had an opinion piece by DeWayne Wickham (long may his banner fly) that notes among other things that aWol used “disassemble” for “dissemble,” referring to lying. And he calls him on it and points out that he’s an idiot. He then goes on to point out at least two blatant lies he made during the press conference, and then says “Shame on you!” to all of his colleagues who pretended none of this happened.

Reward good behavior, especially since he works for Gannett (at least until thugs from the Ministry of Truth come around to have a "talk" with him). His email is DeWayneWickham@aol.com.

I don’t have a link, sorry. Couldn’t find one. Readers, help the linkigially challenged?

Do you have one? If you don't, do you want one? Or are you just saying you don't have an agenda because your agenda is hidden? Is it possible not to have an agenda? What is an agenda?

NOTE Questions inspired by alert reader Mrs. T.

UPDATE Alert reader MJS supplies us with Bush's agenda. However, he forgets that the poor are poor because they are unGodly. Anyhow:

"[BUSH] When I go home tonight I'm gonna play with my broccoli. Laura's gonna steam some broccoli, I know it, she always does. And I'm gonna pick up one of those little steamed broccoli trees and get it all jiggling, and we're gonna laugh, we're gonna laugh hard, because we're free and broccoli jiggles when it's been steamed. Sorry about your dead kids, but you're poor and fuck you."

I did consider placing this contribution under The Department of Pictures You'd Rather Not Have in Your Mind...

Trying to channel the spirit of Cole Porter here, but it just doesn't work. Nothing with the word "DeLay" in it will scan worth a crap.

Oh yeah, he's lawyerin' up. BIG time.

(via Richmond VA Times-Dispatch)

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, facing allegations of unethical conduct, has turned to Richmond lawyer and Republican activist Richard Cullen for legal help.

DeLay, R-Texas, recently retained Cullen and the firm where he is a partner, McGuireWoods LLP, a DeLay spokesman confirmed yesterday. Cullen is a former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia and a former state attorney general, appointed by then-Gov. George Allen, now a U.S. senator.

Cullen will handle a wide range of matters for DeLay, including ones that may come before the House ethics committee, DeLay spokesman Dan Allen indicated in an e-mail. He declined to say why Cullen was selected. Cullen would not comment yesterday.

In 1987 [Cullen] was special counsel to then-U.S. Sen. Paul S. Trible Jr., R-Va., during the congressional investigation into the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages controversy.

Gotta find my old cast album of "Anything Goes." For some reason "Blow, Gabriel, Blow" is playing pleasantly in my head right about now.

Dunno if my B.S.S. will let me sleep. And if you want to lie awake, or wake up screaming, check out this compilation on Randi Rhodes of information on who makes electronic voting machines. Diebold is not the only Republican donor...

And as long as we're poking our own brand of gentle fun at the malAdministration, try this Google search. Heh. Hope they don't take it down. (Via, again, Randi Rhodes.)

A little classical music there, kids...

In response to "Coin dealers, money laundering, and connecting the dots in Ohio", Kossack Gryn alerts us to Bernadette Noe, lady wife of Bush Pioneer Tom "Just Say" Noe, he of the mysteriously missing millions that we, putting on our tinfoil hats—as if, at this point, we ever take them off—argued could well have been part of a money laundering scheme to pay rogue Diebold programmers to hack Ohio's servers.

Well, Gryn points out that Bernadette—if I may so call her—was on the board of elections in her county. The board was choosing between two Diebold products: one, an optical scanner, with a paper trail; the other, a touch screen, without. And which product did Bernadette favor? Guess. Take all the time you need. That's enough, right? Yes, she favored the unauditable, no-paper-trail product; so much so that she dropped a dime on a fellow Republican to get him off the board, and the no-paper-trail product in.

And what county is that, you ask? The one Bernadette got the unauditable Diebold machines into?

