Stalin the Shark

The resistance is building

2007-03-06T19:46:00.000-05:00

The Queen is not inevitable, folks.

Ann Coulter, again

2007-03-03T09:17:00.000-05:00

Oh Lord, does this woman never shut up? I defer to Henry Rollins on what needs to be said about her.

Meltdown on Wall Street

2007-02-27T19:13:00.000-05:00

Oh well.

Maybe someone will now realize that borrowing a trillion dollars from overseas isn't a sustainable policy over the long term. Not that any wingnut policy is, mind you.

Oh god No

2007-02-27T08:41:00.000-05:00

If you want to know why many Democrats view Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's bid for the Presidency with deep distaste, look no further than today's Washington Post.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and former president Bill Clinton have operated a family charity since 2001, but she failed to list it on annual Senate financial disclosure reports on five occasions.
The Ethics in Government Act requires members of Congress to disclose positions they hold with any outside entity, including nonprofit foundations. Hillary Clinton has served her family foundation as treasurer and secretary since it was established in December 2001, but none of her ethics reports since then have disclosed that fact.
The foundation has enabled the Clintons to write off more than $5 million from their taxable personal income since 2001, while dispensing $1.25 million in charitable contributions over that period.
Clinton's spokesman said her failure to report the existence of the family foundation and the senator's position as an officer was an oversight. Her office immediately amended her Senate ethics reports to add that information late yesterday after receiving inquiries from The Washington Post.

I'm pretty sure that this is just a stupid record-keeping blooper. However, to members of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, of course, this just confirms what they believe about her anyway, and strengthens the entire 'Hillary can't be trusted' meme which we all remember so fondly from the Nineties. Back then, there was such a thing as Clinton fatigue, and many people are unwilling to have to endure it again.

Conservapedia

2007-02-23T21:32:00.000-05:00

So I've found Conservapedia, the online resource for those who consider Wkipedia to be too liberal. After all, as Steven Colbert once quipped, 'reality has a well-known liberal bias', and we can't have that, of course. Here's what Conservapedia has to say about unicorns:

The existence of unicorns is controversial. Secular opinion is that they are mythical. However, they are referred to in the Bible nine times,^[1] which provides an unimpeachable de facto argument for their once having been in existence.
In the original texts, unicorns go by the Hebrew name Re-em whereas the Greek Septuagint used the name Monokeros.^[2] Unicorn itself is Latin. All three names mean "one horn".
While popularly characterized as a horned member of the horse baramin, it is likely that the unicorn was actually quite unhorselike. One recognized theory is that the unicorn was actually the rhinoceros,^[1] however a growing number of Creation researchers are theorizing that the unicorn was actually a member of the ceratopsian baramin.^[2]
Post-Noachian references^[1] to unicorns have led some researchers to argue that unicorns are still alive today. At the very least, it is likely that they were taken aboard the Ark prior to the Great Flood.

Does anyone wonder anymore why the country is so fucked up?

More evidence...

2006-12-01T20:56:00.000-05:00

...that republican yammering about 'protecting babies' is primarily a means to preserve their dating pool; another one just got caught trying to get it on with a thirteen-year old who turned out to be an undercover cop.

Heh.

"The Next Step? Think Vietnam."

2006-11-29T17:59:00.000-05:00

Fareed Zakaria has an interesting piece in the current issue of Newsweek, worth reading several times. Kind of puts all the handwringing over what to call Iraq's civil war into perspective.

Dec. 4, 2006 issue - If you want to understand the futility of America's current situation in Iraq, last week provided a vivid microcosm. On Thursday, just hours before a series of car bombs killed more than 200 people in the Shia stronghold of Sadr City, Sunni militants attacked the Ministry of Health, which is run by one of Moqtada al-Sadr's followers. Within a couple of hours, American units arrived at the scene and chased off the attackers. The next day, Sadr's men began reprisals against Sunnis, firing RPGs at several mosques. When U.S. forces tried to stop the carnage and restore order, goons from Sadr's Mahdi Army began firing on American helicopters. In other words, one day the U.S. Army was defending Sadr's militia and, the next day, was attacked by it. We're in the middle of a civil war and are being shot at by both sides.

[B]oth sides now see American troops as the problem. The Shiite ruling coalition and the Sunni insurgency both believe that if only the United States were to get out of the way, they could defeat their enemies outright. That's why, in the most recent poll of Iraqis, taken in September, 91 percent of Sunnis and 74 percent of Shiites said they wanted American forces to leave within a year.

What are we doing there again exactly?

McCain announces exploratory committee

2006-11-16T11:50:00.000-05:00

If you were looking forward to a peaceful Turkey Day - and God alone knows there is much to give thanks for this year - you will be disappointed.

So far, we have announcements from Rudy Giuliani and Tom Vilsack that they are indeed running; Mark Warner and Russ Feingold have declared that they are not; John Edwards has announced that he will be making an announcement; and now, John McCain throws his boxers into the ring as well. Over on the side of the forces of freedom, there's a furious movement to stop Hillary.

I guess what they said about the permanent campaign is accurate; though I will take a wager that neither of the two presumptive front-runners, McCain and Clinton respectively, will make the cut. McCain is hated by his base, Hillary is not seen as being able to win.

My money right now is on Edwards and Romney.

Garlic

2006-11-15T20:57:00.000-05:00

So it occurs to me that I may have discovered a suitable antidote should I encounter any stray republicans in my travels through the New York subway - this bumper sticker, pictured above.

Here's why: obviously, it's an advertisement for military service, of which the the ruling class is none too fond, seeing as that it may involve actual sacrifice; and second, it's in Spanish, the idiom favored by the brown hordes flooding our southern border.

I shall experiment with this new weapon, but it seems to me that it combines two critical sources of fright for the disempowered right.

Heh.

Giuliani's running for what?

2006-11-14T09:16:00.000-05:00

Ain't gonna happen.

RIP, 1994-2006

2006-11-12T19:14:00.000-05:00

Bringing the troops home, the republican way

2006-11-11T20:44:00.000-05:00

It begins

2006-11-11T19:00:00.000-05:00

There's no need to wait until January to start exercising some adult oversight over the republicans in Congress. The New York Times notes the newest brilliant idea of the people who brought you Iraq in the first place; now, they're trying to kill the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.

The reason for that is not that the work of that office is done, but that it has consistently embarrassed the junta by finding fraud, waste, abuse and bribery in some very inconvenient places. To quote:

Investigations by the Iraq oversight agency, led by Stuart W. Bowen Jr., have already led to convictions of American occupation officials on bribery charges and uncovered many instances of substandard construction.

Mr. Bowen’s investigations of Halliburton have uncovered tens of millions of dollars of charges for work that achieved little in the way of results, but apparently met the letter of the company’s contract with the United States to repair oil facilities. Mr. Bowen has also found that Halliburton has been using federal loopholes to impede investigations of its work by declaring nearly all information about company activities in Iraq to be proprietary, or sensitive because it could aid the company’s competitors.

So it came as a surprise to many that Mr. Bowen’s office was directed to go out of business on Oct. 1, 2007, by an obscure provision in an authorization bill that [chimperor] Bush signed last month. The termination language was quietly inserted into the bill by staff members working for Representative Duncan Hunter, the California Republican who now leads the House Armed Services Committee.

So yeah, that's over. And if republicans shut it down, because they like wasting tax dollars so much, come January, we'll re-open the office - and dare the chimp to veto that. Or the legislation that bars Halliburton from Federal contracts until it's disgorged every last god-damn penny of taxpayer money it got dishonestly.

Veterans Day

2006-11-11T11:48:00.000-05:00

On November 11th, 1918, the Central Powers surrendered to the Allies in a railroad car in the forest of Compiègne in Northern France, marking the end of what was then known as the Great War. Ever since, November 11th has been commemorated by the 1918 allied nations - the UK, France, Canada, the United States, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand – as the occasion of what was clearly understood to be more deliverance than victory.

Veterans Day 2006 finds us not in a war, but in occupation of a foreign country that rather clearly does not want us there. What was supposed to be a war, a 'war on terror', has succumbed to the usual difficulties of making war on a noun rather than a country.

Meanwhile, the men and women of our Armed Forces have been subjected to carnage in a war of occupation, without having been given the tools, such as body armor, to prevail. What they got instead was photo ops, plastic turkeys on a platter held by a smiling draft-dodger. At the same time, the United States government, run by men and women who without exception did not see combat, did not do them the simple honor of executing the occupation the military fought to achieve with anything approaching competence. What we, and they, got instead was an employment program for the hyper-ideological spawn of Washington think tanks, a laboratory experiment for the so-called 'conservative movement'. The first thing ordered by Viceroy Bremer, even before he disbanded the defeated Iraqi army, was the privatization of the Iraqi energy industry. He moved on to impose a flat tax, invite foreign investors, and stand aside as looters ransacked the museums of Iraq. Bremer opened the Iraqi stock exchange before the main hospital in Baghdad had an uninterrupted power supply. Read about it, here and here.

As any normal human being can glean from the headlines and the evening news with its maddening drumbeat of casualties, that conservative experiment has failed. The architects of this disaster have been punished at the polls. A new group of veterans has been elected to Congress, as Democrats.

What remains is this: to explain to the more than 20,000 maimed, and the families of almost 3,000 dead, why their service was required, and why their sacrifice was not treated with more respect by those in power. And yes, honesty and competence should be considered as the bare minimum of respect. As the country commemorates its veterans today, it will be thinking about those who demanded so much sacrifice, and gave in return so little honesty and achievement. Our men and women were sent into combat to prove the theories of the Project for a New American Century and the Heritage Foundation.

Commemorate that.

Goodbye, President Macaca

2006-11-10T12:47:00.000-05:00

Just as a reminder: if you want to run for President, don't be so stupid as to insult a guy who's pointing a video camera at your face.

Oh, and while we're on the subject, one word for John Kerry: toast.

(This message brought to you by the Stalin the Shark School of the Blindingly Obvious)

What to expect

2006-11-10T11:13:00.000-05:00

Over the last few days, a ton of emails have hit my inbox, mainly expecting immediate resolution and betterment of all the ills brought on the country by the defeated republican majority. It's expected in some quarters that the Democrats will now wave a magic wand and make all the evil magically go away.

That would be nice, but it's not going to happen.

I wonder sometimes if people even grasp what a deep hole this country is in; it will take years to reverse the damage that has been done, and some of it - like the 3,000 dead in Iraq, and 20,000+ maimed - is beyond resolution.

Instead, the Democrats - who, media reports to the contrary notwithstanding, do have an agenda - will first focus on implementing the plans that got them elected. That includes a minimum-wage hike, funding stem-cell research, implementing the 9/11 commission recommendations fully, lobbying and ethics reform, getting started on energy independence, and launching a good number of targeted investigations into some Bush administration abuses relating to the 'energy policy', pre-war intelligence, Iraq contractors, and other things of considerable interest. Impeachment may or may not happen; I'm certainly open to it, but I'd advise that that is a political process above all, and some Americans still love Bush more than they love their country.

What we're not going to do is waste time on debates over flag-burning, marriage equality, or Terri Schiavo. That's over. This Congress has work to do, and they will do it.

What remains, of course, is that illegal resident Bush remains ensconced in the Oval Office, fully free to continue to soil the laws. What's blessedly different now is that a muscular and aggressive Congress is in place to stop or at least hinder his illegal depredations. That means, among other things, that no more wingnut judges will be confirmed - they will die in committee. After all the talk about nuclear options, sorry, don't expect any forbearance. We also expect that veto pen to be handled lightly; after winning an election by a 10% margin, yeah, that's kind of obvious.

The elephant in the room, right next to the dead one, is Iraq. Here, again, it's instructive to note the depth of the abyss we're in; three years of 'stay the course' - or more accurately, 'shut up and sing' - kind of limit our options. If there are any good ones left after three years of incompetence, arrogance and failure, I don't see them.

In short, things will now become much better, but not perfect. The signs are also pretty good that the Democrats aren't going to engage in payback for all the procedural pettiness of the vanquished majority, and will work to craft legislation that will garner at least some republican support. It may be that we'll see and end, or at least a lessening, of the vicious partisanship of the last decade.

Keep your fingers crossed.

Stalin celebrates Democracy

2006-11-09T19:44:00.000-05:00

We did it; Democrats regained the House and the Senate, against long odds and in the face of a withering campaign.

Interestingly, the same candidates that were being attacked just a few days ago as "Pelosi ultra-liberals" are now the vehicle for an attempt by the so-called 'conservative movement' to redeem itself. It seems they've belatedly discovered the 'conservatism' of some of our candidates; problem is, they're wrong. If this was, as some would have it, a conservative victory, then I for one would like to see many more such victories.

Be that as it may, it's over, and we won. That system of checks and balances within the government you might remember from high school civics? Expect it back. Democrats are ready to govern, and with a solid mandate, we intend to do just that. I like to think that we're not going to go down the path chosen by the defeated republicans, or embrace the hyper-partisanship that humbled them, or the blatant corruption of K Street's many, many Abramoffs. As it is, the new governing majority is broadly centrist, and since you can't govern this country from the fringes - the republicans seem unwilling to learn that lesson, but it's the oldest truism of American politics - the Democrats will work to create outcomes that even many republicans will embrace. There's remarkably little desire, as far as I can tell, for payback for the many petty slights inflicted over the last twelve years on Democrats by republicans; the new majority may surprise many by bringing back the comity that characterized Congress before 1994. But I doubt we're going to forget some things, such as this:

Remember that image when republicans start screaming again, which they will do pretty soon, I'd guess.

