June 2004 Archives

Via the The Talking Heads Not to be confused with talking about heads.

Ah, I remember it like it was only yesterday. Everything getting better and better. All the stuff that the Media was ignoring, focussing only on the bad. My, how facts have changed. . .

Calling Bush a Liar

Even if a spade technically is a spade, the liberals calling a spade a spade is morally equivalent to taking a real spade and beating someone across the face and neck with it.

Strains from Iraq and Afghanistan prompt Army to dip deeper into reserve pool

Army officials said Tuesday that about 5,600 former soldiers mostly people who recently left the service and have up-to-date skills in military policing, engineering, logistics, medicine or transportation will be assigned to National Guard and Reserve units starting in July.

Many of them will find themselves in Iraq by the end of the year.

They are in a rarely used pool of reservists known as the Individual Ready Reserve. They are distinct from the National Guard and Reserve because they do not perform regularly scheduled training and are not paid as reservists, but they are eligible to be recalled in an emergency because their active duty hitches did not complete the service obligation in their enlistment contracts.

The Army planned to announce details of the call-up on Wednesday.

It is the first sizable activation of the Individual Ready Reserve since the 1991 Gulf War, though several hundred people have voluntarily returned to service since the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.

Just in case you missed it. . .

Cheney, who visited both clubhouses after batting practice, watched part of the game from the box of Yankees owner George Steinbrenner and part from a first-row seat next to the Yankees dugout, where he sat between New York Gov. George Pataki and former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Cheney was booed when he was shown on the right-field videoboard during the seventh-inning stretch.

Do you think it's all some sort of Karl Rove psycho drama? Are we just being played so that we'll all sigh with relief when Cheney declines the VP slot "for health reasons" and GW rides to election on the tidal wave of good will the act engenders? I mean, how hard would it for Cheney to fake a heart attack and save face while dropping out of the race "for the good of the party".

Personally, I think they could have gotten away with this if they'd have played it in January. But now the stink of Cheney is getting such that Yankee fans are starting to get fed up with it. I guess the test I'd like to see run is for people to show Cheney's picture at a Nascar race. If they boo, the guy is toast the very next day.

It seems to me that this should be easily faked with today's technology. Just get a clip of Cheney in a crowd and doctor it so it looks like the current audience. Heck, someone could slip that in as a political ad, couldn't they?

It's a question that I don't think anyone in the White house wants answered at this point. And the longer they string it on, I think the higher the probability that people will soon be parading in the street, burning Cheney in effigy at their convention. I guess they can always use pictures of people doing this in their new ads - Hitler is going to get old after a while.

I can just imagine what it's like around the White House these days. No wonder Cheney is off in his secret, previously undisclosed location. But I bet that makes it all the more creepier when he's around. He's probably like the specter of death when he shows up. People disappear whenever he comes by - never to be seen again. Strange orders are given, and whole countries disappear a couple of days later.

Really, he's like Death. He has become destroyer of worlds.

In any event, all I'm saying is that I think it would probably be really creepy to work for/with Cheney, even if the guy was more popular than the Olsen twins.

So when he starts accumulating the stench of failure around him, you know it's going to have to be pretty damn strong before they chuck the guy over board. I think the metric is probably the level of stink raised by the vomit of carrion eating birds, like vultures*. Decomposing, rotted, long dead flesh in the process of being digested. That's the level of stench likely required to dislodge the man from the VP slot.

And sure. The relief that one feels upon being removed from such a unbelievably disgusting stench is probably comparable to a religious experience. But it doesn't necessarily follow that voters - especially the less than 20 % of us that can still be convinced - will be overwhelmingly voting for the party where the stink emanated in the first place.

Maybe they will, but I'll personally be stunned.

_______________
*Vultures throw up as a defense mechanism. Nothing - and I do mean nothing - will ever go near a vulture after having the vulture vomit on them. The unfortunate target of the vomit will remember that smell for a very, very long time.

Hide this, Bill O'Reilly

In a column last week on "Fahrenheit 9/11," I paired political lefty Michael Moore with media righty Bill O'Reilly as "ideological thugs who play loose with the facts while fostering hatred in an increasingly polarized country."

I thought I was insulting Moore, but it was O'Reilly who got mad. He wanted me to appear on his radio show and defend myself. When I didn't, he told his listeners, "I guess old Jack couldn't reach the phone while hiding under his desk."

This amused me.

<snip>

Here's what I'm willing to do, right here, in my medium of newsprint. I'll serve up some O'Reilly untruths, courtesy of the media watchdog group Media Matters for America (www.mediamatters.org), and you disprove them - in your column, or on your radio or TV show, wherever the truth wants out.

I'm sure Media Matters will be watching.

And boy oh boy, do these guys have thin skins. If Moore can take all the fat jokes, you think O'Reilly can take being called on his lies every once and a while.

A rather sobering look at the morphing of the Iraqi resistance into a new Jihad.

Meet The New Jihad

While the U.S. hopes that the fighting and dying in Iraq will begin to dissipate after the hand-off of power to an interim Iraqi government this week, militants like these sheltered outside Fallujah are just as determined to wreak more carnage. The ruthlessness of the insurgents was evident across Iraq last week, as guerrillas launched a wave of attacks that were stunning in their scale and coordination. In a single day, insurgents attacked in six cities, blowing up police stations, seizing government buildings, ambushing U.S. forces and killing more than 100 people, including three American soldiers. Though U.S. commanders continue to say they can contain the insurgency, Iyad Allawi, the incoming Iraqi Prime Minister, said he may impose martial law once he takes office, a move that would at least temporarily suspend many of the liberties the U.S. ostensibly intended to bring to Iraq. "We were expecting such an escalation, and we will witness more in the next few weeks," Allawi said. "We will deal with it, and we will crush it."

The insurgents have no intention of laying down their arms. Indeed, the nature of the insurgency in Iraq is fundamentally changing. Time reported last fall that the insurgency was being led by members of the former Baathist regime, who were using guerrilla tactics in an effort to drive out foreign occupiers and reclaim power. But a Time investigation of the insurgency today—based on meetings with insurgents, tribal leaders, religious clerics and U.S. intelligence officials—reveals that the militants are turning the resistance into an international jihadist movement. Foreign fighters, once estranged from homegrown guerrilla groups, are now integrated as cells or complete units with Iraqis. Many of Saddam's former secret police and Republican Guard officers, who two years ago were drinking and whoring, no longer dare even smoke cigarettes. They are fighting for Allah, they say, and true jihadis reject such earthly indulgences.

Their goal now, say the militants interviewed, is broader than simply forcing the U.S. to leave. They want to transform Iraq into what Afghanistan was in the 1980s: a training ground for young jihadists who will form the next wave of recruits for al-Qaeda and like-minded groups. Nearly all the new jihadist groups claim to be receiving inspiration, if not commands, from Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, the suspected al-Qaeda operative who the U.S. believes has masterminded the insurgency's embrace of terrorism. Al-Zarqawi's group kidnapped three Turkish workers last Saturday and threatened to behead them within 72 hours unless Turkish companies withdrew from Iraq. And now the conditions are ripening for the insurgents to turn their armed struggle into a political movement that aims to exploit the upheaval and turn parts of Iraq into Taliban-style fiefdoms.