Why, Lucas County. Here's one of those juicy little election details:

Similar sworn testimony surfaced Tuesday at a citizens' hearing in Toledo. Among other things eye witnesses confirmed that a Diebold programming team entered the Lucas County (Toledo) Board of Elections to "reprogram" the opti-scan voting machines on the day the recount began.

Catherine Buchanan, a Democratic Party observer, testified that one of the sample precincts chosen as a control for the recount---Sylvania Precinct 3---had the programming card reprogrammed prior to the ballot testing. While the observers watched, nearly seven out of fifteen test ballots were rejected at least three times before the machine would read them.

Janet Albright told hearing officers she had been voting at the same Lucas County polling place for fourteen years but that the polling place was changed this year without notification to a station farther away. Machines throughout Lucas County malfunctioned in tests through the week prior to the election, and on election day. Thousands of Ohioans---primarily in Democratic precincts--thus lost their right to vote.

During the Lucas County reprogramming, election observers were shocked when they were denied the right to look at sheets that had target test results on them, or the reprogramming of the opti-scan machines used in the recount. Diebold-leased machines and software malfunctioned in the weeks prior to the election.
(Yurica Report

Say it once, why say it again? Because it bears repeating:

What we knew:

Dot 1: Precious metals are good for money laundering.

Dot 2: Tom Noe "lost" $10-14 million dollars in rare coins, good, like precious metals, for money laundering.

Dot 3: Diebold says they want to help Bush win, and Diebold programmers are known to have been convicted of fraud. (All from "Coin dealers, money laundering, and connecting the dots in Ohio".)

Now add this:

Dot 4: Tom Noe's wife got Diebold machines that don't leave a paper trail installed in Lucas County.

Dot 5: Lucas County was a statistical anomaly, Bush's way, on [cough] election Day.

Dot 6: Diebold programmers did something to the machines in Lucas County after the [cough] election, but they wouldn't show anybody what. I wonder why?

When is a reporter going to take Deep Throat's advice, and follow the money?

I'm still betting some of the laundered money ended up in the pockets of a rogue Diebold systems programmer, hacking the mother machine.

Oh, man. My B.S.S. is acting up real bad. Again.

Well, 7:45:

American jailers at the Guantanamo prison for foreign terrorism suspects splashed a Koran with urine, kicked and stepped on the Islamic holy book and soaked it with water, the U.S. military said on Friday.

In the incident involving urine, which took place this past March, Southern Command said a guard left his post and urinated near an air vent and "the wind blew his urine through the vent" and into a cell block.
(via Reuters)

Yeah, and the dog ate my homework. Guess I'd better not try to dry out my, um, waterlogged copy of The Purpose Driven Life near the window, eh?

Every Friday is Tinfoil Hat Day!

I just can't stop connecting those dots....

Dot One: As we surmised (awhile back), dealing in precious metals can be a front for a money laundering operation. In fact, the Treasury Department agrees:

The Bush administration, in its latest effort to nab drug lords and terrorist financiers, will require major dealers in gold, diamonds and other precious metals and gems to set up comprehensive anti-money laundering programs.

The provision applies to dealers who have bought and sold at least $50,000 worth of precious metals and gems. Dealers whose activities for the 2005 calendar year fall into that dollar threshold will have until Jan. 1, 2006, to set up anti-money laundering programs.

"The characteristics of jewels, precious metals and stones that make them valuable also make them potentially vulnerable to those seeking to launder money," said FinCen's director William Fox.

Congressional investigators have told the Treasury Department it needed to get a firmer grip on how terrorists may be using alternative means - such as trafficking in gold and hard-to-trace diamonds - to raise and move financial assets.
(via AP)

Dot Two: Rare coins are also hard to trace. Bringing me at once to the shenanigans in the Ohio Republican party. Pass the popcorn:

Ohio's "Coingate" scandal isn't just about the disappearance of up to $12 million in rare coins a state agency invested in, or even about the fact that the agency had no business investing public money in collectibles in the first place. It's also about an apparent culture of influence peddling and abuse of power in state government. Authorities must get to the bottom of this problem - wherever it may lead. More important, state leaders should quickly enact reforms to guard against the abuses this episode has exposed.