US Senate up for grabs

2006-10-16T13:07:00.000-04:00

A useful tool for those obsessed with politics is the NYT's race tracker, here.

As of today, it shows the U.S. Senate up for grabs by the forces of good; this because all three contests they show as toss-ups have recent polls giving Democrats a lead anywhere from five to eight points.

Meanwhile, Virginia, which they show as 'lean republican', has Democrat Jim Webb either even or within the margin of error against George Felix Macaca Allen.

Also in the Times, an article about a GOP firewall strategy, trying to contain the inevitable Democratic gains by throwing contenders in Ohio, Rhode Island, Montana and Pennsylvania under the bus.

Not sure that's going to work.

Baker Commission draft report leaked

2006-10-14T12:18:00.000-04:00

This just in from the worthless fishwrapper that is the New York Sun, our other rightwing "news"paper:

Baker's Panel Rules Out Iraq Victory

By ELI LAKE - Staff Reporter of the Sun
October 12, 2006
WASHINGTON — A commission formed to assess the Iraq war and recommend a new course has ruled out the prospect of victory for America, according to draft policy options shared with The New York Sun by commission officials.

Currently, the 10-member commission — headed by a secretary of state for President George H.W. Bush, James Baker — is considering two option papers, "Stability First" and "Redeploy and Contain," both of which rule out any prospect of making Iraq a stable democracy in the near term.

More telling, however, is the ruling out of two options last month. One advocated minor fixes to the current war plan but kept intact the long-term vision of democracy in Iraq with regular elections. The second proposed that coalition forces focus their attacks only on Al Qaeda and not the wider insurgency.

Instead, the commission is headed toward presenting [disgraceful chimperor Bush] with two clear policy choices that contradict his rhetoric of establishing democracy in Iraq. The more palatable of the two choices for the White House, "Stability First," argues that the military should focus on stabilizing Baghdad while the American Embassy should work toward political accommodation with insurgents. The goal of nurturing a democracy in Iraq is dropped. [Emphases added]

What? No democracy? Working with the insurgents? I thought they were all tayruhrists?

Next thing you know, they'll be saying there were no weapons of mass destruction. Or that the republicans started a war and then lost it. Or that they've been liars all along. Or that they just killed 2,759 American soldiers in their excellent adventure, as of noon Eastern.

Were the America-hating traitor hippie peacenik communists right all along after all? Naw, that can't be. Surely, moral leader Rush Limpdick will have some soothing words to reassure the faithful.

Friday night funnies

2006-10-13T19:43:00.000-04:00

Hehe.

Bob Ney pleads guilty - surprise!

2006-10-13T11:23:00.000-04:00

In yet another blow to the party of pedophile enablers, another scandal hits the headlines three weeks before the election. This time, it's Abramoff - they guy that bought your government from people like Doolittle, Pombo, DeLay, and Bob Ney.

Ney pled guilty today in federal court.

Inside the courtroom, [Judge] Huvelle spent nearly a half-hour asking the sandy-haired, red-faced congressman a series of questions about whether he understood the charges and agreed that he had taken money, gifts and favors in return for official actions on behalf of Abramoff and his clients.

At the end she asked him how he pleaded to the conspiracy count, he replied, "I plead guilty your honor."

Asked how he pleaded to the count of false statements, he replied, "I plead guilty, your honor."

So how is John Doolittle these days?

Corey Lidle hits building, dies

2006-10-11T19:34:00.000-04:00

Corey Lidle, a pitcher for the Yankees, was killed today when a plane he was piloting struck an Upper East Side highrise, reports the Times.

Now, for reasons that don't need to be explained, any sentence that contains the words "plane" and "crash" and "highrise" causes nervousness in these parts. The natural reaction, I'd argue, is that people think "Oh shit, not again". People who only saw it on television seem to forget how viscerally we still remember an earlier incident of this nature.

Of course, there are also the freaks. I checked one of the local right-wing blogs earlier, and noticed what amounts to giddiness; planes hitting buildings may kill people and be universally acknowledged as a bad thing, but they would tend to help republicans and are therefore, I guess, welcomed in those quarters. The letdown when it turned out to be an accident was palpable; they were saved by this as little as by their earlier rejoicing over the North Korea nuke test.

Kind of sick, but there you have it. Odds are, if it kills people or is otherwise bad for America, republicans revel in it. November 7th, is all I can say.

So people ask me how I really feel about republicans

2006-10-10T23:39:00.000-04:00

Simple. Like this:

You ask, what is our policy? I say it is to wage war by land, sea, and air. War with all our might and with all the strength God has given us, to wage war against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy.

You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word. It is victory. Victory at all costs - Victory in spite of all terrors - Victory, however long and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival.

- Winston Churchill, Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat

North Korea tests nukes

2006-10-09T08:27:00.000-04:00

In January 2002, George Bush famously labeled Iraq, Iran and North Korea as members of an 'axis of evil'. What was lacking was an operational framework to transform the rhetoric into a policy approach.

Crucially, when Bush first spoke of an 'axis of evil', the United States still had the full arsenal of options available to a great power: unequaled military strength, strong alliances, economic leverage, all the tools required to get a foreign government to change course.

Today, we don't have those instruments. The military is hollowed out by the twin nightmare of Iraq and Rumsfeldian transformation. At this moment, this country can't fight a war on the Korean peninsula. Nor can we pay for it, or, most likely, find other countries to fight with us. We can't pay for it, of course, because of republican tax policies; and just as an aside, because China is the foremost purchaser of U.S. Treasury Bonds (with which we finance our ever-escalating debt), we'd have to inquire as to whether or not Beijing would be supportive of such a fight on its border.

As to allies, my guess would be that the people who brought you Abu Ghraib, Katrina and the Iraq quagmire don't have the confidence of other capitals. No foreign government is going to entrust their blood and treasure to these fools.

Meanwhile, the two other members of that axis - note how the term 'axis' implies a partnership, for which proof of any sort is still outstanding at this point - have become infinitely more dangerous to this country as a direct result of administration action or lack thereof. Iraq, of course, is the festering sewer into which we have flung our army and three hundred billion; Iran is building its own weapons, supposedly, and is next on the pre-emptive war schedule. But as the saying goes, "You and what army?" - because we don't have an army anymore.

Five years after 9/11, there is still a huge empty pit in downtown Manhattan. Five years after 'axis of evil', there is a huge empty pit where there used to be foreign-policy options. It's all of a piece.

Uh-oh

2006-10-08T11:21:00.000-04:00

Huffington Post reports that Denny Hastert lives with his chief of staff.

Is that gay cabal inside the party of Bush - or, as I refer to them, Gross Old Perverts - bigger than anyone thought?

Heh. I think Jerry Falwell's head is going to explode.

Another multi-billion dollar vanity project

2006-10-07T15:13:00.000-04:00

The U.S. Navy today christened its newest carrier, the USS George H. W. Bush.

There is no USS Franklin Delano Roosevelt. There is, however, a USS Ronald Reagan. There are no plans to build a USS William Jefferson Clinton. Is there a problem here? And whatever happened to that old conservative custom of not naming things after people who are still at least somewhat alive?

When we retake the majority and the Presidency, an effort should be made to rename all of those things - ships, airports, office buildings, highways - that impudent republicans have named after men (and families) who are demonstrably worthless. The taxpayer shouldn't have to subsidize the vanity of these people, unless it's to the extent of putting mirrors in their jail cells.

Republicans cluster around Hastert

2006-10-06T20:18:00.000-04:00

Whom the gods wish to destroy, they first strike with idiocy. By that logic, the gods are hoping for a wipe-out in November, because the republicans - there's a typical one right above - are eating stupid pills by the fistful.

For example, the forces of evil have closed ranks around Denny Hastert, despite a poll showing that his retention could cost them fifty seats in the House alone.

And that he protected a child molester, despite laughable new claims now being trotted out to the contrary.

In other news, job growth has slowed; Rove's secretary just "resigned" because of the Abramoff scandal (remember that one?); Senator John Warner just joined the cut-and-run crowd; Iraq continues to descend deeper into civil war; a laxly-regulated chemical plant in North Carolina went up in flames, causing the evacuation of 17,000 people; and so on and so forth.

Have you finally, at long last, had enough yet?

More Foleys?

2006-10-05T19:20:00.000-04:00

This is interesting. As a rule of thumb, when there's one scandal, there are usually more that explode due to the sudden publicity. The same logic may be applying around Washington, D.C., if the rumors are true.

As the scandal over former congressman Mark Foley entered its sixth day, one Republican warned that there may even be further disclosures involving other politicians. "People are very, very concerned," said Representative Ray LaHood, an Illinois Republican. "They think there are going to be more disclosures."

So here's a theory: is this a GOP-specific problem? I'd say it is, this because obviously, to win, they need their snarling rabble whipped up to full hate form. You can't do that if you have gay people serving openly - sorry, Log Cabiners. As a result, these guys are deep in the closet and looking for some relief. Then, put together deeply repressed, self-loathing (but powerful) individuals and kids far away from home for probably the first time. Presto, magic happens.

Is it any wonder?

And thus, the GOP's hatred of gays now comes back to bite them in the ass.

The sleaze dividend

2006-10-05T18:49:00.000-04:00

Harold Ford, Democrat of Tennessee:

In TN, How does Harold Ford, Jr. beat back an NRSC ad that notes he once partied with Playboy bunnies?
Says Ford: "I'm not going to take a lecture on morality from a party that took hush money from a child predator."

Zing!

"If the term "moral degenerate" has any validity..."

2006-10-04T12:46:00.000-04:00

From Glenn Greenwald:

If the term "moral degenerate" has any validity and can be fairly applied to anyone, there are few people who merit that term more than Rush Limbaugh. He is the living and breathing embodiment of moral degeneracy, with his countless overlapping sexual affairs, his series of shattered, dissolved marriages, his hedonistic and illegal drug abuse, his jaunts, with fistfulls of Viagra (but no wife), to an impoverished Latin American island renowned for its easy access to underage female prostitutes.

Yet that is who Hastert chose as the High Priest of the Values Voters to whom he made his pilgrimage and from whom he received his benediction. The difference between Rush Limbaugh and Mark Foley, to the extent there is one, is one of hedonistic tastes, not moral level. Rush Limbaugh isn't just tolerated within the party that stands for religious piety and moral strength. He is a leader of it, arguably the leader of its most righteous wing. Is it really all that surprising that a political movement that has chosen a moral degenerate like Rush Limbaugh as one of its most revered and morally respected leaders is not all that bothered by -- and therefore actively harbors -- the Mark Foleys of the world?

Amen, brother.

Here we go again

2006-10-04T09:36:00.000-04:00

It's instructive to look back over the last five years, especially if you have an interest in the sordid and aberrant, as I do.

Mark Foley, R-FL, is the fourth republican Congressman to resign in disgrace and under legal peril this year; after Cunningham, R-CA, DeLay, R-TX, and Ney, R-OH. Do I even need to mention Jack Abramoff? Bob Taft? Ralph Reed? Jeanine Pirro?

Unsurprisingly, every time the newest bit of depravity has come to light, the Hallelujah chorus has come out to shift blame somewhere, anywhere, but where it belongs. "Everybody does it", they proclaim, "we're being persecuted by the librul media", they wail.

At some point, you do have to wonder about the basic integrity of the members of this chorus. They say absolute power corrupts absolutely; I'd say that absolute partisanship does so as well, only more thoroughly.

The newest low

2006-10-03T20:13:00.000-04:00

Every time I think the republicans can't possibly sink any further, they grab the shovels and deepen the gutter still further.

Witness today's interview between pedophile-enabler Denny Hastert and confessed drug addict Rush Limbaugh, via DKos:

SPEAKER HASTERT: There were two pieces of paper out there, one that we knew about and we acted on; one that happened in 2003 we didn't know about, but somebody had it, and, you know, they're trying -- and they drop it the last day of the session, you know, before we adjourn on an election year. Now, we took care of Mr. Foley. We found out about it, asked him to resign. He did resign. He's gone. We asked for an investigation. We've done that. We're trying to build better protections for these page programs.
But, you know, this is a political issue in itself, too, and what we've tried to do as the Republican Party is make a better economy, protect this country against terrorism -- and we've worked at it ever since 9/11, worked with the president on it -- and there are some people that try to tear us down. We are the insulation to protect this country, and if they get to me it looks like they could affect our election as well.

So basically, this isn't in any way the fault of the republicans, but of those pesky people making noise. Remember 9/11, and drop your pants.

What Hastert is really saying here is this: if you don't let republican Congressmen have their way with your children, the terrorists win.

Some notes on CA-04

2006-10-02T15:19:00.000-04:00

So I'm noticing from the comments section that some people are still drinking the Doolittle koolaid. Here's a few generic observations (and no, I don't have the direct line to the DCCC's efforts in that district):

Already, four tribunes of evil - or, as some people refer to them, republican Congressmen - have resigned in disgrace this year. Next on the radar screen of the Justice Department are Mssrs. Burns of Montana ... and Doolittle of California.

The overall numbers for the forces of darkness nationwide are awful.

This is not being helped by the fact that one of their tribunes just had to resign for propositioning young boys.

As an example of how bad it is for them - or, conversely, how good for us Americans - consider that Wyoming-At Large and the First District of Idaho now lean pro-freedom, that is, to Democrats.

Representative Doolittle has benefitted directly and indirectly from the public trust. His wife takes commissions on the money he raises. He is one of the most Abramoff-tainted figures in Washington. He supports each and every failed policy of this hated regime - the war, the tax cuts for big oil, sending troops into combat without body armor, mercury in your water supply, dominionists in your child's classroom, James Dobson in your bedroom, the list goes on. Most notably, via the Abramoff connection, Doolittle supported policies in U.S. territories that are anathema to any decent human being - sweat shop labor, forced abortions, that kind of family-values stuff.