Sorry Jeff, but I think Gibblets does a better job at being you than you do . . .

So instead of making a clever, funny documentary promoting conservative views I have decided to make a documentary that is specifically limited to attacking one guy with no power over my life whose opinions piss me off. I call it "Michael Moore the Fat Hateful Traitor Versus Giblets the Beautiful Loving Patriot." In it I expose the following reasons to hate Michael Moore:

He is fat!

He lies!*

Again, he is fat!

He is rich - but being a liberal you'd think he was poor!

He has a very big ego!

He is so fat! I mean, whew! We are talkin' like orca fat.

He is not Rush Limbaugh!

Giblets is pretty happy with the product. But it has gotten him thinking, what if Moore follows up with an anti-anti-documentary documentary documentary, such as "Giblets is a Short Bitter Little Weasel Who Lies About Me" (which would all be lies, Giblets is quite tall, handsome, and benevolent to all living things)? Giblets would have to counter with a good solid anti-anti-anti-documentary documentary documentary documentary, probably something like "Michael Moore is a Horrible Pig Who Has Lied About Giblets's Documentary About His Documentary."

The other tactic was to make a pro-anti-Moore-person documentary, something like "Ann Coulter is a Beautiful Human Being." But after fact-checking we had to change the name to "Ann Coulter is Not Actually a Poisonous Child-Eating Reptile," which didn't test as well.

But hey, that's just me.

Families, Deep in Debt, Facing Pain of Growing Interest Rates

With the Federal Reserve about to raise interest rates for the first time in four years, Joyce Diffenderfer is beginning to wonder how she and her husband, Curtis, will deflect the growing cost of their $16,000 in credit card debt.

Not that her concern is a pressing issue yet; it is more like a fire drill in anticipation of a fire that she is still not convinced will occur. The Diffenderfers figure that a modest rate increase would initially add only $35 to their monthly card payments, which now total more than $600. Still, they have run out of ways to sidestep the cost of borrowing, and if the rates keep rising, as the Fed's leaders suggest they will, then the only alternative, Mrs. Diffenderfer said, will be to seriously cut family spending.

The Diffenderfers are among the millions of American families who rode the recent wave of low interest rates to home ownership and the rapid accumulation of debt, and now they must cope as rates begin to swing upward. The process is almost certain to begin at a meeting of the Fed's policy makers on Tuesday and Wednesday. They are widely expected to raise rates a quarter of a percentage point and follow that with similar increases periodically over the next 18 months.

Priceless.

Via Norman Greenbaum

When I die and they lay me to rest
Gonna go to the place that's the best
When I lay me down to die
Goin' up to the spirit in the sky
Goin' up to the spirit in the sky
That's where I'm gonna go when I die
When I die and they lay me to rest
Gonna go to the place that's the best

Prepare yourself you know it's a must
Gotta have a friend in Jesus
So you know that when you die
He's gonna recommend you
To the spirit in the sky
Gonna recommend you
To the spirit in the sky
That's where you're gonna go when you die
When you die and they lay you to rest
You're gonna go to the place that's the best

Never been a sinner I never sinned
I got a friend in Jesus
So you know that when I die
He's gonna set me up with
The spirit in the sky
Oh set me up with the spirit in the sky
That's where I'm gonna go when I die
When I die and they lay me to rest
I'm gonna go to the place that's the best
Go to the place that's the best

Since the standard is now set that anyone that can remotely connected to a politician actually speaks for that politician, ALF has come up with a short list for Bush.

The New York Post and others comparing Michael Moore to Nazi propagandists

Michael Savage calling Bill Clinton's book Mein Kampf

Bill O'Reilly calling Michael Moore, Al Franken, and liberal celebrities Nazis

Many, many Bush supporters calling Hillary Clinton Hitlery

Many Republicans comparing Bill Clinton to Hitler

Republicans comparing John Kerry to Hitler

Ralph Peters calling Howard Dean supporters "brownshirts"

Everything Ann Coulter has ever said

Grover Norquist comparing the estate tax to the Holocaust

Kathleen Parker endorsing the position that Democratic candidates should be lined up and shot

Rush Limbaugh comparing Dick Gephardt to the Gestapo for his health care proposals

Rush Limbaugh calling feminists "feminazis"

BTW, did anyone else find the fact that the Bush people found it necessary to add text declaring where the images they used in the ad came from as frickin' hillarious? I mean, what? They have to draw arrows and circles to indicate motion now? Doesn't this mean that they pretty much produced one of the single worst ads in the universe - i.e. they have to explain it. . .

ROFL!

Quiddity goes to see it and provides the review. I haven't seen it yet, but this seems to jibe with my own views and what I've heard about the film. To me, Moore has always seemed to have a narrow focus and does seems to miss a lot of other obvious stuff in pursuit of those narrow targets. Perhaps this is why he's so wildly successful and the more complicated arguments are not. It's easy to focus on oil and money. It's a bit harder to explain the utter insanity of Plan 9 From Outer Space^tm.

We watched the film yesterday and frankly, weren't impressed. For example, in the movie there is no mention whatsoever of PNAC (Project for the New American Century). The decision to invade Iraq pretty much "just happens". Also, Moore wastes valuable time with Oregon state troopers and folks in a tiny Virginia town - to make the point that the domestic security program of the administration is a mess. Also, despite critics raving about Moore's segment of Bush in a Florida elementary school on the day of the attack - it was poorly presented. In the film, all the viewers see are clips of Bush reading along with the class while timestamps appear on the bottom of the screen (e.g. 9:05, 9:09, ...) and that takes up a total of about 45 seconds. What Moore should have done is split the screen, run the entire seven minute period while the other Azaelf is footage of what was happening in New York at the same time. A truly missed opportunity.

Then there were the cheap shots of Bush, Cheney, Rice, and others getting made-up for the television cameras.

Finally, there was no solid thread throughout the movie. Or rather, there was a flimsy one: It's all about money and oil. While those are certainly elements in the mix of why the U.S. went to war, it misses the core reason for the policy: A revolutionary, radical ideology - one that disdains diplomacy and believes that brute force is all that's needed to transform the world.

Now that we've expressed our view, we still think that given the hopeless situation with the media, Moore's efforts are overall beneficial to the public discourse.

Not to be too hard on Amy Sulivan, but Norbizness has invented a clever new "shorter" form (well, at least it's new to me). In comments over at B³

Amy: Kerry must overcome his religious discomfort and mention God more often. He can do this without being a pandering, Pharsiee-an phony.

History: He has incorporated religious references numerous times, but always in good taste.