Two months ago, reports emerged that $300,000 in rare coins was missing from a collection in which the state Bureau of Workers' Compensation (BWC) began investing in 1998 as a peculiar form of stock hedge. That was bad enough. But last week, word came that between $10 million and $12 million in coins had disappeared. [I.e., "disappeared" into somebody's pocket. But whose?] That caused BWC director Jim Conrad to announce his resignation, and launched a flurry of accusations and calls for legal action.

At the scandal's center is [Bush Pioneer] Tom Noe a rare coin dealer, former county GOP chairman, long-time party fundraiser and (until recently) member of the Ohio Board of Regents. He arranged and managed BWC's coin collection, sharing in the profits.

Noe, who faces several investigations, also has given campaign donations to virtually all statewide elected officials. But Noe is not alone. It was reported this week that Republicans have received more than $200,000 from 50 other brokers who have done business with the BWC. And that's just one state agency.

It all leaves an ugly perception - which may well be backed by reality - that Ohio state government runs on a "pay-to-play" basis, that political contributions buy state business. This is unacceptable. Ohio voters and taxpayers deserve far better.
(via Cincinatti Enquirer)

Shocked, shocked!

Of course, the Enquirer is a Republican paper and a cog in the wingerly apparat; the Enquirer's owners and backers are thoroughly enmeshed in, and have benefitted handsomely from the system they now editorialize against.

So, what if pushing the pay-to-play narrative is yet another piece of misdirection?

They heave a few polticians over the rail to divert our attention from... something.

But what? What could be worse for the Republicans than a massive corruption scandal in a state that they have totally wired? It would be irresponsible not to speculate.

Dot Three: A corrupt voting machines systems programmer would demand to be paid in laundered money; and those who paid him would want to use laundered money as well. Before dismissing this idea—I grant it isn't a theory—remember:

1. We already know of Diebold one voting machines programmer convicted of fraud, and
2. Diebold's Republican CEO said he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

And who is better equipped to put a corrupt systems programmer in place at Diebold then, well, the Republican executives of the company? Laundering their own corporate money through Thomas Noe's company, as part of the $10-12 million that got "lost"?

Oh, and did I mention that Diebold is headquartered in Ohio?

Please refer all comments containing the words "conspiracy theory" to The Department of No! They Would Never Do That!

After all, we already know that Florida 2000 was stolen—not through the chad fiasco, though that was bad enough, but by the systematic exclusion of likely Democratic voters from the rolls, well before the election.

NOTE Although individual electronic voting machines are hackable, the true vulnerability of an electronic voting machines system is that the votes are centrally stored and tabulated on a single server. That's called a single point of failure. "Give me the right place to stand, and I will move the world," said Archimedes. And give a corrupt systems programmer the right set of privileges, and one man, acting alone for those who paid him, could create all those little statistical anomalies that have so many worried about Ohio 2004.

UPDATE Here's an Ohio blog that's watching the saga unfold. Pass the popcorn!

A lone gunman, acting alone, leaving a diary—or not?

But which one? Back in the day, there very so very many lone gunmen, acting alone, leaving diaries... It's almost as if all these operations events had something in common...

Anyhow, did anyone in the Nixon White House have prior knowledge that Arthur Bremer was going to assassinate George Wallace? Tinfoil hat time? Not really. The Wallace family seemed to think so. And Nixon's behavior at the time was even weirder than usual.

Will Bunch brings our attention to some WaPo content: an actually, honest-to-gosh scoop that seems to have been overlooked in the orgy of Deep Throat coverage:

For the first time, Woodward

There's a pony in here!