Representative Doolittle got primaried, managing only about a sixty-percent-plus share of the vote. That's extraordinary in machine-dominated contests. Now, he has a strong and well-financed challenger in Charlie Brown, who is asking whether Doolittle is corrupt or ineffective. Oh, and he's a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Air Force, not like draft-dodger Doolittle.

If you're looking for the worst in the seething mass of hypocrisy and treachery that is the current republican party, just look to John Doolittle. The man is scum - lying, corrupt scum. End of story.

I'd be surprised if CA-04 were not competitive. But it is. And remember, there will be a special election after John Doolittle gets indicted.

So go, Charlie Brown.

Going down in flames

2006-10-02T14:47:00.000-04:00

OK, let's review:

A republican Member of the House gets caught writing way sexually explicit IMs and emails to under-age pages.

In 2001 and again in 2005.

The House leadership covers it up, just before this scandal explodes into the limelight five weekends before an already difficult election.

Bring out the butter and jam. They are toast.

Alrighty, I'm back

2006-09-16T19:21:00.000-04:00

Well, unfortunately, the primary campaign I worked for ended in defeat. Therefore, normal blogging can resume; and I would add that defeat notwithstanding, it was really quite the experience.

New York's Eleventh District was created under the influence of the Voting Rights Act, which (to simplify considerably) guarantees the right to vote to historically disenfranchised minorities in certain jurisdictions throughout the United States, primarily in the Old Confederacy, but also in three counties of New York State: New York, Kings and The Bronx. To comply with the Act, New York's legislature carved out three districts that have a majority-minority polulation: the Tenth, Eleventh and Fifteenth districts respectively. The Tenth, in Brooklyn, is currently represented by Ed Towns, the Fifteenth, in Harlem, by Charlie Rangel.

The reason this race was different was that a white Member of the City Council, one David Yassky, moved into the district with a war chest of a million dollars. I've always taken a rather dim view of the councilman, and in this case, was aghast at his run. What happened was this: Yassky cleverly manipulated the racial tensions that exist in this district - 28% white, 61% black, partly stunningly rich, mainly devastatingly poor - to solidify white (and especially Jewish) support behind his candidacy.

Long story short, Yassky lost, and most amusingly, some people are blaming me for that; this because I have been a very public and vehement critic of his utterly cynical campaign. All amusement aside, however, this campaign revealed a depth of racism in that district I find stunning; Yassky, endorsed inter alia by the Times (!), simply declared that he was more competent than any black person could be. The problem was that many (white) people believed it; needless to say, the reaction in the black community was one of snarling fury. There were fist-fights, I hear, the night before the election, between Yassky supporters and those of other candidates. The bitterness left over from this primary is appalling; lifelong neighbors and friends are literally spitting at one another in the streets.

In any event, it's over. Now to deal with some republicans. Yum.

Sharking for Congress

2006-08-29T08:19:00.000-04:00

I haven't posted for a while, for a simple reason: I am now engaged in a congressional campaign. Not my own, alas - there are still misgivings about electing actual sharks to the legislature - but this one.

Since this campaign is taking place in a solidly Democratic district, New York's Eleventh, our general election really is the primary, which will take place on September 12th. This race has gotten national attention for a very simple reason: the 11th is a so-called voting rights district, meaning it was carved out in accordance with the ideas of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which covers the old Confederacy, parts of Pennsylvania, and New York, Kings and Queens counties in this state. Accordingly, this district has been represented since 1968 by a black person, first by Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman elected to Congress, and then by Major Owens, who is retiring. However, the best-financed contender is one David Yassky, a member of the City Council, who happens to be white, and is running a strategy of prevailing in a four-way primary against three black contenders.

The hours, needless to say, are ridiculous, which cuts down on blogging time. I'll try to post a thing or two, but these days, whenever I paddle back home, it is really mainly to sleep a wink or two. Of course, I do encourage support of my candidate, perhaps with a donation. One thing I can honestly say is that, of all the contenders and office-holders I have ever met, Chris Owens is the best - by a mile.

Lieberman defeated - Code red! Code red!

2006-08-10T09:51:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, Kenny Boy Mehlmann goes into hysterics about, and I quote, 'Defeat-ocrats', who will, if given a majority, do liberal things like sell U.S. ports to a Taliban-friendly government or even strip 40% of the funding from terror targets, or perhaps sit on their ass for five years and leave the borders unsecured; today, we get our first-ever Code Red terrorist emergency. Never happened before. Today, it did.

Isn't it odd how the completely unexpected republican attack on 'weak Defeat-ocrats' gets this kind of incidental backup from the United States government? Wait a minute, don't they run that? And didn't Tom Ridge say that the 2004 terror alerts were crassly politicized? And aren't they looking at an election in which their fat asses will be turned out of power?

But let's not play games with national security or do any in-your-face political posturing about it. Just one prediction: we'll stay on Code Red between now and about, oh, November 8th, whereupon the threat will diminish for, say, about two years.

Lamont and Lieberman: what's the meaning of it all?

2006-08-09T18:52:00.000-04:00

I haven't really mentioned anything on this blog, but yes, I've been closely following the Connecticut Senate race, and I am thrilled by the result.

I met Ned Lamont a few weeks ago at a meet-and-greet we co-sponsored for Mark Warner, the former governor of Virginia, who is running for President. He was in the neighborhood, and I had the chance to chat with him for about ten minutes or so. Lamont is a good, decent, honest man, very unpretentious and humble; he's in this not to sell Connecticut to Hezbollah, but to give voice to the overwhelming feeling in his state that we have gone badly off track, a feeling shared in every state of the Union.

Joe Lieberman, by contrast, has raised whoring the Bush agenda to an art form. This kind of bipartisanship we can no longer afford; not as Democrats, not as Americans. The voters of Connecticut, who came out in record numbers for this election, agreed. Lieberman's brand of bipartisanship is the kind practiced at Munich in 1938 - appeasement. We can't have that, not with the repugs hellbent to leather on destroying the constitution, freedom and democracy.

Lastly, I don't view elections as purges. Elected officials serve at the pleasure of, and are responsible to, the people. I've always looked askance at those who claim that they ignore polls, such as Lieberman (or Bush, for that matter); what that translates to is not an aversion to the fickle mob, but a repudiation of the democratic sovereign.

And that, in a democracy, our would-be kings and aristocrats do at their peril.

LieberWhore

2006-08-08T16:21:00.000-04:00

Defeat Whore Lieberman

2006-08-08T10:49:00.000-04:00

From AmericaBlog:

Lieberman said that this race is about whether the Democratic Party “will accept a diversity of opinion” on national security. He defined himself as a Democrat in the mold of John F. Kennedy, Harry S Truman and Bill Clinton – that is, one with “a real socially progressive record, and strong on national security.”

He said a victory for Lamont will send a message to the country: “In the Democratic Party, there’s no room for strong-on-security Dems.” He said that would be disastrous for the Democrats. “You can’t win in this country,” he said, “unless you assure people" that you aren’t going to compromise on national security. He said he has backed the war on terror because he never forgets about the “radical Islamic terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 and want to do it again.” Oh, so folks who are unhappy with Lieberman are soft on national security and don't remember September 11.

What a self-serving, selfish, egotistical piece of Republican trash this man has become. So Joe Lieberman is claiming that everything is going great in Iraq not because he's out of touch, not because he has a seemingly inquenchable desire to pander to George Bush and defend him at all costs. Oh no. Joe Lieberman says that Iraq is going great because HE remembers September 11 and YOU don't. Because he is strong on national defense and YOU aren't.

In short, "vote for me me me, or the tayruhrists win". Isn't that normally something reserved for republicans? It's time for this douchebag to go. Let's clean up our own house.

Bigots disrupt funeral; Bush nowhere to be seen

2006-08-07T18:27:00.000-04:00

Corporal Philip Baucus, nephew of Montana's senior Senator and a recent casualty of Bush's war, was laid to rest today amid anti-gay protests at his parents' ranch.

Needless to say, national embarassment and illegal resident George Bush was nowhere to be seen; he doesn't have time for anything as real as a funeral. Rather, Barbara's baby was in Texas, clearing brush - it's vacation time again, which should make all of us very nervous.

But back to the funeral. As noted, there were anti-gay protests, despite the fact that there is no evidence in the public domain that the deceased was gay; in fact, he had been married for a bit less than a year. Well, here you go:

Baucus' status as a nephew of a U.S. senator also drew the attention of the Topeka, Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church, whose members picket military funerals around the country. They believe the troops deserve to die because they fight on behalf of a government that, according to church beliefs, does not adequately condemn homosexuality.

What a sad commentary on the state of affairs in this country today.

NYT: "100,000 March Against U.S. and Israel in Baghdad"

2006-08-04T16:09:00.000-04:00

Ahem: From today's NYT:

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 4 - More than 100,000 followers of the Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr marched today to show support for Hezbollah, denouncing Israel and the United States for the violence in Lebanon.

The protesters filled 20 blocks of a wide boulevard and dozens of side streets in the Shiite-dominated Sadr City section of the capital.

Waving Lebanese flags and posters of Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, the protesters chanted, "No, no, no, Israel, no, no, no, America,’" challenged Americans to fight them in their neighborhoods, and called on Hezbollah to strike at Tel Aviv.

The fighting in Lebanon has caused a rift between the United States and the Shiite parties that lead Iraq's new government, which feel a strong solidarity with Hezbollah, also a Shiite group. Mr. Sadr was one of the first Iraqi leaders to denounce Israel for the conflict, saying last month that "we will not sit by with folded hands before the creep of Zionism." He also accused the United States of culpability in the bombardments because of its close relationship with Israel.

More recently, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and other leading Shiite figures have strongly condemned Israel for its attacks.

Gee, I guess maybe Iraq won't be such a reliable ally after all in Bush's 'war on terror'.

Max Baucus' nephew killed in Iraq

2006-08-03T12:06:00.000-04:00

It was bound to happen sooner or later: a relative of a sitting Member of Congress has been killed in Iraq. Of course, the afflicted family is that of a Democrat, Montana's senior Senator, Max Baucus.

From the NYT:

WASHINGTON, Aug. 2 — “We loved him dearly, and we’ll miss him more than words can ever express,” said a man from Montana on Tuesday upon learning that his nephew had been killed in Iraq.

Words like those have been uttered thousands of times in big cities and tiny towns, heard mostly by friends and relatives. But the man from Montana is Senator Max Baucus, so his words attracted more notice.

Cpl. Phillip E. Baucus of the Marine Corps, dead at 28, was “like a son to Senator Baucus,” Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, said Tuesday on the Senate floor.

“Our family is devastated,” Mr. Baucus said after the Defense Department announced that Corporal Baucus, of Wolf Creek, Mont., was killed in combat on Saturday in Anbar province. Three other marines from his battalion were also killed there Saturday, according to the department

Of course, as the article goes on to note:

A White House aide, who requested anonymity because his information was preliminary, said Wednesday that he knew of no top Bush administration official who had a relative who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Not much to add, is there?

The national interest and calculations of power

2006-08-02T21:36:00.000-04:00

The fundamental truism of foreign policy is that there is always a gap between the desirable and the obtainable. How wide that gap is depends on the power of a given state; for this country, arguably, the apex of power came in 1945. Since then, while we have indeed grown stronger, others have grown, in toto, more so.

I mention this because certain people on the right seem incapable of understanding that there are indeed limitations on American power, which have grown more stark in the last few years, ever since George Bush threw the concept of the national interest overboard in the decision to invade Iraq.

The national interest is a curious thing; Lord Palmerston said once that "England has no eternal allies or everlasting enemies, only permanent interests". Our national interest is broadly defined as stability; this country is a classic status-quo power like 19th-century Britain. We desire, and will fight for, democratic peace in Europe and the Pacific Rim, because that's who we trade with; we desire stability, with or without democratic niceties, in the Mideast and Latin America; in the latter, we also tend to intervene when some country gets too friendly with a power we deem unfriendly to our interests, as Chile found in 1973.

This is a largely stable and self-sustaining system of what could be called informal empire; the countries in the American orbit have a large stake in remaining so, because that orbit is essentially synonymous with the developed world. Undergirding this system are multi-lateral institutions like the UN, which is very much a tool of the American interest despite the rantings of the usual suspects, the WTO, the World Bank and so on. We're also, in one of the few things I am willing to give the Bush people credit for, pursuing an understanding - an entente, if you will - with India, as a balance to China. That policy, of course, was pioneered by Bill Clinton.

What has changed in the Bush era is that the former pre-eminence of stability has been changed to one that stresses 'fighting terrorism'. Below that surface is a willingness to shake things up, as it were; hence, Iraq, and perhaps soon, Iran. The problem with this new approach is two-fold: first, our underlying interest in stability hasn't changed; and second, when we create instability, it requires adequate resources to contain and manage. These resources so-called small-government conservatism is fundamentally unable to provide; there will be no draft, for example, and certainly not a tax increase to pay for whatever we need to manage this new chaos. Nor is it at all clear that 'terrorism' requires this shift in policy; or more to the point, it is reasonably clear that instability aids terrorists, as in, again, Iraq. The same can be said for democratic change; Hamas comes to mind.

Consider North Korea. Bill Clinton had the intent and ability to strike that country; George Bush, with two thirds of the Army not ready for combat due to Iraq, does not. In direct consequence, the North Koreans saw fit to launch a rocket we had made clear we did not wish to see launched on the 4th of July. The loss of face from that is pretty drastic - for us. The lack of a response from us to an outright provocation is the clearest indication of the new limits on American power.