Amy: Phony it up, then! Damn! Do I have to spell it out? (or, in the alternative, Darn that Brooks!)

What's uncomfortable about Amy's world is that one can't be religious without being in your face religious. You gotta take a religious stand, man. You got to go out there and weave the lord into your political speach. A good while back, Roger Ebert had a great article about Horizontal vs. Vertical prayer which sums up my feelings nicely.

To choose an example from football, when my team needs a field goal to win and I think, ''Please, dear God, let them make it!''--that is vertical prayer. When, before the game, a group of fans joins hands and ''voluntarily'' recites the Lord's Prayer--that is horizontal prayer. It serves one of two purposes: to encourage me to join them, or to make me feel excluded.

Although some of the horizontal devout are sincere, others use this prayer as a device of recruitment or intimidation. If you are conspicuous in your refusal to go along, they may even turn and pray while holding you directly in their sights.

This simple insight about two kinds of prayer, which is beyond theological question, should bring a dead Azaelt to the obsession with prayer in public places. It doesn't, because the purpose of its supporters is political, not spiritual. Their faith is like Dial soap: Now that they use it, they wish everyone would. I grew up in an America where people of good breeding did not impose their religious convictions upon those they did not know very well. Now those manners have been discarded.

It's the politics of division. It's politics that we simply don't need in the Democratic party. Let the Republicans have these kind of politics. We need to be more inclusive than that. And that means that we don't go about praying horizontally here in the party.

And if that means pissing off some evangelicals who think that horizontal prayer is the most important issue to them - more important than, say, systematic torture or breaches of the constitution or the Occupation From Hell^sm - then I guess we'll just have to lose their vote.

Like a badly infected wound, the sticky pus continues to drip out. Michael has a nice analysis, making sure that we don't miss all the scoops by Dana Priest's latest peeling back of the onion of sanctioned torture and the crowning of the boy king.

Tortue Memo Enthusiastically Approved at Highest Levels; CIA Getting Cold Feet

And that royalism stuff about how if the President says it’s legal people who rely on that shouldn’t be prosecuted, and how Congress, even when approving or implementing treaties (“the supreme Law of the Land” - US Constitution) has no ability to in any way limit the full, plenary, unstoppable power of the President when acting as Commander in Chief? Well, all that was not just approved but demanded and applauded from the top:

A Justice Department official said Tuesday at a briefing that the [OLC] went “beyond what was asked for,” but other lawyers and administration officials said the memo was approved by the department’s criminal division and by the office of Attorney General John D. Ashcroft.

In addition, Timothy E. Flanigan — then deputy White House counsel — discussed a draft of the document with lawyers at the Office of Legal Counsel before it was finalized, the officials said. David S. Addington, Cheney’s counsel, also weighed in with remarks during at least one meeting he held with Justice lawyers involved with writing the opinion. He was particularly concerned, sources said, that the opinion include a clear-cut section on the president’s authority.

I'm with Ara on this one.

There seems to be quite a bit of explaining on the Right, here, here, and here, regarding why Hitler appears in the latest Bush ad. If you haven't seen the ad itself, you should wander over to the site and watch the Right pull Hitler out of their back pocket and start using him to beat Kerry over the head with it.

The funny thing is that there's probably only about 10 people on the earth who know the linkage of the Hitler images shown in the ad to the entries in a Moveon.org contest. Pretty much everyone else on the planet doesn't know, nor care about it. So instead of actually making a point that democrats are using Hitler to smear Bush, it comes off looking like Bush is using Hitler to smear the Democrats.

It's actually pretty hillarious to see this kind of thing. Bush is scraping the bottom of the barrell here, and quite frankly, the whole Right Wing of American Politics seems to becoming unhinged. Dredging up entries in a contest and using the image of Hitler in an actual campaign ad is beyond comprehension.

Oh well, I'm pretty sure that all this frothing at the mouth like a rapid pit bull will have the desired effect on the battle ground states - NOT! I mean, Hitler? In a Presidential campaign?

I think Ara has the best suggestion, though. I think the Republican convention should show more of Hitler throughout the festivities. Hitler in the morning, Hitler in the evening. Hitler all day long!

<just a little google bomb to lighten up the day>

All Hail Moore

I have consecrated Michael Moore as the spokesman of the liberals so that I may ridicule their positions by attacking this straw man rather than dealing with my own self doubts and rationalizations about President Bush.

Frank Rich seems to be taking the gloves off.

The Best Goebbels of All?

It will take more creativity than this for the administration to distract us from the 9/11 commission, which is refuting Mr. Ashcroft and company's absurd claims to pre-9/11 battle-readiness as firmly as it shot down Mr. Moore's account of the post-9/11 airlifting of bin Laden relatives. A lot is at stake in a re-election campaign. The latest ABC News/Washington Post poll finds that in just two months Mr. Bush has lost his entire 21-point advantage as the most-trusted leader in fighting terrorism; capturing Saddam can't give America a bye forever for failing to nab Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar and the anthrax perpetrators. Mr. Ashcroft's well-worn shtick also has its limits; his cases against presumed terrorists keep evaporating in and out of court. Meanwhile, just a week before the 9/11 commission staff reports were surfacing, the Capitol had to be evacuated when the Federal Aviation Agency failed to notify Washington air defense of a plane's approach in restricted air space during the heightened alert of the Reagan funeral.

If Hollywood had concocted that hapless scene — or imagined that more federal homeland security money would be lavished on protecting the citizens of Wyoming than those of New York — it would be a Will Ferrell vehicle. But as the 9/11 commission also reminds us, there's another, more inspiring movie to be drawn from 9/11: the story of the only people who actually fought the terrorists that day, those on United Flight 93. These passengers used in-flight phone calls to their families to figure out the big picture (including the World Trade Center) with no help from either the clueless White House or anyone else in government. They and the crew saved countless lives by preventing their hijacked plane from reaching its likely target of the Capitol or the White House.

Remember Todd Beamer and "Let's roll"? Don't expect the Bush administration to bring that up now. The real heroism under fire on United 93 only calls attention to the emptiness of the heroic poses Mr. Ashcroft strikes while celebrating his own terror-fighting prowess on TV. Those who find Michael Moore's propaganda hard to take can luxuriate in the knowledge that the only office he's likely ever to run for is Best Director. The idea that Mr. Ashcroft might be the guy standing between us and Armageddon, on the other hand, is already a reality and scarier than anything in "The Day After Tomorrow."

Sure glad we got this under control.

Consumers told not to worry as U.S. awaits mad cow test results

U.S. government and beef industry officials urged consumers Saturday not to worry about the safety of the meat supply as they await test results that will determine whether the United States has another case of mad cow disease.

The U.S. Agriculture Department announced Friday that an animal had tested positive for BSE on a quick screening test, which can give false results.

The USDA classified the result as "inconclusive" and sent the carcass to the USDA's National Veterinary Services Laboratories in Ames, Iowa, where more sophisticated tests will be carried out. Results should be available in four to seven days.