-- relying on information that he got from the No. 2 CIA man back in 1972 --added some key new details to President Richard Nixon's strangely suspicious behavior after the shooting that crippled Alabama Gov. George Wallace, the most serious political threat to the president's re-election that year. The growing mound of information about White House meddling in the probe of deranged would-be assassin Arthur Bremer is enough to suggest a re-opening of the investigation of the probe:

[WaPo]That evening, Nixon called Felt -- not Gray, who was out of town -- at home for an update. It was the first time Felt had spoken directly with Nixon. Felt reported that Arthur H. Bremer, the would-be assassin, was in custody but in the hospital because he had been roughed up and given a few bruises by those who subdued and captured him after he shot Wallace. "Well, it's too bad they didn't really rough up the son of a bitch!" Nixon told Felt. Felt was offended that the president would make such a remark. Nixon was so agitated and worried, attaching such urgency to the shooting, that he said he wanted full updates every 30 minutes from Felt on any new information that was being discovered in the investigation of Bremer.

It's important for the White House to stay atop a political assassination case, and that Nixon would take some special interest in the matter in an election year is hardly surprising. But why would the president seem so agitated, and make so many phone calls, on what in essence seemed an open-and-shut case of a lone gunman?

This passage is from a 1997 Washington Post story involving some of the tapes. It begins with a White House meeting that night of May 15, 1972, between Nixon and Chuck Colson, his aide who today is a prominent born-again Christian [SIC] activist:

"Is he [Bremer] a left-winger or a right-winger?" Nixon asked. "Well, he’s going to be a left-winger by the time we get through, I think," Colson replied. "Good," Nixon said, chuckling. "Keep at that. Keep at that." Colson’s lieutenant, soon-to-be Watergate burglar E. Howard Hunt, told the Senate Watergate Committee in 1973 that he was told to get into Bremer’s Milwaukee apartment simply to find out "what kind of a kook this guy is," but the idea really was to salt the place with McGovern for president literature. With the FBI on the verge of obtaining a search warrant, Colson was worried only that it might be a bit too late.

In the end, Colson canceled the operation. The FBI had the apartment sealed. But the next morning, at a meeting with Colson and top aides H.R. Haldeman and John D. Ehrlichman, Nixon was still urging a White House-inspired media campaign about Bremer, with tidbits to be obtained from FBI Director L. Patrick Gray. "You got Pat Gray, he will be an accomplice," Nixon says in confident tones. "Use him. And use Colson’s outfit—you know, to sneak out things. I mean, you do anything. I mean, anything!"

Maybe this is all very sleazy, hardball politics. Or maybe this is something worse. Could the "agitated and worried" Nixon have been concerned that Hunt and his team of "White House plumbers" -- arrested at the Watergate Hotel just 33 days later -- would somehow be linked to Bremer through one of their rogue operations.

The key question in any crime is cui bono?, or who benefits? With Wallace surging in the Democratic primaries, he might have launched another third-party bid, one which could have out-performed his 1968 showing of 13 percent -- and cost Nixon a close election.

Before Wallace died in 1998, his family asked the case be re-opened -- specifically to examine the actions of Nixon's aides. From a Dec. 14, 1992, Associated Press story (Nexis -- no link): The FBI should reinvestigate the 1972 shooting of former Gov. George C. Wallace, his son said, to learn if there is any truth to a report that the attack was discussed in the Nixon White House.

George Wallace Jr. said Saturday he asked President-elect Clinton to reopen the investigation and that he also wants a congressional inquiry. Wallace said he doesn't believe then-President Nixon had any knowledge of the assasination attempt before the shooting. "My question is, did anyone else involved in Nixon's campaign have prior knowledge?" he said. That was 13 years ago -- but it's not too late. In fact, the key players -- Hunt, Colson, Liddy -- are all alive and in good health. They may know more about why their boss was so agitated about Arthur Bremer. In 2005, with "Deep Throat's" final leak, we're still wondering what did all the president's men know, and when did they know it? (via PNI Online)

Interesting. But since Colson is now a Christian [cough] activist, maybe we could just ask him; after all, it's a sin to lie...