In terms of long-term strategy, the Bush legacy, it seems clear, will be instability that other administrations may, or may not, have the will and ability to manage. That is unfortunate, not merely for its own sake, but because of the newest challenge to confront the post-1989 system; that, of course, is China. That country is going to be, in my mind, the Germany of this century. Germany, of course, grew too strong after its unification in 1871 for the European balance of power to contain or accomodate it; the result were two world wars. What we should be doing right now and in the decades to come is not to waste blood and treasure in a Mideast that will be irrelevant as soon as the oil runs out; rather, we should be integrating China into the existing world order, and preparing to balance it simultaneously. To be sure, China has huge problems, but these problems pale next to its potential power.

The problem with focusing on 'terrorism' is this: we are not taking into account what should be the most natural basis of policy: that intentions are not capabilities. Of course Al Qaeda is dangerous and has goals that would be nightmarish if they were implemented - by the way, us liberals don't support an ideology that relegates women to second-class status, shreds the separation of church and state, and so on, just for record - but policy is never made based on intentions alone. Rather, the deciding factor in crafting policy is the ability of your opponent to implement his goals. Considering the huge imbalance in power between ourselves and a rag-tag bunch of goat herds, what the hell are they going to do? As the saying goes, you and what army? That's something this country needs to learn, instead of literally leaping from crisis into crisis.

That's the national interest of this country. Too bad this government does not have the intellectual tools at its disposal to discern, let alone act on it.

Blogging the heatwave

2006-08-02T10:49:00.000-04:00

It is unbearably hot, to the point where I don't even want to go near a keyboard; hence the blogstinence. But here are some thoughts:

Parts of New York City have been experiencing blackouts for the last two weeks or so; 100,000 people in Queens were without power for 9 days, Staten Island is being hit with roving blackouts, and the local utility is working furiously to avoid another full-scale blackout. As a reminder, this is what that looked like in 2003:

Seen from space, note that huge hole on the East Coast:

So here's my question: why, when we had a catastrophic blackout three years ago, has nothing, or too little, been done to avoid even the possibility of another similar occurence? This town is not some hole in the Alaskan tundra, like the one where your republican government is spending $300 million to build a bridge maybe fifty people will use - we're the center of the national and global economy.

Next question: considering that this country, Europe and Asia are all sweating in the grip of a heat wave, that over 60% of the nation is in a drought, is it not maybe time to give up the semantic games on whether or not global warming is happening, and maybe, you know, begin to address the problem?

Republicans claim to have an energy policy, one that consists of bloating the bottom line of Exxon Mobil still further, and otherwise bitching about the all-powerful Sierra Club, which supposedly stops them from building power plants and the like. That's right, the enviros are more powerful than the entire unified Federal government. So are they also stopping them from investing in the grid, hmmm?

The emerging storyline of election 2006 is the wholesale, catastrophic failure of right-wing governance. Add their "energy policy" into the list.

What they're saying

2006-07-25T22:01:00.000-04:00

Some folks of the R persuasion have slowly awakened, albeit in fits and starts, to the looming November catastrophe that seems set to engulf their little criminal enterprise.

Take, for example, Senate aspirant Michael Steele, of Maryland. Steele complained to the Washington Post that his party 'R' was akin to a scarlet letter; that letter being, perhaps, a blazing W.

Others, including Allen in Virginia and Burns in Montana, stress their ability to deliver pork - mounds of it - to their constituents. Not a word about small government and all that jazz of yesteryear.

But the prize for today goes to a writer on Nazional Review, who posted this on his contribution to the war on ~~terror~~ Democrats, in response to an earlier op-ed piece that had heretically claimed that the armed forces were of greater consequence than the fighting keyboarders:

There is a war of arms. And there is a war of ideas. They are not just inter-related, they are interdependent. They are equally consequential.

…Let’s take just one example: In the 1930s, Churchill fought a war of ideas. He tried to warn the world about Hitler; tried to warn Europe and America that Hitler’s hatred and ambition had to be checked. But most people did not listen. Churchill’s ideas did not prevail. They called Churchill a “war monger.”

…So yes, Kathryn, you are fighting a war. And your e-mailer is ignorant about how wars are fought, about how wars are won and lost, and about the way the world actually works.

Chickenhawks, rejoice! Your keyboard-pounding is Churchillian! Meanwhile, the rest of us, who already know that Rs just don't get it, can rest secure in knowing we are right in that assessment.

Stupidity piled on ignorance: Iraq

2006-07-23T16:18:00.000-04:00

It's one of those quiet Sundays; the oppressive heat has broken, we have friends in town, now despatched to SoHomo for a glamour fix. So I have some free time to bang my head against the wall at the catatonic stupidity that is our policy in Iraq. Words are beginning to fail me at the extent of this colossal military and moral disaster; what is it? A quagmire? A morass? Mere turmoil at the bloody borders of the empire? Or a fetid sewer into which the nation has cast, in a season of madness, our blood, our treasure, our power and our honor?

Case in point: the Washington Post has a long article today titled simply "In Iraq, Military forgot lessons of Vietnam", well worth a read. It details in exquisitie detail how exactly we tumbled over this abyss, once the war had been won and this country, under leadership at once staggeringly inept and profoundly criminal, proceeded to lose the peace.

On the morning of Aug. 14, 2003, Capt. William Ponce, an officer in the "Human Intelligence Effects Coordination Cell" at the top U.S. military headquarters in Iraq, sent a memo to subordinate commands asking what interrogation techniques they would like to use.

"The gloves are coming off regarding these detainees," he told them. His e-mail, and the responses it provoked from members of the Army intelligence community across Iraq, are illustrative of the mind-set of the U.S. military during this period.

"Casualties are mounting and we need to start gathering info to help protect our fellow soldiers from any further attacks," Ponce wrote. He told them, "Provide interrogation techniques 'wish list' by 17 AUG 03."

This was in accordance with memoranda issued by the Justice Department allowing the use of torture against "terrorist suspects". This buck goes straight to the Oval Office.

Feeding the interrogation system was a major push by U.S. commanders to round up Iraqis. The key to actionable intelligence was seen by many as conducting huge sweeps to detain and question Iraqis. Sometimes units acted on tips, but sometimes they just detained all able-bodied males of combat age in areas known to be anti-American.

In short, we picked up all the able-bodied men from entire districts and sent them to Abu Ghraib. Just a reminder: this is what happened then.

So what we - yes, we, even if you opposed this war, you're an American, and responsible for the actions of your government - did was this: we brought together harmless civilians from the bad parts of town with people who really were dangerous, and locked them all up together. Then we let dogs loose on them.

Senior U.S. intelligence officers in Iraq later estimated that about 85 percent of the tens of thousands rounded up were of no intelligence value. But as they were delivered to the Abu Ghraib prison, they overwhelmed the system and often waited for weeks to be interrogated, during which time they could be recruited by hard-core insurgents, who weren't isolated from the general prison population.

Once again, Abu Ghraib:

Let me just re-state this for emphasis: we did mass round-ups of civilians and subjected them to this. And now, we wonder why this tormented country despises us.

But did it work? Was all the best advice considered? Once again, no.

That summer, retired Marine Col. Gary Anderson, an expert in small wars, was sent to Baghdad by the Pentagon to advise on how to better put down the emerging insurgency. He met with Bremer in early July. "Mr. Ambassador, here are some programs that worked in Vietnam," Anderson said.

It was the wrong word to put in front of Bremer. "Vietnam?" Bremer exploded, according to Anderson. "Vietnam! I don't want to talk about Vietnam. This is not Vietnam. This is Iraq!"

This was one of the early indications that U.S. officials would obstinately refuse to learn from the past as they sought to run Iraq.

In Imperial Rome, a man like Bremer would have found his bloody severed head on a pike, as a punishment and a warning to others of like stupidity but perhaps more discretion.

One of the essential texts on counterinsurgency was written in 1964 by David Galula, a lieutenant colonel in the French army who was born in Tunisia, witnessed guerrilla warfare on three continents and died in 1967.

Ignored, of course, since anything French was suspect to the triumphant neocons. They had been proven right, or so they thought; all that went before by way of experience was mere dust in the bright noonday of the neocon ascendancy.

When the United States went into Iraq, his book, "Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice," was almost unknown within the military, which is one reason it is possible to open Galula's text almost at random and find principles of counterinsurgency that the American effort failed to heed.

Galula warned specifically against the kind of large-scale conventional operations the United States repeatedly launched with brigades and battalions, even if they held out the allure of short-term gains in intelligence. He insisted that firepower must be viewed very differently than in regular war.

"A soldier fired upon in conventional war who does not fire back with every available weapon would be guilty of a dereliction of his duty," he wrote, adding that "the reverse would be the case in counterinsurgency warfare, where the rule is to apply the minimum of fire."

The U.S. military took a different approach in Iraq. It wasn't indiscriminate in its use of firepower, but it tended to look upon it as good, especially during the big counteroffensive in the fall of 2003, and in the two battles in Fallujah the following year.

One reason for that different approach was the muddled strategy of U.S. commanders in Iraq. As civil affairs officers found to their dismay, Army leaders tended to see the Iraqi people as the playing field on which a contest was played against insurgents. In Galula's view, the people are the prize.

"The population . . . becomes the objective for the counterinsurgent as it was for his enemy," he wrote.

Call me old-fashioned, maybe not in tune with the glittering imperial prize the neocons dangle before our eyes like a new Eastern Raj, but I'd think that those entrusted by the democratic sovereign with the care of our armies and our good name might pay a little closer attention to details. Stepping back for a moment from the fact that this war was an illegal farce from the beginning - it wasn't even well executed. They risked the good name of the United States of America, and did not even see fit to learn any lessons they might have taken; because in this new age, the one they were shaping, there were no lessons to learn. One would think that the war's supporters, the ones who were sold this bauble under false pretenses, would be shouting their outrage from the rooftops.

The Iraq war was a disaster from the start, when the neo-con cabal sold it to a willing Bush administration. They had their mandate - at the time, the country supported the effort, after a concentrated and knowing campaign of treachery and deceit. What we did not know at the time was that the people who got us in had no idea what to do - indeed, had set themselves up to not want to know what to do. There is a classic Latin word for that: hubris.

Today, the entire region is going up in flames, and for what? At what cost? The Mideast is infinitely more dangerous than it was when this war began, dangerous regimes like Iran's and North Korea's have been empowered, and for what? So America could have a lesson in the dangers of listening to extremists? To chastise us for living in fear and wilfull ignorance? To humble us in our heedlessness?

Perhaps George Bush was God's instrument after all; the instrument of a God that wants to lay low our pride.

Blogging the war

2006-07-21T20:52:00.000-04:00

So what does this whole blogging thing really amount to? I'm not talking about the big examples, like DailyKos or ThinkProgress; they are vastly influential media channels that reachmillions of people, profoundly affecting the way they think and act. Rather, I'm thinking of smaller efforts, such as my own. It flatters me no end that people read what I write; but when all is said and done, there are things that matter vastly more.

One example is the ongoing conversation between Lebanese and Israeli bloggers. This is probably the first time in human history that civilians on opposing sides in a cinflict can freely communicate, and nobody has any idea what effect this will have.

From the link above, perhaps the most astonishing blog I've ever come across:

The internet has also been offering some surreal experiences, like the ability to have a Beirut-Tel Aviv online IM chat in real time while the missiles are falling. That's what happened to me and this blogger a few nights ago. We chatted while he was sitting on the roof of his apartment building in Beirut, watching missiles from Israeli planes fall on his city and describing it to me. He was carrying on an online conversation with another Israeli at the same time. And he was able to describe his feelings and the atmosphere in a human, personal way that no newspaper article or television news segment could achieve.

Now, given that a critical part of any war is the dehumanization of the enemy, how is that going to work when all you have to do to look at the people on the other side is log on the internets?

Much to ponder, it seems.

Tom DeLay's PAC fined out of existence

2006-07-20T15:38:00.000-04:00

Haha. Following an FEC complaint by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), Tom DeLay's ARMPAC - Americans for a Republican Majority - has closed its doors. The DeLay front group was fined $115,000 and pleaded guilty to the following:

The FEC found that:

--ARMPAC failed to report accurately nearly a quarter million dollars in contributions and expenditures during the 2001-2002 election cycle.

--ARMPAC failed to report nearly $325,000 in debts owed to 25 campaign vendors.

--ARMPAC improperly used over $200,000 in soft money to pay for federal election activity. In particular, ARMPAC improperly used over $120,000 in soft money to pay for GOTV activities in Texas immediately before the 2002 general election.

Thus ends another chapter in the long history of reactionary crime. One gets the feeling that a multitude of chickens are in the air, coming home at last to roost.

Exodus from Beirut

2006-07-19T23:47:00.000-04:00

Katrina continued: the U.S. government's operations in extracting our citizens from Beirut continue to lag behind those of similarly well-equipped superpowers. Like Norway.

Shayna Silverstein and her friends jumped into expensive taxis and sped from Beirut to Damascus, preferring to dodge bombs and bribe border officials than wait for the United States government to evacuate them. Ann Ainslay Chibbo said she desperately phoned friends back home, urging them to contact the State Department to get her name onto an evacuation list. She said she couldn't get through by phone to the U.S. Embassy in Beirut.

How cute: driving to Damascus through a war zone because you can't reach the embassy. Brownie lives.

The administration's Arab problem

2006-07-19T10:59:00.000-04:00

Maybe I'm missing something here.