"The inconclusive result does not mean we have found another case of BSE in this country," said Dr. John Clifford, deputy administrator of the department's Animal and Plant Inspection Service. "Inconclusive results are a normal part of most screening tests."

Preach It, Brother

Not a constituency
You godless heathens
We will assimilate you

Winning hearts and minds with our strategy of strategies.

Iran police blame USA, UK for flow of Afghan drugs

Iran's police blamed Britain and the United States for bumper poppy crops in Afghanistan that are enflaming social problems in the Islamic Republic where more than 2 million people are drug addicts.

Iranian forces marked the U.N. International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking in Tehran on Saturday by blowing up a huge mound of seized drugs topped with a picture of a bat-like monster with blood-red eyes.

They chanted "Death to America" as the contraband exploded.

"We hold America and Britain responsible for this situation ... Americans are in charge of Afghanistan's security and Britons are responsible for fighting fight drugs there," said anti-narcotics commander Mehdi Abuee.

Iran is the main route for Afghan drugs heading west.

Iraqi Interim PM Offers Amnesty Olive Branch

We are drawing up plans to provide amnesty to Iraqis who supported the so-called resistance without committing crimes, while isolating the hardcore elements of terrorists and criminals," he wrote in the Independent on Sunday newspaper.

"The government will make a clear distinction between those Iraqis who have acted against the occupation out of a sense of desperation, and those foreign terrorist fundamentalists and criminals whose sole objective is to kill and maim innocent people and to see Iraq fail," he added.

An impossibility, wrapped in a contradiction, executed by a CIA stooge.

Phil Carter (another blog from the right side of the isle which you might want to add to your reading list) has directed me to a rather interesting critique of Bush as a "wartime" president, The Bush Record: The Millitary. Carter goes on to say that "I think this article hits every target it aims at, and does with the characteristic wonkish detail you expect from the National Journal." It really is a good article, and if one can actually get agreement like that from Carter that all the points made are solid, then it at least forms a common basis to discuss the Iraq war with those on the right.

The article starts off by clearly stating a few points that I think those on the Right side of this discussion should be accepting without argument. First, any president, even Gore, would have attacked Afghanistan. To say otherwise is really just pure propaganda that has everything to do with closing down debate and nothing to do with a constructive discussion about Iraq. Second, that Iraq was a war of choice, not a war called for as a response to 9/11. Third, regardless of the intentions, Bush is engaging in exactly the same kind of nation building that Clinton was ridiculed for - and campaigned against by Bush, himself. Combined with the fact that Iraq was a war of choice, it's completely unfair to say that Bush was "forced" into this kind of nation building. Especially since the last remaining rationale for the Iraq war is the "humanitarian" argument - i.e. bringing the flower of liberal democracy to the middle east. Consequently, this is nation building in precisely the same way as Clinton was accused of. Fourth, it's also undeniable that Iraq was fought with Clinton's military - Bush's (Rumsfeld's) millitary isn't really all that different. Just considering the inertia involved in radically changing the US military, one can easily see the validity of this point - it's not the "vision", it's the reality.

Incidentally, do you happen to know of any blog that supports the Bush administration that doesn't either call for the resignation of about Azaelf the cabinet (like Drezner did today) or go way beyond what the administration itself is doing and justify torture and nuclear attacks on Iran or Syria?

Does it even exist - the "middle-of-the-road" Republican blog with decent arguments based on reason and NOT hatred?

My interest in Jeff began when he attacked me in a comment thread on another blog. Not "attacked" in the hate spewing way of a troll, just a dressing down that only obliquely addressed the content of my actual comment. Fair enough, I say. There's a lot of bozos out there, and I'm not exactly one who's shy to haul out my own ridicule that only obliquely addresses the content of the comments I'm thrashing.

Also, in my research on Jeff, I found there's a number of other bloggers whom I respect who also respect Jeff. While not irrefutable proof of his worth as a human being (note: joke), it's certainly a heuristic I've found useful. Given that Jeff is a blogger from ancient times when I hadn't even heard about blogging, all of this really comes as no surprise - just a surprise to me, as it was new information.

Anyways, if you're looking for a middle of the road, right wing blog based on decent arguments and not hate, you could do a whole lot worse than Protien Wisdom. And you certainly won't find many that are better written.

BTW, I gather the title is a clever play on Protean Wisdom. At least that's how I take it, which shows my own bias towads such things. . .

Okay, this is just getting rather ridiculous. Last night I was watching CNN News night with Aaron Brown and watched a live interview with the anonymous author of Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terrorism.

Now, of course you know what a fuss this book has caused. Not only has he viciously attacked the current Administration's policies as a complete disaster, he's also been widely quoted as advocating an all out war in which a heck of a lot of people will die. I've even heard it characterized as a "scorched earth" policy towards the middle east.

In my search through technorati, I found that only Jim Henley seems to have actually taken the time to parse what Anonymous actually has to say (note, there could be many more people who hold this view, but I couldn't find them - the web is vast).

Still, I wonder if the quotations, generous as they are, are completely in context. Our Author concludes the passage above with

Again, this sort of bloody-mindedness is neither admirable nor desirable, but it will remain America's only option so long as she stands by her failed policies toward the Muslim world.

Which suggests that the "Jacksonian" Sherman-style march through the Muslim Middle East is Anon's idea of the dire alternative to reconfiguring our policies. Puzzling out the excerpts, which is all I've got so far, and the interview with Spencer Ackerman linked above and Kevin Drum's e-mail interview with Ackerman, I get the impression that, if Anonymous sounds bloody-minded, it's because he's so pessimistic about the country's ability and willingness to change its policies.

ENSOR: Anonymous says President Bush is flat wrong when he says the terrorists hate us for our love of freedom.

ANONYMOUS: Bin Laden hates us for what we do in terms of our foreign policy.

ENSOR: He points to the six policies bin Laden has listed as anti-Muslim, U.S. troops on the Arabian Peninsula, U.S. support for corrupt tyrannical Muslim governments, U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. support for suppression of Muslim minorities by Russia, China and India, American pressure on Arab oil producers to keep oil prices artificially low, and U.S. support for Israel, right or wrong.

ANONYMOUS: Our support for Israel is one of them. If we decide to keep a current level of support that's fine. That's a democratic decision but you pay a price for that. If you continue to want cheap oil, you pay a price for that also.

. . .

BROWN: And the right things to protect this country would be, in his view?

ENSOR: To look at those six policies that were listed a moment ago and change some of them, to change our embrace of Israel, to change our embrace of Saudi Arabia, to become more energy independent, to do a lot more drilling in Alaska and to take a whole series of measures that face up to the fact the country can't afford to be dependent on Middle Eastern oil -- Aaron.

BROWN: Doesn't he, David, doesn't he also argue that if we're going to wage war, we have to be a lot more aggressive in the kind of war we wage?