And please refer all mail containing the words "tinfoil hat" to The Department of No! They Would Never Do That!

Is there anything more laughable than a pair of fools like Friedman and Brooks extolling the poverty of the Third World as an antidote to those spoiled rich kids in Europe with all their outdated perks? (Brooks' "It is happier to live in a poor country that is moving forward - where expectations are high - than it is to live in an affluent country that is looking back" is particularly delicious; when can we look forward to him packing up the family for the big move to India?) Anything more hilarious that that?

Why, yes, I guess it would have to be the spectacle of 3 known law-breakers, one with time under his belt, lambasting W. Mark Felt as a traitor to everything Americans hold dear for outing the largest government criminal conspiracy prior to the Bushco coronation. For putting it all together in one place we can thank John Stewart and The Daily Show. And for putting it into a neatly watchable soundbite that I can link to, I can thank Crooks and Liars.


As John Stewart proves, "Mark Felt is truly a great man."

Update: Fixed Friedman's name. Although in the climate of the current regime, evidence of incompetence is only incompetence of evidence.
Ask Rumsfeld.

I was just reading this post of Josh Marshall's referring to Peggy Noonan's outrageous comments about W. Mark Felt today.

Let me just quote the part of Noonan's article I'm interested in talking about:

Felt helped produce was a weakened president who was a serious president at a serious time. Nixon's ruin led to a cascade of catastrophic events--the crude and humiliating abandonment of Vietnam and the Vietnamese, the rise of a monster named Pol Pot, and millions--millions--killed in his genocide. America lost confidence; the Soviet Union gained brazenness. What a terrible time. Is it terrible when an American president lies and surrounds himself by dirty tricksters? Yes, it is. How about the butchering of children in the South China Sea. Is that worse? Yes. Infinitely, unforgettably and forever.

Um, Peggy? Josh? Anyone see the problem with this argument?

How about the impeachment of a president over a blowjob? Anyone remember what was going on at that time? You know, um, that little "obsession" as W and the boys called it at the time that Clinton's administration had with that little insignificant Islamic terrorism thing?

If one's going to make this sort of argument about the impeachment of Richard Nixon one could easily make a similar argument about the impeachment of Bill Clinton. One could contend that the impeachment of Bill Clinton produced, to use Peggy's words, "a weakened president who was a serious president at a serious time."

If we're going to seriously accept an argument that Nixon was capable of stopping Pol Pot then it's not too crazy to contend that Clinton could've stopped al-Qaeda if he hadn't been critically weakened by "Lewinsky-blowjob-gate." Clinton would've been in a position to seriously go after al-Qaeda if he wasn't distracted by the impeachment saga of 1998 and 1999.

In short, if Peggy can get away with this argument then I'm going to contend that Clinton's impeachment helped lead to the deaths of thousands of Americans on 9/11.

Furthermore, since W and the boys used the bogus terrorism link argument to justify the IraqWar Part II disaster, one could contend that Clinton's impeachment may have also led to the deaths of 1,600 U.S. soldiers and 100,000 Iraqis over the past two years.

In fact I would even be so bold as to contend that I have a much better argument on the evidence than Peggy does.

Anyone else care to comment? Please, can someone out there in bigtime media or a bigtime blogger say something about this?

UPDATE Mustang Bobby in comments points out that Noonan et al is getting this from none other than Rush himself.

Ugh.

UPDATE 2 Hello Buzzflash readers! Several thousand of you have come in since last night and we here at Corrente appreciate your visits.

As for bigtime bloggers or media, not a one of them (and I e-mailed a link to several of them) have linked this or written about this yet.

Oh well.

From the Department of Disturbing Possibilities:

Today’s local fishwrapper has an AP (no link, sorry) article that says a Swiss scientist named Ernst Fehr of the University of Zurich has discovered a hormone named oxytocin, which, when sprayed on people or ingested, makes them trusting even when they shouldn’t be. Willing to give people money, believe lies, stuff like that. Seems to work 17-45% of the time.