Post-9/11, Arabs in this country were treated like garbage; blanket orders from DoJ to submit to "interviews", racial profiling, overt and covert official hostility, with a sharp spike in hate crimes attendant on all of this. The lunatic fringe - or, to use the republican expression, "top conservative pundits" - are still calling for internment camps and "raghead talks tough, raghead faces consequences" measures.

So why exactly are top republicans and their feckless administration now pushing for a trade deal that would allow the government and private sector of Oman to purchase outright key national security assets?

The answer seems to be that the Omanis are brown people we like. The country is staunchly pro-Western, having been a British colony until 1971 and presently governed by an emir who graduated from Sandhurst. In addition, it practices a form of Islam known as 'Ibadh', which stresses tolerance and communal decision making - never a bad thing. The Saudi Wahhabists consider the Omanis to be heretical - a huge vote in their favor, in my mind.

So the next time you hear some rightie talking about how intrinsically dangerous and downright evil all Arabs and Muslims are, tell them that their government is trying to sell Raytheon to an Arab country. Just step back so the goo from exploding heads doesn't get all over your clothes.

Ralph Reed crushed

2006-07-18T22:53:00.000-04:00

And now for some truly good news. Ralph Reed, the guy who made the "christian coalition" the cancer on the body politic that it is, and one of Abramoff's bag men, has suffered a humiliating defeat in a Georgia primary.

Perhaps those ties to Abramoff do matter, eh, boys?

There is some cold sweat being produced in some very expensive offices right about now. This is very, very bad news for everyone who thinks the fundies will swallow every bit of chicanery that certain elements try to feed them.

Perhaps Mssrs Doolittle, Ney, and a few others, should consider early retirement.

Gingrich: "War is grand and oh so helpful"

2006-07-16T14:50:00.000-04:00

Newt Gingrich thinks we should be intervening in Lebanon, because this could help republicans in November.

This brings to mind the idea that launching a World War over the assasination of an Archduke was a grand plan. The thinking in imperial Vienna in 1914 was, just to recap, that beating down the Serbian government over the assassination of the Austrian heir-apparent by a Serbian nationalist would provide a political benefit to the struggling Austro-Hungarian empire.

Thankfully, nobody cares what Gingrich has to say; but where is the outrage that a prominent republican is calling for this country to join a war for the political benefit of one party? Has the whole world gone insane? Is it really necessary to paint the nightmare scenario that a wider Middle East war would be?

Americans trapped in Beirut; Embassy hapless

2006-07-15T23:08:00.000-04:00

There are Americans trapped in Beirut with no way to get out, and the U.S. Embassy isn't even answering its phones. That's the gist of a story from MSNBC quoted on this blog.

[S]everal hundred U.S. residents [are] studying abroad this summer at the American University in Beirut, a school accredited in New York state that has about 7,000 students, most of them from Middle Eastern countries.

[A]bout 40 students [are] in the summer Arabic language program, many of whom have been huddled in a university dormitory since fighting between Israeli forces and Hezbollah guerrillas broke out Wednesday.

"There aren't any ... reliable ways to get out by air, land or sea," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Friday. U.S. citizens are being told to "assess what is best for their own personal security." [An interviewee] said so far she has heard nothing from officials at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, which is about 20 miles from her dorm.

It gets better.

The U.S. embassy has been anything but helpful these last few days. When I finally got through to a human being last night he told me the embassy was closed, to try back tomorrow, and made me feel that I was crazy for even asking about an evacuation plan.

Last I checked, the embassy is supposed to be taking a little bit more of a hands-on approach; that's why it's advisable in certain regions of the world to register with them in the first place, if you're abroad for more than a holiday. It's not the responsibility of teenagers trapped in a war zone to figure out what to do - that's what the embassy staff get paid for. This because kids in a war zone have the unproductive habit of getting hurt. What is wrong with these people?

Is Heckuva Job Brownie at the Department of State these days?

As usual, there's a tie-in to the larger mess that the Rs have created in the entire federal government. State was always, along with the EPA, the agency of the government that Rs loved to hate most; perhaps because it has always been absolutely impervious to rabid ideologues, like, say, John Bolton, after whose "appointment scores of career DoS employees quit, only to be quickly replaced with dross, the main qualification of which was the right kind of opinions. This on top of a five-year pro-dross hiring campaign, mind you.

Now, the dross is faced with a real crisis, as opposed to the made-up crises that consume so much of the time of our rightist friends; you know, the school prayer and gay marriage kinds of crises. And what's their response? They're just not picking up the phone.

It doesn't take a genius to know that Americans in Lebanon right now face extraordinary peril, less even from the Israeli bombardment than from the indigenous factions in the country itself. Remember: this mess started with a kidnapping. And here you have forty-odd American teenagers sitting in an unguarded dorm in a war zone. Meanwhile, if they're studying Arabic, just a hint: which institution in this country has the greatest need of Arabic-speakers? To the point where they give out scholarships?

If Hezbollah has half a brain, they're probably already trying to figure out how to get those kids. Which is why it would make a lot of sense for the embassy to get in touch with them, get a battallion of Marines into the country - the Israelis aren't dumb enough to bomb our guys - and create a secured holding spot for as many Americans as they can.

However, just because something makes sense does not mean the Katrina administration is going to do it. In a scenario we should all be familar with by now, nobody's answering the phone. Literally.

A comment from another blog

2006-07-14T21:02:00.000-04:00

I left this as a comment on another blog; a paleo-con by the moniker of Leo was going on and on about how great conservatives are, as opposed to us hateful leftists and the despicable moderates.

Hehe. Yup, those conservatives are doing such a fine job all around, and besides, everything that doesn't go right, which is a lot, they just blame on those all-powerful liberals that seem to thwart them all the time. Especially that well-known and treacherous liberal known as 'the world we live in'.

Like Steven Colbert said, reality has a well-known liberal bias. That's the problem and what's doing the thwarting; well, that and the fact that conservatives kinda don't do anything in government well, 'cause they hate government, and have this irritating habit of spending tax dollars like a crankhead at a porn shop. I mean, these days they're celebrating a deficit of $300 billion as good news. Brought to you courtesy of The Terri Schiavo Institute of Creation Science®.

Conservatives? Feh. Bunch of has-beens running around pretending they have a clue and making faces at people. When they're not jumping up and down shouting "9/11! War! Terror! Bwaahaaahaa!" and pretending that their own god-damn incompetence isn't staring everybody in the face, that is.

:=0, StS

From the mouths of babes

2006-07-14T17:49:00.000-04:00

...and behold, a little child shall lead them.

A different kind of crisis

2006-07-13T20:35:00.000-04:00

While we weren't paying attention, a new war has broken out in the Middle East. This is more than a 'crisis', as it's presently being called in the media; it has all the makings of a wider regional conflict involving all the major players. Even better, if you like carnage, thanks to the glorious liberation of Iraq, the United States sits smack-dab in the middle.

The backstory is simple enough: the terrorist group Hezbollah - or more accurately Hisb'Allah, 'the party of god' - conducted a raid into northern Israel, killed several Israel Defence Force - IDF - soldiers, and abducted two to Lebanon. Hezbollah is a hybrid creature, perhaps best compared to the broader organization formed by Sinn Fein and the IRA; it has a political arm which forms a large bloc in the parliament of Lebanon. The linkages between the terrorist and political arms of Hezbollah are somewhat murky; they do, however, exist, even if it's a bit of a stretch to decide where control of the organization lies, or if there is indeed central control. Hezbollah has declared that it wants to exchange the hostages for prisoners held by Israel; Israel answered, entirely correctly in my view, that it does not negotiate with terrorists or at the barrel of a gun.

Israel's reaction, as is that country's well-known and expected response, was swift and severe; as the Times reports, the Israeli air force has bombed Beirut airport several times, a naval blockade of Lebanon has been instituted, and tanks are on the ground moving north. The argument made by the government in Jerusalem is simple: Hezbollah forms a part of the government of Lebanon, therefore, the attacks and abductions rise above the level of terrorism into a hostile act as defined by the UN charter. De jure, that's accurate; de facto, it's a bit of a stretch, simply because it's doubtful that the parliamentarians of Hezbollah control the terrorist wing of that organization, much less the government of Lebanon proper. What the Olmert government is more likely doing is increasing the pain felt by the Lebanese government to a level where it will in turn force Hezbollah to hand over the hostages; certainly, naval blockades and bombings of the capital can be expected to cause pain.

The problem with that approach is that the writ of the Beirut government does not de facto extend to those portions of the country held by Hezbollah. Meanwhile, Jerusalem expects the Beirut government to be rsponsible for what happens on its territory. So we're likely to see further escalation. Hezbollah indeed retaliated, slamming Katyushas - Soviet-made rockets - into northern Israel as far south as Haifa.

Where it gets really ugly is in the following scenario: PBS tonight reported an Israeli government statement that Hezbollah might move its hostages out of Lebanon into either Syria or Iran; the organization is allied with both Shi'ite-governed countries. In that case, Israel will extend operations into those countries. I would assume that the Damascus government at least is horrified by that prospect; as for Teheran, likely, they would welcome an Israeli attack; war has a wonderful way of getting people to think about things other than, say, a crappy economy. If it worked here, it will work there.

This wider war would provide both Syria and Iran with plenty of reasons to want to pressure the United States; and guess where they can do that at their discretion and pleasure? That's right, in Iraq, already a tinderbox and a place rich in opportunities for mischief overt or covert. Just think of it as another small price tag of empire that Bush forgot to mention on the aircraft carrier.

And who is in the driver's seat of this crisis? Not the combatant governments in Beirut and Jerusalem; not Damascus or Teheran; certainly not the professional diplomats at Foggy Bottom or Whitehall. No, the decision as to where this conflict ends, and how far it goes, rests with the leadership of Hezbollah.

Hallelujah.

Damn right

2006-07-12T14:10:00.000-04:00

The New York Observer has a piece today on similarities between The New York Times and the Democratic Party.

It’s true what the right-wing bloggers and bloviators say: The New York Times does indeed resemble a branch of the Democratic Party.

But the newspaper’s conservative critics are utterly wrong about where the resemblance really lies.

The similarities between the newspaper of record and the opposition party have nothing to do with treason, irresponsibility or blaming America first. The main thing the institutions share is a potentially fatal timidity.

The Times, like the Dems, has yet to absorb the age-old aphorism that the best means of defense is attack.

The Times, like the Dems, clings to an anachronistic belief that it should not engage in debates that it deems coarse, vicious or otherwise beneath it.

And in so doing, The Times, like the Dems, leaves the field open for its opponents to hurl any insult and press home any smear, safe in the knowledge that no serious counterattack will be mounted.

True enough. Certainly in the past, many Democrats thought that the vicious slander hurled by the likes of republican terrorists like Ann Coulter was not something we should respond to; the thinking being that one does not dignify the obviously moronic with a response.

We saw how well that worked with the Smear Boat veterans, didn't we?

It is my considered opinion that Democrats need to be more aggressive in dealing with the political rabies that is the dying conservative movement. Certainly, that movement is a target-rich environment; just today, some wingnut distinguished himself by calling for the lynching of the Supreme Court majority that wrote the Hamdan decision. If we let ourselves be attacked with impunity by the criminal scum that leads and speaks for the right, we deserve to lose. The logic to be applied in this battle is this: far from dignifying some outrage - like Coulter's serial encouragements of right-wing terrorism - we encourage and legitimize them by staying silent.

The right response to rabies is not a pat on the back. Agonizingly enough, this is still a point that needs to be made, it seems.

Head-slamming-on-wall stupid

2006-07-11T21:41:00.000-04:00

Via DailyKos:

We all know The Onion; billing itself as 'America's finest news source', and featuring regular clearly satirical, that-could-never-happen stories such as ~~"Drunk Dick Cheney shoots man in face"~~ "George Bush, pet pig have relationship crisis" and other stuff clearly meant to be an amusing send-up on the real world.

The problem with satire, however, is that some people are stupid. A disturbing number of these people have in turn populated the right-wing blogosphere, where they cast wider the nets of their dumb-ass-ness. As in this example, in which someone apparently did not understand that what he was reading was perhaps to be taken with a grain of salt.

Here are some quotes from a pro-abortion person, Miss Caroline Weber, who wrote an article at The Onion online magazine.

The Onion Article

When referring to the killing of her child she said:

"I am totally psyched for this abortion!"

"Those pro-life activists made it pretty clear that, unlike me, they actually think abortion is bad and to be avoided. Are they nuts? Abortion is the best!"
"It wasn't until now that I was lucky enough to be pregnant with a child I had no means to support."
"I just know it's going to be the best non-anesthetized invasive uterine surgery ever!"

Who does Miss Weber blame her abortion on? The pro-life movement.

"The funny thing is, I actually have the pro-life movement to thank for this opportunity."

It's our fault? She says:

"If my HMO wouldn't have bowed to their pressure not to cover oral contraceptives, I never would've gotten pregnant in the first place."

Sorry ma'am, if you hadn't had sex you wouldn't have gotten pregnant, it's not the HMO's fault for not supporting your promiscuity while not married.

Does it show at all that the right wing also believes in creationism, "tax cuts and expenditure hikes don't cause deficits", "the weapons of mass destruction are in Syria" and all that? Is there maybe a linkage here?

Overheard

2006-07-11T20:46:00.000-04:00

This PM in this household:

"I can't believe you're watching Big Brother instead of, well, anything else."

"Leave me alone. It's fun."

"You do realize that this show represents the end of American civilization, right?"

"No. George Bush represents the end of American civilization. This is just a TV show. And now, leave me alone."

Hehe.

And we're off!

2006-07-09T08:58:00.000-04:00

Us sharks are off to Boston to see Madonna; unfortunately, Madison Square Garden couldn't accomodate us.