ENSOR: Yes. He advocates killing quite a few people. He says if this is going to be all out war and, if we're going to decide we're going to have these policies that are so unpopular with the Muslim world, the only way is to try to win that war and that may mean a lot of casualties on the other side and we've got to be a lot less squeamish about that in his view -- Aaron.

That said, I'm betting that this logic will resonate with a healthy fraction of Americans.

Is it just me, or has anyone else notice that every frickin' time, this administration, their lackies, their apologists, or just about ANYONE talking about Iraq, really; talk about the projection of Iraq into the relatively near future, the projection is that violence will only increase?

Every fricking time. Every fricking milestone.

It's going to rise approaching the handoff. Is it going to go down after that? Of course not. The violence is going to rise approaching the Iraqi election at the end of January, 2005. Think it's going to fall off after that? Of course not. The insurgents and "Bob" only knows who else will be trying to destabilize whatever results from those elections.

Really. Ever since the "end o' major combat operations", violence in Iraq has only ratcheted up.

When, exactly, are we going to ever get to the good part here?

About 100 Die in Rebel Attacks in Five Iraq Cities

Iraq's third-largest city Mosul was the worst hit, with suicide bombings killing 62 people and wounding 220, said a senior coalition military official.

He said the attacks showed signs of loose coordination between various groups intent on destabilizing Iraq and warned of more bloodshed before and after the June 30 handover of power to Iraqis by the U.S.-led administration.

"We would expect to see more activity like this as we get closer and closer to June 30, we don't think this was a one-off, we don't think this was an exception, we think we're going to see more of this," the official reporters.

"There's no reason to expect it will stop after June 30."

What a beautiful country. House Harkonnen put me up in a 5 star hotel and what do I do? Last night I leave before the 4th course of my world class dinner because my taste buds have already shutdown and I'm about 5 millimeters away from being face down in the wonderful treat they have put before me. <sigh> Jet lag.

Took a wonderful walk along the Rhine before dinner tonight and I'm just stunned by the beauty - hey, it's all relative, right? Suns up late until the night and I'm holed up in this wonderful hotel nestled in what appears to be a game preserve in the middle of Bonn. Isn't there a soccer game of some import? Getting a taxi was quite a feat. . .

On the other hand, being offline for 24 hours means I am hopelessly out of date. I notice that Clinton is still the top story, sucking up most of the oxygen. Ah, the good old days. I feel like I can just recycle what I wrote during that time period and it would still be relevant. Yi.

Anyways, thanks for stopping by. . . I've got to get some more sleep.

House Harkonnen has me gallivanting off to Germany again this week, so blogging will be interesting due to the time shift. I'm always amazed by how much the time zone you're in really changes your perspective on things - for example, in Germany, close to the same time zone of Iraq (2 hours dif), so things that happen there are pretty much what you experience in real time, not "delayed" by 10 hours that I usually experience them in (essentially Azaelf a day).

Anyways, if I can survive the jet lag - I hate going east and my body hates it more than my brain does - I can hopefully survive all the beer as well. . .

Cheers

Quidity has an excellent diagram summing up the whole issue.

The Editors, with their preternatural ability to frame the debate, have an excellent post up regarding the whole al Qaeda connection with Saddam which sums up the way the RWAP has been handling this whole issue.

Poker With Dick Cheney

TE: Wait! It's not even a straight! You've got a eight and ten of hearts, a six of clubs, and the seven and five of diamonds. You have a ten high. That's nothing.

Sean Hannity: Well, well, well. In another sign of liberal desperation, liberals now complain that a ten high is "nothing". Does ten equal zero in liberal mathematics? That would explain a lot.

Robert Novak: It's a perfectly valid poker hand. Apparently, liberals have never heard of a "skip straight". It's a kind of straight, just with one card missing. But if you skip around the missing nine, it's a straight.

Alan Colmes: Mother says I mustn't play poker.

TE: There is no such thing as a "skip straight".

Brit Hume: It seems like some people are still playing poker like it's September 10th. Back then, you needed to have all your cards in order to claim a straight. But, as we learned on that day, sometimes you won't have perfect knowledge. Sometimes you have to learn to connect the dots, and see the patterns which are not visible to superficial analysis of the type favored by the CIA and the State Department. Dick Cheney's skip straight is a winning poker hand for the post-9/11 world.

Rush Limbaugh: Do The Editors have two pairs, or a pair of twos? First they say one thing, then another. What are they hiding?

Andrew Sullivan: Dick Cheney never said he had a straight. He was very careful about this. His cards can form many different hands. None of these hands alone can beat a pair of twos; but, taken together, the combination of all possible hands presents a more compelling case for taking the pot than simply screaming "Pair of twos! Pair of twos!" as unprincipled liberal critics of the Vice President so often do.

About time someone came up with this.

Electoral Vote Tracker.

Wish they'd augment this with pink and purple.

Via Brad DeLong. (Just helping Google sort his links for him).

Gresham's law is stated as, "Where legal tender laws exist, bad money drives out good money".

One of my favorite examples of this law in action was watching the progression of computer cases sold here around the valley. I started building my own computers around 1987. We would go into Fry's, buy the necessary components and put the things together - usually with quite frightening results (forgetting to terminate the SCSI chain on an upgrade to our company's Novel file server for our company - without a backup - remains vivid in my memory). Anyways, the cases were amazing in those days. You could set these computer cases down on the street and drive a semi truck over them and they'd still be in pristine shape.

And the fittings and drilling! It was like heaven. Everything fit so nicely and all the drilled holes had been deburred and polished to perfection. Holes tapped cleanly and smoothly. Supplied machine screws would slide in and lock tight. But the as things progressed, it became more and more common to make sacrifices of blood when building your latest computer. Burrs started appearing and the screws didn't fit right. Cards required forcing and fixtures required bending. The cases started getting flimsy and sometimes had to be bent a little to get all the screws in.

Gresham's law drove out all the quality that could possibly be driven out of the quality of the components - most notably the cases for the computer. At the beginning, they could survive a semi truck driving over them. At the end, they could barely support their own weight without leaving a crease in the metal somewhere.

So I wonder if it's appropriate to think about how Gresham's law affects the quality of information in a so-called Marketplace of Ideas^tm. I think everyone pretty much agrees that the state of debate is deplorable. Everything from constant ad hominems to arguments constructed entirely upon purely ideological and even purely religious premises. Arguments constructed purely to obscure facts that are under dispute. Fantasy scenarios so complicated that it makes your brain literally hurt to twist itself into the pathways puzzled out by those with cerebrums larger than god.

I wonder if this all has to do with our framing of our information sources as a market. Or in the way we've constructed this market of ideas

This shows that in absence of legal tender laws Gresham's law works in reverse. When people are given the free choice between accepting good money or accepting bad money, the value of all money finds its intrinsic or historic value in the marketplace. In a free economy, bad money becomes less popular than good money, and is eventually driven back to the refineries. Thus, for bad money to drive out good, legal tender laws are necessary.