Perhaps now we know what’s in the Kool-Aid, eh? Could there be an antidote? A hormone that makes people examine facts and evidence?

Those Swiss—well, at least they gave the world LSD. Maybe they can come up with the antidote, too.

Yeah, if Bush wants him, you know he's trouble.

And while we're on the subject of Africa, the Village Voice has a number of meaningful pieces, including this one from Nat Hentoff on what may be at the bottom of Bush's hypocritical hesitation to intervene in the affairs of Darfur--the agreement with the Sudanese government to feed us info on terrorists:

"Why have Bush, Rice, and the rest of the administration betrayed the black-Africans being slaughtered in Sudan? The answers are in a detailed report by Ken Silverstein in the April 29 Los Angeles Times, "Official Pariah Sudan Valuable to America's War on Terrorism."
Silverstein writes, the CIA sent "an executive jet...to ferry the chief of Sudan's intelligence agency [the Mukhabarat] to Washington for secret meetings [with CIA officials] sealing Khartoum's sensitive and previously veiled partnership with the administration, U.S. government officials confirmed.
As Silverstein notes, the head of Sudan's equivalent of the CIA, Major General Salah Abdallah Gosh, was Khartoum's liaison with Osama bin Laden when that Al Qaeda flourished in Sudan during the 1990s. More recently, members of Congress have charged General Gosh and some of his colleagues in Khartoum with "directing military attacks against civilians in Darfur."
With their blood on his hands, General Gosh told the L.A. Times, "We have a strong partnership with the CIA. The information we have provided has been very useful to the United States."
General Gosh was not understating how valuable his partnership with the CIA has been, and continues to be, to the United States—so valuable that last October, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service confirmed that while Gosh has indeed been among those playing "key roles" in the genocide in Darfur, the Bush administration is "concerned that going after these individuals could disrupt cooperation on counter-terrorism."

He goes on to identify specific acts of omission committed by the Bush administration to protect Sudan's government in exchange for the relevant data. Rather like the convenient relationship we've had with Uzbekistan, methinks.

And then there is the post by the admirable Ward Harkavy on Wolfie's new gig at the World Bank, and how much impact we can expect it to have on the ongoing African crises. (His opinion is: "Not much.") But linked to that post is a story by the IRIN arm of the UN on the tragedy in the Congo that manages to highlight, in an almost throwaway manner, an even more cruel twist to the already ghastly atrocities committed there--Viagra as a weapon of war:

""Most of these rapes were by the Interahamwe but some were by members of the national army," Stanilas Bya Mungu, GTZ project manager in Bukavu, told IRIN.
Army dissidents led by Mutebutsi and Nkunda carried out rapes systematically during their occupation of Bukavu, he said. The dissidents, he said, targeted neighbourhoods then went from house to house to rape victims ranging from one to 80 years old.
"We noticed that Viagra was attributed to [Mutebutsi's] military," he said.
The dissidents, he added, broke into four medical distribution centres in the city and took the viagra."

I'll spare you the evil details. If Africa has not yet become the seventh circle of Hell, I'd surely like to know where it is.

But don't worry. Our precious tax dollars and marching freedom won't be squandered there.

A veritable cavalcade of weirdness this morning, and one need look no further than the NYTimes to find it. First to smack one in the eye like the proverbial cream pie is the heartwarming tale of discarded cells rescued from the sink by nice white people in search of nice, perfect white children of a suitably malleable age:

"...to protest a bill supporting the use of embryos for stem cell research, President Bush appeared with the McClures and 20 other Snowflakes families, kissing the babies, some of whom wore T-shirts that said "former embryo," or "this embryo was not discarded." Federal and state lawmakers have held similar appearances.
People on this part of the political spectrum have begun calling the process "embryo adoption," echoing the phrase that Snowflakes uses instead of "embryo donation." The Health and Human Services Department has termed the process embryo adoption in certain grants. Bills that would formally call it "embryo adoption" have begun to filter into statehouses in California, New Jersey and Massachusetts, states that, not coincidentally, are at the forefront of legalizing and encouraging embryonic stem cell research...
"I think appearing with Snowflakes kids is a potent symbol, and I think it illustrates the truth, which is that the embryo is just that child at an earlier stage of development," said Bill Saunders, director of the Family Research Council's Center for Human Life and Bioethics."