Have a good weekend; we'll be back very late Monday.

Revolt in the House?

2006-07-08T21:00:00.000-04:00

I see no need to detect, or hope for, anything that could be described as 'independence' in the republican House. They are, and have been for the last five years, bootlickers to the regime, not an independent co-equal, branch of government. They are dogs that can be kicked as often as pleases their masters, and will still come back for more.

This is what they do. And it is a disgrace to our Congress.

So I am somewhat surprised, and quite a bit suspicious, to hear this from Representative Hoekstra, a boot-licker of the first order:

In a sharply worded letter to [George] Bush in May, an important Congressional ally charged that the administration might have violated the law by failing to inform Congress of some secret intelligence programs and risked losing Republican support on national security matters.

The letter from Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, did not specify the intelligence activities that he believed had been hidden from Congress.[...]

"I have learned of some alleged intelligence community activities about which our committee has not been briefed," Mr. Hoesktra wrote. "If these allegations are true, they may represent a breach of responsibility by the administration, a violation of the law, and, just as importantly, a direct affront to me and the members of this committee who have so ardently supported efforts to collect information on our enemies."

He added: "The U.S. Congress simply should not have to play Twenty Questions to get the information that it deserves under our Constitution."

True enough. So why did it take five years for Hoekstra to open his mouth? What, he's just now (with elections coming up and Bush a bit less popular than bubonic plague) noticing that this administration holds the other branches of government in complete and utter contempt? This is news to you?

Note the last paragraph, the "direct affront" part. Yes, Representative Hoekstra, Member of the ancient and storied House of Representatives, clothed in the measureless power of the United States, obedience buys you nothing. You've heard this before, from people you derided as Bush-haters and Moonbats. You've made your bed; don't complain now that it's in the servants' quarters.

That Democratic Congress you keep hearing about? It's coming; there's revolution in the air. When a whipped cur like Hoekstra dares open his mouth, the crowds must be gathering at the Bastille.

More from Tom Tomorrow

2006-07-07T22:39:00.000-04:00

Hehe.

2006-07-07T18:46:00.000-04:00

A new book, it seems.

We're all Bush-haters now, Part II

2006-07-07T14:55:00.000-04:00

I've written about this before, and if I hadn't screwed up the HTML here, I'd link to it - but oh well for that. However, it's becoming ever more clear that with Preznut Fucktastic tanking more by the day, dislike of him, his person, his policies, even his dog for crying out loud, is spreading like an oil spill on a lake in a Texas nature preserve. Witness this gem from DailyKos:

[Illinois GOP gubernatorial candidate Judy] Topinka says Karl Rove urged her to run, hoping to offset in Illinois a probable gubernatorial loss in New York. Would she like President Bush to campaign for her? An aide says not exactly: "We just want him to raise money." Topinka does not demur as the aide adds: "Late at night." Pause. "In an undisclosed location."

Gee whiz, that guy sure is popular.

The lights go out

2006-07-07T12:27:00.000-04:00

As part of my ongoing "republicans are so incompetent it would be funny if it weren't so god-damn outrageous" series, here's what MSNBC presents today:

A diversion of dollars to help fight the war in Iraq has helped create a $530 million shortfall for Army posts at home and abroad, leaving some unable to pay utility bills or even cut the grass.

In San Antonio, Fort Sam Houston hasn’t been able to pay its $1.4 million monthly utility bill since March, prompting workers in many of the post’s administrative buildings to get automated disconnection notices.

Fort Bragg in North Carolina can’t afford to buy pens, paper or other office supplies until the new fiscal year starts in October.

At this point, let me make another one of my crazy left-wing suggestions: how about, when you have a shooting war going on, you don't cut taxes every year for the top 0.5%, so you can actually pay for that war and the electricity bills?

I know, I know, that's treasonous, Bolshevik thinking.

Kerry: Reinstate bin Laden unit now

2006-07-06T20:37:00.000-04:00

Well effing Hallelujah.

This unit should be reconstituted immediately and given all resources necessary to finish the job of holding bin Laden accountable and preventing him from organizing or inspiring future attacks against the United States and our allies.

There is no question that since 9/11, al Qaeda has morphed into a global terrorist movement that transcends any one individual. The decision to divert resources from the crucial fight against bin Laden and al Qaeda to wage war on Iraq has made the task of eradicating this increasingly diffuse threat more difficult. We now face a long, difficult and multi-faceted struggle against global terrorism and the hateful ideology that inspires it.

Moreover, disbanding the bin Laden unit sends the message to the terrorists that they can kill thousands of Americans without being held to account. Given that Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz was quoted this week as saying that "nobody has any idea" where bin Laden is, it is especially important that we send a clear message now that we have not given up the hunt. Reconstituting the bin Laden unit now would make it clear that we will never rest until he has been brought to justice.

Past failures to eliminate bin Laden at Tora Bora and in the nearly five years since 9/11 are no excuse for failing to do everything possible to find him now. The CIA's bin Laden unit can play an important part of our effort to win the war on terror, and I urge you to revive and strengthen it as soon as possible.

And what does the other side have to say? Nothing at all, of course; Osama who? Call it what it is, the repug shrug.

Michelle Malkin smears woman she may have helped kill

2006-07-06T20:06:00.000-04:00

Another day, another dead Democrat.

From The American Prospect:

You may have missed this story, but it's worth a look. It appears that Michelle Malkin is taking some heat from her compadres on the right because she failed to apologized after heaping a great deal of vitriol on a woman who subsequently committed suicide.

Well, now Malkin has lashed back at her critics. Her response? She smeared the dead woman again, calling her a "corruptocrat."

This is quite a tale. Here's what happened: Not long ago the news broke that some military recruiters fled a University of California Santa Cruz job fair after some protestors forced their way into the fair. Malkin immediately sprang into action. She wrote that "UC Santa Cruz hates our troops," described the school as "seditious" and instructed her on-line army of pod people to direct their wrath at UC Santa Cruz Chancellor Denise Denton, even though it wasn't at all clear why she should be held responsible for the protests. Naturally, Malkin posted contact info so the pod people could more easily shriek and howl about what a traitor this Chancellor apparently was.

Well, on June 24, Denton, 46, went and jumped from the roof of one of the tallest buildings in San Francisco. The reasons are murky, though news reports say that politics, scandal and her high public profile may have played a role. Did the attacks from Malkin and her marching followers play a role, too? No one has alleged that, in fairness. On the other hand, being fingered by the Malkin gang wouldn't exactly ease one's mental anguish, obviously.

What a class act. The culture of life, hard at work.

Christian America: Jews flee Delaware

2006-07-05T15:30:00.003-04:00

From The Daily Gotham:

Hate Crimes have been on the rise in America since 9/11, and, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, hate groups in America have increased by 33% in the past five years. A peak in attacks on Muslims after 9/11 was rapidly followed by an increase in anti-Semitism in the US and worldwide. There was a slight decline in anti-Semetic incidents in 2005, but incidents are still at disturbingly high levels.

Back in February I reported an incident that, while not a hate crime, was certainly a frightening trend. In Indiana, a prominant politician told a group of Jews that their opinion on the recitation of Christian prayers at legislative sessions didn't matter because they only made up 2% of the population. This is a further sign of the rise of Republican, Christian Taliban in the US.

A large Delaware school district promoted Christianity so aggressively that a Jewish family felt it necessary to move to Wilmington, two hours away, because they feared retaliation for filing a lawsuit. The religion (if any) of a second family in the lawsuit is not known, because they're suing as Jane and John Doe; they also fear retaliation. Both families are asking relief from "state-sponsored religion."

Among numerous specific examples in the complaint was what happened at plaintiff Samantha Dobrich's graduation in 2004 from the district's high school. She was the only Jewish student in her graduating class. The complaint relates that local pastor, Jerry Fike, in his invocation, followed requests for "our heavenly Father's" guidance for the graduates with:

I also pray for one specific student, that You be with her and guide her in the path that You have for her. And we ask all these things in Jesus' name.

This is why we used to have that wall of separation. It made sense at the time, before it became a sign of persecution of "Christians" to not let them shove their doctrine down everyone else's throats. These days, Jews are fleeing a state in the union; shameful.

Bush CIA disbands bin Laden unit

2006-07-04T14:14:00.000-04:00

Unbelievable. The New York Times reports that the CIA has just disbanded the unit dedicated to capturing Osama bin Laden.

Michael Scheuer, a former senior C.I.A. official who was the first head of the unit, said the move reflected a view within the agency that Mr. bin Laden was no longer the threat he once was.

Mr. Scheuer said that view was mistaken.

"This will clearly denigrate our operations against Al Qaeda," he said. "These days at the agency, bin Laden and Al Qaeda appear to be treated merely as first among equals."

In recent years, the war in Iraq has stretched the resources of the intelligence agencies and the Pentagon, generating new priorities for American officials. For instance, much of the military's counterterrorism units, like the Army's Delta Force, had been redirected from the hunt for Mr. bin Laden to the search for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed last month in Iraq.

What was that about cutting and running? And do you feel safer yet?

Ann Coulter: terrorist, and plagiarist

2006-07-02T15:48:00.000-04:00

Hehe.

The right-wing New York Post reports that Little Annie Terrorist (pictured here with her syphilitically grinning rumored fuckbuddy Sean "Never Served" Hannity) has been caught lifting entire passages from other authors and passing them off as her own.

Conservative scribe Ann Coulter cribbed liberally in her latest book, "Godless," according to a plagiarism expert.

John Barrie, the creator of a leading plagiarism-recognition system, claimed he found at least three instances of what he calls "textbook plagiarism" in the leggy blond pundit's "Godless: the Church of Liberalism" after he ran the book's text through the company's digital iThenticate program.

He also says he discovered verbatim lifts in Coulter's weekly column, which is syndicated to more than 100 newspapers, including the Fort Lauderdale (Fla.) Sun-Sentinel and Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle.

When is someone finally going to prosecute this terrorist thief? And when are republicans, assuming some of them have a shred of honor left, finally going to stand up and say that she does not represent them?

I'm not holding my breath.

LA Times: Did Bush commit war crimes?

2006-07-01T17:13:00.000-04:00

Sweet.

THE SUPREME Court on Thursday dealt the Bush administration a stinging rebuke, declaring in Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld that military commissions for trying terrorist suspects violate both U.S. military law and the Geneva Convention.

But the real blockbuster in the Hamdan decision is the court's holding that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention applies to the conflict with Al Qaeda — a holding that makes high-ranking Bush administration officials potentially subject to prosecution under the federal War Crimes Act.

Snip.

Common Article 3 forbids "cruel treatment and torture [and] outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment." The provision's language is sweeping enough to prohibit many of the interrogation techniques approved by the Bush administration. That's why the administration had argued that Common Article 3 did not apply to the war on terror, even though legal experts have long concluded that it was intended to provide minimum rights guarantees for all conflicts not otherwise covered by the Geneva Convention.

But here's where the rubber really hits the road. Under federal criminal law, anyone who "commits a war crime … shall be fined … or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both, and if death results to the victim, shall also be subject to the penalty of death." And a war crime is defined as "any conduct … which constitutes a violation of Common Article 3 of the international conventions signed at Geneva." In other words, with the Hamdan decision, U.S. officials found to be responsible for subjecting war on terror detainees to torture, cruel treatment or other "outrages upon personal dignity" could face prison or even the death penalty.

Yes, you read that right: the death penalty. Serious stuff.

Bush falls in polls, again

2006-07-01T16:39:00.000-04:00

Under the headline "Poll: Good News Fails to Boost Bush's Job Approval", Time Magazine reports the obvious: That we hate George Bush and his little henchmen.

A spate of good news at home and abroad has so far failed to boost how Americans feel about [worthless chimp] Bush's job performance. Bush's approval rating slipped to 35% in a TIME poll taken this week, down from 37% in March (and 53% in early 2005). Only 33% of Americans in the survey said they approved of Bush's handling of the situation in Iraq, vs. 35% in March, and 47% in March 2005. His management of the U.S. economy lost supporters, too, as 36% approved, compared with 39% three months earlier. Bush's handling of the war on terror saw a slight gain in support, from 44% to 45%.

Here's a tip to the mainstream media: the war isn't over, the economy still sucks, people are still not making more money, and the republican party is still extremist and corrupt. Hint: that's why the polls are where they are. Talking them up does not seem to be working, so why don't you get with the program and tell us the real news: that Americans are sick and tired of this man and everything he stands for?

"Crush liberalism"

2006-06-30T16:56:00.000-04:00

Ha ha ha!

I am vastly amused, having just stumbled across a blog titled Crush Liberalism.

The proprietor, one Jonathan Leffingwell - that's a proper ruling-class name for you right there - is a twenty-two year old student at a Southern public university, and thereby the recipient of taxpayer subsidies; of course, because everything right-wing is utterly dependent on such subsidies. Kinda like Nazional Review, which has lost money every day for decades.

A cursory glance does not reveal any interest by Leffingwell in signing up for the Armed Services, though he's about two decades short of the new top enlistment age. Another yellow elephant who would probably pee on himself and holla for momma if he ever got near real danger.

Unfortunate, really. If there were a way to harness the de rigeur bloodthirst of winger young into something that were actually conducive to the public interest - such as fighting in the wars they all get so excited about, or just not committing treason - the world might be a better place. Of course, I would consider it in the public interest if ~~people~~ unhinged traitors who publish blogs titled "Crush Liberalism" came back home with a flag on their face, but that's just my presently irked self.