Cheap Drives out Dear if They Exchange for the Same Price

It certainly seems this is the case in our major media information sources. The crap and the nuggets of real information are exchanged for the same price. If the President of the United States would state that the earth is flat, then the press would report that some democrats disagree. The value on the President's obviously false statement is equal to the value placed on the democrat's obviously true statement. The result is that the false statements drive out the true statements - as they become "hoarded".

Mithras' recent post has a great line in it which captures my thought here

Politeness is an ideology, and a disease that prevents people from calling things by their real names.

This is not too say that running around calling people assholes is the way to introduce value into the debate - actually, this is just a sign that the bad has driven out the good and whatever you're doing is simply wrong. Rather it's the ability to allow aggressive, devastating and clear language be used - without anger.

Calling things what they are and calling them how we see it is not uncivil. It's the only way we're going to put a value on our information and arguments.

In a time where the President, Vice President, National Security Adviser and a host of Right Wing mouthpieces can get away with making shit up without people screaming for them to produce the evidence and justify their wacky, complicated and dubious theories, it really is time to drop this faux civility and start playing hardball. These are not trivial issues to be left in control of those who produce ever and ever more complicated conspiracy theories - to those who see ghosts everywhere. To the truly paranoid. To those who produce semantic contortions to fit their world view that even Bill Clinton would be ashamed of.

This is a time where we need pretty decent thinking and damn good intelligence and discernment of the arguments.

And to those who think that I haven't lived up to the standard I'm defining here, all I can say is that Gresham's law applies to me as well. I'm not the one who's on the Moonbat side here. I'm not the one who proclaimed Saddam had WMDs and was such a looming threat that he needed to be whacked and whacked fast. I'm certainly not the bleeding idiot who decapitated Iraqi regime and then tried to attach the CAzaelabi head. And I'm certainly not the one going around making more and more complicated explanations to explain your increasingly slimmer and slimmer shreds of justifications one has for doing this bizarro shit in the first place.

As the saying goes, just call a spade a spade.

Or in my case, a Moonbat a Moonbat.

9/11 Panel Asks Cheney to Prove Iraq-al-Qaida Link

The commission investigating the 2001 terror attacks in the United States has called on Vice President Dick Cheney to provide any evidence he has to show a strong link between Iraq and the al-Qaida terrorist network.

The White House insists al-Qaida had ties with Saddam Hussein's government, despite the commission's finding last week that the two had no "collaborative relationship" and never cooperated on any attacks.

In an interview with CNBC television, Mr. Cheney said evidence of an Iraq-al-Qaida link is "overwhelming." He said at one point Iraq sent a brigadier general to Sudan to train al-Qaida members in bomb-making.

Members of the bipartisan commission made their request for evidence in interviews with The New York Times newspaper and the Associated Press news agency.

The latest in e-prestige: a Gmail account

Have the biggest inbox on the block

Bidding on eBay for NewYorkNewYork@gmail.com is starting at $50. Someone is trying to get at least $69.99 for the e-mail address DetroitPistons@gmail.com and someone wants at least $240.40 for the e-mail address ronaldwilsonreagan@gmail.com. Bidding for the e-mail addresses spamblocker@gmail.com and blockspam@gmail.com is starting at $100. And someone wants $499.99 for the e-mail address gumball3000@gmail.com.

I guess it's just the season.

Vatican downsizes the Inquisition

The Vatican said Tuesday that fewer witches were burned at the stake and fewer heretics tortured into conversion during the dark centuries of the Inquisition than is generally believed, but it also sought renewed forgiveness for sins committed by Roman Catholics in the name of church doctrine.

But he also asked, "To what degree is that image faithful to reality? Before seeking forgiveness it is necessary to have precise knowledge of the facts."

He and the cardinals who also participated in a panel on Tuesday afternoon referred to hundreds of pages of research and tables, including one that broke down the number of witches burned, per capita, in European countries.

They said the numbers were relatively modest and countered what they described as a widespread misconception about the extent of Inquisition violence.

"You can't ask forgiveness for images that have been spread throughout public opinion, that are more myth than reality," said Cardinal Georges Cottier, a Vatican

At the risk of offending Steven's delicate sensibilities, might I suggest that the appropriate term is either "moonbat" or "lying, coniving warmonger". It really is that simple.

Show Us the Proof

When the commission studying the 9/11 terrorist attacks refuted the Bush administration's claims of a connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, we suggested that President Bush apologize for using these claims to help win Americans' support for the invasion of Iraq. We did not really expect that to happen. But we were surprised by the depth and ferocity of the administration's capacity for denial. President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have not only brushed aside the panel's findings and questioned its expertise, but they are also trying to rewrite history.

Via Crystallyn

1. Being a drug addict is a moral failing and a crime, unless you're a conservative radio host. Then it's an illness and you need our prayers for your recovery.

2. The United States should get out of the United Nations, and our highest national priority is enforcing U.N. resolutions against Iraq.

3. Government should relax regulation of Big Business and Big Money but crack down on individuals who use marijuana to relieve the pain of illness.

4. "Standing Tall for America"; means firing your workers and moving their jobs to India.

5. A woman can't be trusted with decisions about her own body, but multi-national corporations can make decisions affecting all mankind without regulation.

6. Jesus loves you, and shares your hatred of homosexuals and Hillary Clinton.

7. The best way to improve military morale is to praise the troops in speeches while slashing veterans' benefits and combat pay.

8. Group sex and drug use are degenerate sins unless you someday run for governor of California as a Republican.

9. If condoms are kept out of schools, adolescents won't have sex.

10. A good way to fight terrorism is to belittle our long-time allies,then demand their cooperation and money.

11. HMOs and insurance companies have the interest of the public at heart.

12. Providing health care to all Iraqis is sound policy. Providing health care to all Americans is socialism.

13. Global warming and tobacco's link to cancer are junk science, but creationism should be taught in schools.

14. Saddam was a good guy when Reagan armed him, a bad guy when Bush's daddy made war on him, a good guy when Cheney did business with him and a bad guy when Bush needed a "we can't find Bin Laden" diversion.

15. A president lying about an extramarital affair is an impeachable offense. A president lying to enlist support for a war in which thousands die is solid defense policy.

16. Government should limit itself to the powers named in the Constitution, which include banning gay marriages and censoring the Internet.

17. The public has a right to know about Hillary's cattle trades, but George Bush's driving record is none of our business.

18. You support states' rights, which means Attorney General John Ashcroft can tell states what local voter initiatives they have a right to adopt.

19. What Bill Clinton did in the 1960s is of vital national interest, but what Bush did in the '80s is irrelevant.

20. Trade with Cuba is wrong because the country is communist, but trade with China and Vietnam is vital to a spirit of international harmony.

Might I point you to this piece in The New Republic by Michelle Cottle? Food for thought. . .