"Snowflakes" being an organization of people dedicated to saving frozen embryos from the near extinction threatened by the immminent collapse of the in vitro fertilization industry. As real, live children (with heads and arms and legs and everything) die brutal deaths under the watchful eye of child protective services here at home and in bogus wars everywhere else, this touching display of pro-life angst feels more than a tad misplaced. But what do I know? I'm just a kid who was actually adopted after I was born.

Meanwhile, our Culture of Life president is coming up with reasons why we can't give more money to Africa, in addition to the previously promised $15 billion we never gave:

"Asked Wednesday about the issue, Mr. Bush said, "It doesn't fit our budgetary process."

So there, you 4 million dead Congolese! Bush did actually raise the issue of genocide in the Sudan, but only in a spirit of political efficacy. You see, the lack of frozen embyros in that country, combined with its lack of oil or other useful resources, make it all but impossible for him to commit to any kind of humanitarian intervention.

Just click the link. You'll be glad you did.

Click here.

My favorite stanza has got to be this one:

When the president talks to God
Does he ever think that maybe he's not?
That that voice is just inside his head
When he kneels next to the presidential bed
Does he ever smell his own bullshit

Indeed.

Heh.

Look! Over there! Richard Nixon!

Look! Back there! A functional free press!

In a comment to my previous post on the Felt matter, parsec wrote:

"I was in college when the Watergate hearings were televised and not being a politically in-tune type I was only vaguely aware of the ins and outs of the story. It didn't make sense to me why Nixon would be involved with such a thing when the election was in the bag. I never believed many of the nasty things people said about him at the time. Then, over time, one by one, the stories proved true. The last one was verified about four years ago when the Nixon Library(!) exhibited the letter from Anna Chenault wherein she lamented the price she was paying for having persuaded President Thieu to withdraw from the Paris peace talks -- so Nixon could beat Humphrey in the '68 election. The deal left on the table that year was the same one we accepted five years -- and 20,000+ American lives -- later."

But they died for freedom. Don't you see how much freer we are since the war, what with all our oil-guzzling Hummers and non-returnable bottles and useless-as-tits-on-a-boar McMansions we rattle around in? Doesn't the sweet smell of liberty waft through the air when you look at a new improved map of Vietnam? And how about those Cambodians? They really came out of the deal smelling like roses, didn't they? Good God, it's great to give your life for a concept, isn't it? Well, I guess I wouldn't know, being as I'm not quite dead yet, and being as neither are all the powermongers who move the pieces on the board and exchange someone else's lives for their own even as they speechify all that high talk about how good it is to die for freedom. But, Goddamn! It sure does sound pretty, doesn't it? Pretty enough to tempt all those kids who believed in a real, honorable American dream, the one where we ride in with the cavalry and save the little guy from the murdering Hun. Pretty enough to grow plenty more cannon fodder for the next 50 years of patriotic bullshit memorial services overseen by cowardly men offering cliched epitaphs to dead soldiers that they, and they alone, are responsible for murdering.

20,000+ more dead? Please. There's so much more where they came from. We can do this for hundreds more years, and so long as we confuse pity and respect for our dead with a mandate for endless war, we will never. Ever. Stop.

I hate to interrupt the SCLM's circle-jerk on Deep Throat, but needs must when the Devil, or Bush, drives.

The easy point to make is that Deep Throat, and Watergate, explain why the Bush Whited Sepulchre House would rather that the press use no anonymouys sources (except those approved by Karl Rove, of course). Nixon... Now there was a President. Don't you wish you had Nixon back, instead of this crowd?