Repugs: killing Americans is A-OK

2006-06-30T12:03:00.000-04:00

Republican treason is a fact of life. From the Reagan campaign's negotiations with Iran to keep the hostages until after the 1980 election to George Bush senior's sales of chemical weapons to Saddam Hussein to the chimp's illegal and deceptive war of choice, the Plame affair, Iran-Contra, even support for the Axis in World War II, the list just goes on and on. Treason is in their blood, it seems.

The newest iteration is nothing short of scandalous; I am referring, of course, to the repug demand that amnesty be extended to Iraqi insurgents that are in Iraqi jails for killing Americans.

Under the headline "Amnesty for Insurgents? Yes.", Charles Krauthammer writes:

The Bush administration is firmly behind this policy. And who is sniping at it from the sidelines? Democratic senators, fresh from having voted for troop withdrawal rather than victory as our objective in Iraq, led the charge to denounce any sort of amnesty for insurgents who had killed Americans.

Apart from the hypocrisy, there is the bizarre logic: Is the best way to honor the sacrifice of those who have died in Iraq to decree an impotent, completely hypothetical policy of retribution? (Who, after all, is going to bell the cat?) Or is it to create conditions for precisely the kind of Iraq -- self-governing and internally reconciled -- that these courageous soldiers were fighting for?

Yes, the best way to honor those killed in Bush's war is to set free the very people who killed them, hoping they won't do it again. Which, likely, they will, because this desperate gambit doesn't contain any safeguards to assure good behavior; in terms of competent negotiation, this is the approach we know so well from hurricane Katrina, the Dubai ports deal and other examples of repug government.

Repugs want to go into November with some sign of success in Iraq. To achieve that, they are putting American lives at risk. Par for the course.

Voting with our eyeballs

2006-06-29T22:29:00.000-04:00

Very interesting. While the right is currently deceiving itself into thinking it is ascendant (the polls give no indication of either a sustained Bush bounce or of a repug bounce, by the way), the reverse seems to be true. In the marketplace of ideas, the left, America, or whatever you prefer to call the forces of freedom, is winning.

During the last three months, AnnCoulter.com is down 10%. Fox News down 13%. RushLimbaugh.com down 18%. The Drudge Report down 21%. Townhall.com down 24%. Washington Times’ website down 27%. And BillOreilly.com down 40%.

Could it be that Internet users are getting tired of political sites in general? Maybe so. But http://moveon.org is up 13 percent in the same period. Delicious! thought I. But I’ve always got to do my own research. So I headed over to make sure there was no cherry-picking going on. What did I find?

Focus on the Family down 18%. Free Republic down 19%. Hugh Hewitt down 21%. World Net Daily down 23%. Michelle Malkin down 30%. The Weekly Standard down 37%. Pajamas Media down 39%.

Raw Story up 6%. Center for American Progress up 12%. Crooks and Liars up 17%. Think Progress up 41%.

Kos is down 10%, one might add; but that could be because of the YearlyKos convention, who knows? And there's always Faux "News", right? Wrong. They're in freefall as well.

Now Bill [O'Really] has to swallow the difficult truth that Keith's [Olbermann] viewership is growing while his own is shrinking. In the key demographic group of viewers aged 25-54, the Total Day ratings for MSNBC rose 47% while Fox declined -13%.

Fox's Prime Time erosion was even greater at -21%. In fact, in every hour in the daypart, from 3:00pm till midnight, Fox numbers were lower. This is a distinction that only Fox, of the five nets surveyed, was able to achieve.

The largest decline was suffered by Greta Van Susteran's On The Record (-22%), followed closely by O'Reilly (-21%). Hannity & What's His Name took the Bronze (-17%). Of the MSNBC programs opposite those losers, Olbermann's Countdown was the biggest gainer (55%), which I'm sure doesn't bother O'Reilly at all.

I'll say it again: the nightmare is not over yet. But change is in the air and more importantly, on the ground.

Repug operative convicted of child molestation

2006-06-29T09:04:00.000-04:00

Another triumph of family values and clean living, via Yahoo!:

EDINBURG, Texas - A political consultant whose company was behind a television ad accusing the Clinton-Gore administration of giving away nuclear technology was convicted of child molestation charges.

A jury deliberated almost two days before convicting Carey Lee Cramer, 44, of aggravated sexual assault of a child, two counts of indecency with a child by contact and one count of indecency with a child by exposure. He was cleared of nine other charges Tuesday.

The sentencing phase of the trial was scheduled to begin Wednesday. Cramer faces up to 149 years in prison.

Cramer, who now lives in Tucson, Ariz., gained national attention during the 2000 presidential election when his company created the ad that accused the administration of giving nuclear technology to China in exchange for campaign contributions.

The spot was modeled after the infamous 1964 "Daisy" nuclear scare commercial and was pulled after a barrage of Democratic criticism.

Cramer, who had been free on bond since his 2005 arrest, was taken into custody on a $4 million appeal bond after the verdict, The (McAllen) Monitor reported in its Wednesday editions.

Two girls accused Cramer of sexual assault, alleging it occurred in the past eight years. Defense attorney Charles Banker argued the allegations were invented by Cramer's ex-wife to help her case in a custody battle.

When are people finally going to realize that whenever an R starts talking about morals is a good time to hide the children and the family silver?

Tom Tancredo: Flagburner

2006-06-28T16:59:00.000-04:00

How do you get a flag to look like that? Hint: it ain't Photoshop, that much I can tell you.

We may need a flag-burning amendment to protect it from repugs, intent as they seemingly are on treason.

Maglalang endorses Lieberman

2006-06-28T15:52:00.000-04:00

Disgusting right-wing slag Michelle ~~Maglalang~~ Malkin goes all out for Joe Lieberman; and in a two-fer bonus, first, she describes DailyKos as the "unhinged nutroots" (yes, coming from her), and second, without apparent irony, calls her show "Hot Air".

Heh.

Flag-burning amendment fails

2006-06-27T20:32:00.000-04:00

Well, today we got another example in repuke government and Democratic cowardice. The United States Senate, having nothing better to do, just spent two days debating a "flag desecration amendment".

The amendment - "The Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States" - failed, 66 to 34. Sixty-six Senators felt that two days of debate were the appropriate response to the epidemic of flag-burning; there were thirteen reported incidents last year, four so far this year.

It's not as if we have an energy crisis, a budget crisis, a healthcare crisis or a war going on, of course. One day, when the history books about our decline and fall have been written, it will be nonsense like this over which our descendants will disbelievingly shake their heads.

El Rushbo caught with illegal drugs, again

2006-06-27T09:04:00.000-04:00

I know, how tedious; El Super Grande Nazi Fatass Rushbo just got caught with illegal drugs - again.

Limbaugh was returning on a flight from the Dominican Republic when customs officials found a Viagra prescription that did not bear his name. Instead, the bottle of pills had the names of two doctors on it, according to the Palm Beach Sheriff's Office.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents examined the 55-year-old's luggage after his private plane landed at the airport from the Dominican Republic. The matter was then turned over to the Sheriff's Office. Investigators seized the drugs - used to treat erectile dysfunction - from Limbaugh.

Mind you, El Grande Fatass Nazi is not currently ensconced in the loving bonds of traditional marriage, having just gotten his third divorce. So why would he need the Pfizer Riser anyway - especially in the Dominican Republic?

Going down to the islands where the whores are cheaper and more accomodating, eh, Limbarf? Is that what those family value are all about?

Update: And who just took Pig Limpdick's case? Why, the ACLU, of course.

Update 2: It appears that Pig Limpdick has joined the Stalin the Shark family of commenters. No way. Fuck off, pig.

The Katrina Method

2006-06-26T11:39:00.000-04:00

Remember Afghanistan? That's the war where, supposedly, Bush had not completely and miserably failed.

However, the team that brought you Katrina, "Mission Accomplished", "Last throes", Haditha, Abu Ghraib, Medicare Part D, Social Security Privatization and Samuel Alito has been busy in Kabul, and it shows:

Many Afghans and some foreign supporters say they are losing faith in President Hamid Karzai's government, which is besieged by an escalating insurgency and endemic corruption and is unable to protect or administer large areas of the country.[...]

In markets and mosques across the country, Afghans are focusing discontent on Karzai, 48, the amiable, Western-backed leader whose landslide election in October 2004 appeared to anchor a process of political reconstruction and stability that began with the U.S.-led overthrow of the Taliban in late 2001.

Since then, public confidence in his leadership has soured with reports of highway police robbing travelers, government jobs sold to the highest bidder, drug traffic booming and aid money vanishing. There are no public opinion polls here, but several dozen Afghan and foreign observers expressed similar views.

Since April, an aggressive Taliban offensive across the south has resulted in the deaths of 600 people. In the past four days, more than 150 insurgents have been reported killed in battles with Afghan and foreign troops in the southern provinces of Uruzgan and Kandahar.

Late last month, a riot in Kabul, in which protesters attacked foreign facilities for hours as police vanished from the streets, raised concerns among many people here that the government is too weak to protect even the capital.

"In the past year, security has gotten worse and worse," said Sayed Tamin, 42, a tailor in a working-class Kabul district who was hemming a pair of pants. "The Taliban have been able to come back because the government is weak. There is corruption in high places and nothing for the poor. People are very, very disappointed."

Repugs: if they touch something, it falls apart.

Perverse pro-pigeon propaganda

2006-06-26T09:53:00.000-04:00

The New York Times prints this today:

IT should come as little surprise to Americans, especially those living in cities, that Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London, has declared war on the pigeons of Trafalgar Square. Mr. Livingstone's primitive and cruel tactics — forced starvation and the use of raptors — are all too common, particularly in our own country.

Damn right. And we need more of these tactics.

Take New York City, where over the years there have been numerous reports of the poisoning and purposeful torture of pigeons. And while the city has thankfully outlawed the use of avicides, it has turned a blind eye to the weekly poaching of thousands of pigeons, which are then sold to Pennsylvania gun clubs for use as live target practice. Last year, to much fanfare, one New Yorker even came out with a book that illustrates 101 ways to murder a pigeon.

Leading the way, as always. Pigeons are detestable creatures deserving only of buckshot.

One thing alone leads to an overpopulation of pigeons: overfeeding. Pigeons breed only when food is available. When food is overly bountiful, as was the case at Trafalgar Square for many years, pigeons will mate as often as possible — up to six times a year. When food is scarce, mating drops drastically as the flock anxiously forages for food.

Although some view pigeons as "rats with wings," we should keep in mind that they also bring joy to millions who appreciate how they animate our cities. After all, it's not Lord Nelson's column that attracts flocks of tourists from around the world to Trafalgar Square; it's the birds. When the socialite Paris Hilton was fined for feeding London's pigeons not long ago, she claimed that she enjoyed feeding the pigeons at Trafalgar even more than shopping.

Look, if the "see Trafalgar for the pigeons" theory were true, people would be flocking to every landfill in London and New York. But they don't. As to Miz Hilton, her familiarity with those winged sluts of the air probably stems from their shared habits of fucking in public and carrying disease.

Repugs prepare to Cut and Run

2006-06-25T11:22:00.000-04:00

Ha Ha Ha!

Remember how Democrats were called cowards, oh, like, yesterday, for suggesting an exit and withdrawal strategy from Iraq?

Remember how that was called 'cutting and running', 'giving information to the enemy', blah blah traitorous blah?

Well, now we learn that the human vomit at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue has already approved a similar plan.

The United States has 14 combat brigades in Iraq, plus many other support troops. Under the plan, the United States would shrink this force to 12 combat brigades in September. This would be done by not replacing 2 brigades that are scheduled to be withdrawn.

A combat brigade would be kept on alert in Kuwait or elsewhere in case American commanders needed to augment their forces to deal with a crisis. Another brigade would be kept on a lesser state of alert elsewhere in the world, but still prepared to deploy quickly. As a result of these arrangements, the plan to bring the combat force down to 12 active brigades in Iraq is being called 12-1-1.

Further reductions might be made by the end of the year. By December, the number of American combat brigades in Iraq would be 10 to 12. As with the September reduction, a brigade would be kept on alert and another brigade would be ready to deploy.

According to the projections in General Casey's briefing, the number of combat brigades would shrink to seven to eight by June 2007 and finally to five to six by December 2007.

At the same time, the number of bases in Iraq would decline as American forces consolidated. By the end of the year the number of bases would shrink to 57 from the current 69. By June 2007, there would be 30 bases, and by December 2007 there would be only 11.

So basically, Bush, cut and run America-hating terrorist-appeasing coward that he is, has just adopted the Democratic plan.

Wonder how quickly the bootlickers will adopt this as the only possible course? Some heads must be exploding right now.

[Update]: the Iraqis are demanding a timetable as well. Included in that proposal is an amnesty for insurgents who have killed US troops; a position repug Senators embrace. Perhaps they do need fresh blood daily to keep Cheney alive.

Guzzling the Kool-Aid: Global Warming

2006-06-24T17:47:00.000-04:00

With apologies to the Roseville Conservative, I'll be adopting the Kool-Aid Man. Today's Kool-Aid Award goes to the entire right wing, specifically the types who are arguing that the newly released NAS report on global warming is somehow ambiguous.

From Electricity Daily (!):

The NAS report casts serious doubts on the conventional scientific wisdom of man-made climate warming, particularly as described by political advocates such as former Vice President Al Gore. … Those who argue that solar activity drives global climate, not CO2, will take heart.

In fact, the report specifically states that “human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming.” Moreover, as ThinkProgress noted, the report factored in the natural variations in temperature — volcanic activity, solar radiation, etc. — and concluded that these can’t explain the warming trend.