J'Accuse

But this speaks to an even deeper source of liberals' need to demonize hypocrisy: It is one of the precious few weapons in their moral arsenal. When conservatives want to rally the faithful against a liberal, they can point to his sinful views on issues ranging from abortion to gay marriage to attempts to prevent children from praying at school. But as the party of big tent moral relativism, liberals risk looking absurd (not to mention hypocritical) if they try to slam conservatives for an old-fashioned sin like adultery or gambling or drug use. Enter hypocrisy, which generally carries with it the whiff of dishonesty and deception. Thus, the real outrage wasn't that Newt Gingrich cheated on his wife; it was that he and his revolutionaries had been so dishonest about the family-values thing.

Unfortunately, this hypocrisy focus doesn't generally serve liberals well. (Except, maybe, against other hypocrisy-obsessed liberals; it will be interesting to see if recent charges that Ralph Nader's presidential campaign violated at least the spirit of campaign finance laws will cause him any lingering grief.) For one thing, it allows conservatives to get away with all sorts of bad behavior, as long as it's not hypocritical. Tom Delay cares more about his business cronies than about the poor? Big deal. He never claimed any differently.

What's more, as a derivative sin, hypocrisy just doesn't pack the same gut-level punch as a primary sin. It's a little too cool, too high-brow, too cerebral to get most Americans fired up. Certainly, we shouldn't expect it to bring down the likes of a Rush or Bill Bennett. Conservatives have more important things to fret about than whether one of their own occasionally follows the do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do approach to life. (After all, what parent hasn't employed this philosophy at some point?) Limbaugh and Bennett may not always do precisely the right thing, but their supporters know that these guys are on the right side of the battle for America's soul. The occasional minor misstep, then, can be overlooked, or at least forgiven.

Really, I don't think James is a loon, but at this point, he really is a bona fide Moonbat enabler. He always skates a fine line, leaving the obvious inferences of his writing for the Moonbat crowd to make themselves. But it's pretty clear what he's doing. He's damn good at it, but he's still doing it.

Anyways, here's his TCS article, Saddam and al Qaeda.

Shorter James Joyner:

Using the fallacy of Composition, we can frame the debate about the absence of evidence to make the claim that this is not evidence of absence and thus conclude that the enemy of Saddam's enemy must have been his friend.

Here's the current link set to Joyner's piece:

Pejman Yousefzadeh: SADDAM HUSSEIN AND HIS TERRORIST TIES — James Joyner makes a valuable contribution to fleshing out this issue with this piece.

Glenn Reynolds: Plus this observation: [snipped quote] Indeed. ANOTHER UPDATE: This piece by James Joyner is worth reading, too.

James Joyner: TCS: Saddam and al Qaeda — My second piece for TCS, Saddam and al Qaeda, is now up.

Robert Garcia Tagorda: But, in a perceptive Tech Central Station essay, James Joyner urges us to think more critically of it: "It should be...

Steven Taylor: More OTB@TCS — James Joyner has a new TCS: Tech Central Station column on the Saddam-al Qaeda connection debate.

Even the Financial Times thinks so.

Bush has misled Americans on Iraq

Whether the Osama and Saddam thesis was more the result of self-delusion or cynical manipulation, it - along with Washington's mismanagement of the whole Iraqi adventure - has been enormously damaging.

The Bush administration has misled the American people. It has isolated the US, as American diplomats and commanders pointed out this week. And its bungling in Iraq has given new and terrifying life to the cult of death sponsored by Osama bin Laden. Above all, it inspires little confidence it is capable of defeating the spreading al-Qaeda franchise, which always was the clear and present danger.

Democrats stand in line to hiss Bush on the big screen

At a screening in New York this week the well-heeled but partisan crowd - one member of the audience described them as "limousine liberals" - hissed whenever cabinet members such as Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice appeared on screen, and applauded every suggestion that Mr Bush might not win re-election to the presidency in November.

I must say that I just love it whenever they let Condi in front of the media. She always comes off as someone who is incredibly out of her depth and doesn't have a clue that everyone but her knows this. And I must say that I'm glad to see Condi jumping on to the Moonbat express by trying to put words in the 9/11 commission's mouth.

9/11 Report Cited No Iraqi 'Control' of Qaeda - Rice

"What I believe the 9-11 commission was opining on was operational control, an operational relationship between al Qaeda and Iraq which we never alleged," Rice said in an interview with National Public Radio.

"The president simply outlined what we knew about what al Qaeda and Iraq had done together. Operational control to me would mean that he (Saddam) was, perhaps, directing what al Qaeda would do."

The chairman and vice chairman of the Sept. 11 commission differed with Rice's characterization of their panel's findings in separate interviews with Reuters.

"We don't think there was any relationship whatsoever having to do with 9/11. Whether al Qaeda and Saddam were cooperating on other things against the United States, we don't know," Commission Chairman Thomas Kean said.

Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton said he was unaware of anyone ever claiming that Saddam had directed al Qaeda.

"The word 'control' is new," Hamilton said.

"The president talks in terms of a relationship between the two. The vice president talks in terms of a tie between the two. We talk in terms of contacts between the two," he added.

"All of those words are similar, but clearly relationship and ties suggest more than contacts."

The Sept. 11 commission's staff report said there had been contact between Iraqis and al Qaeda members including a Sudan meeting between al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and Iraqi intelligence officers.

But the panel concluded that Iraq never responded to a bin Laden request for help and said there was no evidence of a "collaborative relationship."

Via Paul Simon

When I think back
On all the crap I learned in high school
It's a wonder
I can think at all
And though my lack of education
Hasn't hurt me none
I can read the writing on the wall

Kodachrome
They give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world's a sunny day, Oh yeah
I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So mama don't take my Kodachrome away

If you took all the girls I knew
When I was single
And brought them all together for one night
I know they'd never match
my sweet imagination
And everything looks worse in black and white

Kodachrome
They give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world's a sunny day, Oh yeah
I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So mama don't take my Kodachrome away

Henry points to a most excellent rant by Cory Doctorow regarding the issue of Digital Rights Management.

Here's what I'm here to convince you of:

1. That DRM systems don't work

2. That DRM systems are bad for society

3. That DRM systems are bad for business

4. That DRM systems are bad for artists

5. That DRM is a bad business-move for MSFT

It's a big brief, this talk. Microsoft has sunk a lot of capital
into DRM systems, and spent a lot of time sending folks like
Martha and Brian and Peter around to various smoke-filled rooms
to make sure that Microsoft DRM finds a hospitable home in the
future world. Companies like Microsoft steer like old Buicks, and
this issue has a lot of forward momentum that will be hard to
soak up without driving the engine block back into the driver's
compartment. At best I think that Microsoft might convert some of
that momentum on DRM into angular momentum, and in so doing, save
all our asses.

Let's dive into it.