Anyhow, the long narrative that the SCLM is studiously ignoring is this:

The Republicans have been trying to abolish Constitutional government for some time. And each time, the wave breaks further up the beach.

Nixon, the first wave: Watergate, and the plumbers, were felonies orchestrated and directed from the White House. And Nixon tried to use national security as a cloak to hide his crimes. But our Democratic institutions—and here I use the letter "D" in both upper and lower case—were strong enough to withstand the assault. Hearings were held, and Nixon resigned rather than face impeachment.

Reagan, the second wave: Iran-Contra was a covert, off-the-shelf army run from the White House, off budget, and against the express intent of a law passed by Congress exactly to forbid such a thing. In this case, our Democratic institutions were weaker. Hearings were held, but even though the offense was greater than Nixon's, Reagan suffered no penalty, and the all the malefactors were pardoned.

Bush, the third wave: Name it. A war founded on deception ("facts and intelligence to fit the policy"). The Geneva convention, a treaty ratified by Congress, turned to a scrap of paper by White House Lawyers. The Patriot Act. The theft of at least one Presidential election. The Cheney task force.

For Bush, nothing. No penalties, no consequence. Are our Democratic institutions so weak?

UPDATE Then again, for the antidote See RDF.

Know what I saw today at the store parking lot?

A guy in a cowboy hat peeling off a W’04 sticker from his truck.

I had to ask, figuring he was just tired of it or something.

And by the Tits of Meshe, he said, “Wish I’d never voted for the lying motherfucker.”
I just nodded. If only more begin feeling this way, we got a real chance in ’06, me hearties. Our local party is stronger than ever. Twenty new registered since we held our local chair election.

Following up on Tom's post about Deep Throat below, the linked article contains this gem from Charles Colson:

Nixon chief counsel Charles "Chuck" Colson, who worked closely with Felt in the Nixon administration, also expressed surprise at the disclosure.

"Mark first served this country with honor, and I can’t imagine how Mark Felt was sneaking in dark alleys leaving messages under flower pots and violating his oath to keep this nation’s secrets. I cannot compute that with the Mark Felt that I know," Colson said in an interview Tuesday with The Associated Press. Colson pleaded no contest to an obstruction of justice charge in the Watergate scandal and served time in prison.
(via MSNBC)

As many know, Colson's career has had a lucrative (and lachrymose) second act as a "born-again Christian." Fewer might recall that his conversion came about after the Watergate-induced shattering of his earlier lucrative career as self-described "hatchet man" who "would walk over my grandmother for Nixon."

You might think that, as a Christian for whom coming to Christ is the only thing that matters in life, he might have considered thanking Mark Felt for literally making his salvation possible. But this is a guy who has bupkis to say when a fellow Christian hypocrite lies to the voters on a daily basis about matters of life and death, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

Which is further proof, if any is needed, that a born-again Christian is just the same old turd with a fresh coat of paint.

Everywhere you look, details of the newly-revealed identity of "Deep Throat" are splashed across the headlines. It's almost as though people were nostalgic for the days when reporters went underground and did difficult work to get to the bottom of government wrongdoing and malfeasance.

Oh, wait. That's still going on. It's just that nobody really seems to care anymore, which is why, I guess, the Boston Herald can come right out and claim on Bush's behalf that the Amnesty International report is a "lie".

While it's interesting that Felt has finally admitted to his part in the Watergate investigation, in an archival, anthropological way, it's not the story that needs to be pushing everything else off the front page. The big story is how complicit current news organizations have become in "catapulting the propaganda" (3rd paragraph up from the end of the speech.) Or in subtly re-shaping the concepts underlying how government works, as in CNN's curious spin on how Congress has an obligation to Bush not to honor the wishes of the people who put them in office. Irony? Irony doesn't begin to cover it.

(Thanks to Crooks and Liars for pointing out the last two examples.)