So there you have it, gentlemen: a report commissioned by a repug, Sherwood Boehlert, from the National Academy of Sciences, delivered to the United States Congress, that tells you that global warming is real and happening right now. The question today is whether you'll continue to make fools of yourselves, as you have been for the last three decades, by saying it just ain't so, or help the rest of us come up with colutions. And anyone who denies global warming going forward must be considered guilty of guzzling the electric Kool-Aid acid.

Another repug failure

2006-06-23T20:52:00.000-04:00

Back in 2004 - I remember the day very well - as one George (the chimp) was seeking election, another George (Pataki) did a favor for his little friend. A pleasant ceremony was held at the World Trade Center site, songs were sung, babies kissed, speeches given, the dead of 9/11 crassly exploited, and a cornerstone laid.

All for show. The Times reports that the cornerstone was quietly removed from the site and returned to its quarry, where it will stay until it's needed.

Repugs do great photo-ops, I'll grant that hands down. Other than that? They're not even able to piss a hole in the snow.

Contemporary class warfare

2006-06-23T08:53:00.000-04:00

What does class warfare look like in the days of extreme-right rule?

For starters, it means that Congress will try to abolish the inheritance tax, at a cost to you of $760 billion over a decade. That cost consists of $600 billion that would need to be borrowed to make up the revenue shortfall, and another $160 billion in interest. The public benefit from abolishing this tax would acrue to the 2% of estates that actually pay it; the cost, of course, would be borne by all taxpayers. That's what used to be called "wealth transfer", only now, the wealth is being transferred from the bottom 98% to the top 2%.

If the estate tax had not existed, it is a safe bet that entities such as the Ford Foundation, the Carnegie Libraries, MoMA, the New York Public Library, the Gates Foundation, and so on, would not exist, or only in severely straitened circumstances.

On the other hand, our bosses in Congress decided that people who work for the minimum wage don't need a raise, even though they haven't gotten one since 1997. Apparently, we can afford a $600 billion giveaway to the Walton and Hilton families, but we can't afford to pay the Lopez and Smith families more than $10,700 per annum.

As with the estate tax, there is much disinformation being thrown about in reference to the minimum wage. Some people say it kills jobs. At an individual level, of course there are examples of this. But overall, states that have raised their minimum wage have seen higher job growth than those that have not. This because, in direct contraditction of sacred reactionary trickle-down dogma, it really is true that poor people tend to spend any extra money, thereby creating new jobs.

The new class warfare doesn't have anything to do with peasants storming palaces. Rather, the aristocrats are burning down the hovels, with the willing help of the peasants.

About those WMDs

2006-06-22T17:47:00.000-04:00

There's an old saying that if something is too good to be true, then it probably isn't. An updated version for these times should be that if Rick Santorum says something, it most definitely is not true.

Case in point is the story currently causing howls of joy all over the wingersphere: Little Ricky's story of the Iraqi WMDs.

Today, Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) and Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI) held a press conference and announced "we have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq." Santorum and Hoekstra are hyping a document that describes degraded, pre-1991 munitions that were already acknowledged by the White House’s Iraq Survey Group and dismissed.

Fox News' Jim Angle contacted the Defense Department who quickly disavowed Santorum and Hoekstra's claims. A Defense Department official told Angle flatly that the munitions hyped by Santorum and Hoekstra are "not the WMD's for which this country went to war."

Looks like Santorum is as much of a liar as is the chimp-king of darkness himself. Your tax dollars at work.

An encyclopedia for a dying movement

2006-06-21T10:09:00.000-04:00

[Conservatives] do not, with some isolated and some ecclesiastical exceptions, express themselves in ideas but only in action or in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas.

- Lionel Trilling

They haven't really improved much in the fifty years since that quote was spoken, but now, as per the NYT, the people that call themselves conservative can at least point to a thick volume that claims to offer an exhausting look at what passes for thought on the right side of the aisle.

The partisans are pleased. "Feel the heft of it", to quote Lee Edwards, a former aide to the very dead and very right-wing Barry Goldwater, seemingly confusing two meanings of substance, or perhaps quoting Victorian pornography, which would seem apt.

The simple fact is that conservatism does not have a lot of ideas, and I would surmise that the 'heft' noted above stems in large part from explaining the contradictions between those ideas it does have. I'd add that I consider the people who call themselves conservatives these days to be empty shams, because they're not conservative in any sense of the word, and that because of this, what calls itself the 'conservative movement' is dying, but that's another post. So back to those vaunted ideas.

Essentially, cons are against big government, except when they're for it – as when big government builds prisons, subsidizes donors, investigates ovaries and develops a prurient interest in consensual sex. That kind of big government is fine, as is the kind that sells national parks to oil companies.

Cons are for values – in other people. They themselves are, due perhaps to the get-out-of-jail-free card that comes with advocating for "standards", absolved from living up to them.

Cons support a lot of things. The troops, freedom, religious liberty, the American family, the rule of law, mom, a balanced budget, apple pie, you get the idea. The only problem is that this support is very much open to revision as expediency demands; their support of the troops doesn't include, say, getting them the hell out of a god-damn shooting war. They love the family; there had just better not be any ass-fucking going on between members of any family. And so on.

It's interesting to me that this encyclopedia is coming out at this moment in time – because the movement it describes has run out of ideas, if indeed it ever had any. Bush-Coulter conservatism is withering at this writing, not least because it does not work and makes no sense.

That's not going to change with a single volume, no matter how hefty.

"It's just a number" redux

2006-06-20T16:55:00.000-04:00

Two US soldiers in Iraq were kidnapped and tortured to death.

No need for outrage, though, because at 2,506, hey, they're just numbers. Stay the course; things are going remarkably well, obviously.

Language redundancy

2006-06-20T15:39:00.000-04:00

It's an extravagance on the part of the English language that it contains simultaneously words such as 'cerulean' and 'azure', when 'blue' would be quite enough.

In the same vein, I'd suggest that the words 'criminal' and 'republican' are simply variations on a theme and in need of some verbal economy.

This not least because, for all the pious mouth music about values and family and god and all that good stuff, they just can't seem to stop getting convicted of felonies.

Cynical hypocrites, or manipulative, two-faced gasbags?

Yes.

Republican terrorism - now in cartoons!

2006-06-19T13:37:00.000-04:00

The problem with balance

2006-06-17T08:25:00.000-04:00

We Anglo-Saxons - by which I mean the citizens of the English-speaking countries in general, regardless of ethnicity - are culturally pre-disposed to fairness and balance, "two sides to every story", and all that.

This in turn leaves us ill-prepared for scenarios when there really is only one correct side. Take global warming, for example: there is no doubt in the scientific community that it is happening, that the cause is manmade emissions, and that to arrest and reverse this trend, such emissions must be cut. Of course there is a contrarian view, paid for by the petroleum industry; it just has no merit. Balancing these two views against each other may satisfy the rabid right, which demands equal time with truth for its dogma; but does this serve to educate the public, when the facts are clear and are only muddled by "balance"?

We don't need more balanced reporting; we need more accurate reporting.

[Update]: Check out this post by David Sirota on Kos to see what the problem is when you balance facts with fiction.

Moral values update

2006-06-16T21:47:00.000-04:00

...Randy Graf, R-AZ, has an interesting campaign manager; he was convicted of corruption of minors in 1995. In short, a babyfucker.

A man convicted of "corruption of minors" after being accused of having sex with two teenage girls is working as the campaign manager for a Republican candidate for Congress in Arizona, according to documents obtained by ABC News.

Steve Aiken, a former Quakertown, Pa. police officer and self-proclaimed reverend, was convicted of two counts of corruption of a minor stemming from his 1995 sexual relationships with two teenage girls. He served almost two-and-a-half months at the Montgomery County Correctional Facility.

Aiken is listed as campaign manager for Randy Graf, a Republican in a five-way primary for the Congressional seat in Arizona's 8th district.

Aiken told ABC News he had been "falsely accused and convicted" of the two misdemeanor counts.

Aiken says the candidate, Graf, was fully aware of the conviction when he was hired as campaign manager.

"What he did was no more serious than providing a teenager with beer," Graf told ABC News. "I believe Steve when he says he was falsely accused."

The "corruption of minor" violations in Pennsylvania did not require Aiken to register as a sex offender.

Aiken advertises himself on his website as a leader of conservative thought, displaying photos of himself with leading Republicans including former President George H.W. Bush, Tom Delay, and Pat Buchanan.

Since his conviction, Aiken also has worked as a spokesperson for the Traditional Values Coalition, a Washington lobby group that represents over 43,000 churches. A spokesman for the Coalition would only say, "He is no longer with us."

It's funny, isn't it, how the loudest proclaimers of, cough, "values", tend to be the kind of guys that fondle the breasts of very young girls at Bible camp.

"It's just a number"

2006-06-15T21:38:00.000-04:00

Asked about today's milestone of the 2,500th victim of Bush's war, White House spokesman Tony Snow replied "It's just a number".

Well, no, actually, that's 2,500 lives snuffed out over a lie , a grudge and some fever dreams of empire.

And there's your 'party of moral values' right there, mocking the deaths of other people's children; because the wealthy, fat and arrogant Beltway elite that rules us these days definitely isn't going to get its Guccis dirty in a hellhole like Iraq, or take its kids out of their legacy admissions to Andover, Yale and Harvard to do poor people's work.

Republicans: only a dead GI is a good GI

2006-06-15T14:51:00.000-04:00

In a newly leaked memo, Abramoff buddy John Boehner, chief of the House forces of darkness, reveals the position of the dark side in the current debate on Iraq.

In short, they think that their little caper hasn't produced enough bodies yet; presumably, they need a constant supply of fresh blood to keep Dick Cheney alive, or something like that.

Hence, the forces of darkness wish to continue on their present course - yes, that would be the one that 68% of Americans oppose.

The interesting thing about this debate is that it reveals, again, the full depths of R depravity. In theory, war debates should be about the best interest of the country; but for the traitorous degenerates that rule in Washington these days, as Ann Coulter recently demonstrated, nothing is above being made into partisanship. Hence, this is yet another opportunity for the party of treason to pretend that it owns the flag. It will be interesting to see if that works out, considering that two thirds of the country don't want to 'stay the course'.

Selling you out

2006-06-15T08:28:00.000-04:00

Every once in a while, a bill erupts from the bowels of the Congress that lays out, with crystalline clarity, what the priorities of our republican masters are. Case in point: the Financial Data Protection Act of 2006.

Several states, including New York and California, allow you to pre-emptively freeze your credit in case of identity theft. This new bill, heavily promoted by the financial services industry, overrules those state laws and requires that you provide proof - such as a police report, which of course you must file first - of an actual criminal act committed by identity thieves before you can freeze your credit. Of course, this also makes you financially liable for that first criminal act and for any subsequent ones befoe the freeze; better hope your local precinct works fast.

But it gets even better.

The bill overrides all existing state consumer protection laws, neuters the states' Attorneys General, and federalizes data security standards. These existing laws, on the books in 29 states, require companies to notify you if there is a security breach that results in the compromise of your data - such as when, for example, the military-republican complex recently lost 26 million veterans' information. Instead, the bill re-assigns responsibility for enforcement of data security to the Treasury Department, which is not equipped to handle this task. Given that the bill allots only $1,000,000 for implementation, that seems unlikely to change.

The bill's sponsor - the legislation number is HR 3997 - is one Steven La Tourette, republican of Ohio (Picture above). La Tourette has received $129,500 from the financial sector in the 2005/2006 cycle alone.

Bills like this - HR 3997 neatly ties in with the new bankruptcy law passed last year in terms of screwing consumers, by the way - are why I'm almost glad when the Congress spends time debating, say, flag-burning. That keeps them from doing real damage, as with this bill.

American revolution sweeps away SBC leadership

2006-06-14T22:48:00.000-04:00

Now here's a bit of really good news.

The extremist, ~~pro-republican~~ anti-American leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention has been defeated by that body's moderate faction.

In a major upset, outsider Frank Page of South Carolina was elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention over two candidates closely tied to the SBC's conservative power structure.

Page, who described his election as a victory for grassroots Baptists, was elected with 50.48 percent of the vote on a first ballot against Arkansas pastor Ronnie Floyd and Tennessee pastor Jerry Sutton, both high-profile leaders in the conservative-dominated SBC.

Page's election signaled a defeat for the SBC's conservative powerbrokers, who have hand-picked all but one president since 1979. Only Orlando pastor Jim Henry, elected in 1994 and 1995, lacked the endorsement of the SBC's conservative leaders.

Say what you will, but the country has had enough of this crap.

Yes, he is an ass

2006-06-14T14:18:00.000-04:00

From DailyKos comes this exhange:

Today, at a presser, this exchange happened with Peter Wallsten of the Los Angeles Times:

Bush: You gonna ask your question with shades on?
Wallsten: Yes...
Bush: But there's no sun out here.
Wallsten: It depends on your perspective.
Bush: Touché.

Wallsten is blind.

Fitzmas delayed

2006-06-13T10:24:00.000-04:00

Hmmm. The Washington Post reports that Karl Rove is unlikely to be charged in the political outing of a CIA agent.

That's really odd, because we know that Karl Rove did it. And contrary to what wingnuttia maintains, Plame was undercover at the time, working on Iranian weapons of mass destruction, so yes, Virginia, national security was damaged for political reasons.

Did Rove cut a deal with prosecutors of some kind? You don't just appear before a grand jury five times without there being something majorly amiss. Or was Fitzgerald pressured? Does the investigation go so far that the prosecutors made a political decision to not proceed?

We await further developments. There are so many loose ends in this case, notably with the upcoming trial of Scooter Libby, that my gut tells me we will see more.

Update: the Wilsons will now sue Rove in civil court. It's time for some subpoenas to be issued.