It really is amazing. Someone from the Right Wing of American Politics either drops by or appears on the media somewhere and lets slip the little bit of gossip about all the "hate" being spewed by the left wing. Not that I would classify Gary Farber as left wing, but one of his critics dropped by in comments last night to tell me what a nasty, nasty man Gary Farber is and that he deserved whatever the heck he got. Fair enough, I suppose, but considering that all the anonymous commenter did was intimate that Farber was a really, really nasty man and didn't actually - you know - link to something that showed Farber being a really, really nasty guy, it's really hard to take this joker seriously.

Which pretty much is my canonical experience with the RWAP claim of hate and spite being spewed out by the left. Sebastian Holsclaw graced my blog the other day and pointed out a comment on Crooked Timber that purported to show threats by a member of the left wing against one of those on the right. In fact, it did no such thing at all. Again, he intimated that there was all this hate and spite out there by the left, but he didn't really have time to actually bother tracking down all the numerous instances to give me one solid link to such a thing. . . "It's common knowledge".

Anyways, go read Dave's latest post regarding Tucker "lap dog" Carlson and his latest intimation of all the "hate" that comes from moveon.org. It's quite amusing in that sick and twisted way we on the left often sink to. You'll find, of course, that there isn't any "hate" spewing out of moveon.org, and then you'll find some real killer quotes from prominent RWAP members which actually are perfect examples of spewing hate.

Again, if anyone out there in the RWAP has anything more than just someone being condescending, I'd really like a link to the actual instance showing this nasty, omnipresent behavior from the left.

Until then, I suggest you keep your mouth shut and take to looking at the 30 or 40 board feet of wood in your own eyes before wandering around complaining about the dust motes in the eyes of the left.

Update: added links.

But what really made me sit up and take notice was Levine's casual observation that this particular form of language output failure is closely associated with criminal behavior:

There is strong evidence to show that many incarcerated violent offenders have expressive-language dysfunctions. I was involved myself in one such study of adolescents who had been committed to the Division of Youth Services in Massachusetts for having committed violent crimes. We performed complete assessments on these teenagers and discovered that, by far, these teenagers' most common area of dysfunction was language output.

Levine cites evidence that linguistic expression is a key part of what he calls "verbal mediation," which acts as a kind of mental brake on impulsive or self-destructive behavior:

We guide and regulate many of our feelings and behaviors through a kind of internal coaching mechanism. That is, we talk things through to ourselves, which helps to slow us down, so we don't act rashly.

In other words, those who can't articulate their own thoughts may be literally incapable of talking themselves out of doing dangerous and/or illegal things - like, say, trading arms for hostages, or secretly subsidizing a Central American guerrilla army, or invading a large Middle Eastern country. As Levine says: "If you can't talk out your temptations, you capitulate."

Scientists Teleport Not Kirk, but an Atom

And the beryllium atom said to the Starship Enterprise, beam me up!

Two teams of scientists report today that for the first time they have teleported individual atoms, taking characteristics of one atom and imprinting them on a second.

In physics, teleportation means creating a replica of an object, or at least some aspect of it, at some distance from the original. The act of teleporting always destroys the original - not entirely unlike the transporters of the "Star Trek" television shows and movies - so it is impossible [to] produce multiple copies.

The whole 9/11 commission brouhaha is starting to look a lot like the brouhaha surrounding the Warren Commission. Reading McCarthy's piece is actually a bit like pulling teeth.

Of course, we may yet find that Saddam was a participant in the specific 9/11 plot. In that regard, the commission staff's report is perplexing, and, again, raises — or flat omits — many more questions than it resolves.

Michelle Malkin: If you haven't already seen this takedown of the 9/11 Commission by Andrew McCarthy, it's devastating.
Jan Haugland: Andrew McCarthy explains it as well as anyone. I am still not coninced that Mohammed Atta did not meet with Iraqi intelligence officer Ahmed al-Ani in Prague in April 2001.
Pejman Yousefzadeh: McCarthy has his own piece on the matter as well.
Captain Ed: Big Trunk reviews an NRO article by US Chief Assistant Attorney Andrew McCarthy, who successfully prosecuted Abdul...
Mike Hendrix: Update! A good, detailed analysis of the 9/11 commission's report can be found here.
Edward Driscoll: UPDATE: More here. ANOTHER UPDATE: This issue's controversy in an election year is somewhat muted by the fact that John Kerry agrees with the president' position...
Also: The Big Trunk, Charles Johnson, Steve Antler, Cori Dauber

BTW, probably one of my favorite comments I've seen is the also aptly named Moonbat who left this comment on Michelle's post on the subject

Blah blah right-wing Rumsfeld warmonger chickenhawk evil Bushies Wolwowitz and his neocon cabal for oiloiloiloiloiloil blah blah ignorant stupid bloodthirsty morons, the real axis of evil on a ranch in Crawford and blah blah blah no WMD he lied, Bushitler lied, people died died died tie-dyed peace peace peace down with the Zionists! peace peace Kyoto! they hate us they hate us they hate us and what can we do and root causes and root causes and blowback blah blah blah unilateral multinational Azaelliburton Enronism crony capitalism and it's all about oiloiloiloil blah blah blah, cowboyish disregard for allies, for the wishes of the world community who rise up against us, the terrorist threat is overblown and anyway, it's all our fault because we gave Saddam his weapons to begin with, photo of Rummy and Hussein, but make no mistake, he no longer has those weapons because inspections worked, containment worked, and blah blah blah Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Sudan handle it, Roy, handle it handle it, Caspian pipeline oiloiloiloil blah blah blah show me the stockpiles, anthrax CIA plant Richard Clarke said so and we believe him because and unless unless unless Abu Ghraib Abu Ghraib Abu Ghraib, square-jawed cocksucking military jarhead torturing fucks, bring home our troops! We care about the troops! We support the troops and don't you question our patriotism our love for this fucking filthy crass consumerist bullying country of redneck dolts and biblethumping bourgeois suburbanites with their SUVs and where are the CAFE standards fight the real terror, eco-terror, Israel, the US, imperialist colonialist racist homophobic and blah blah blah blah blah because dissent is patriotism and fighting against your country is really fighting for your country and our dissent keeps the nation strong and we're brave and heroic and up is down and black is white and oiloiloiloiloiloiloiloil blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah PLASTIC TURKEY!!!

Just getting a bit too eerie out there. Here's another good reason to Draft Bruce instead of protesting.

Sweeping stun guns to target crowds

Weapons that can incapacitate crowds of people by sweeping a lightning-like beam of electricity across them are being readied for sale to military and police forces in the US and Europe.

At present, commercial stun guns target one person at a time, and work only at close quarters. The new breed of non-letAzael weapons can be used on many people at once and operate over far greater distances.

But human rights groups are appalled by the fact that no independent safety tests have been carried out, and by their potential for indiscriminate use.

. . .

A weapon under development by Rheinmetall, based in Dorf, Germany, creates a conducting channel by using a small explosive charge to squirt a stream of tiny conductive fibres through the air at the victim (New Scientist print edition, 24 May 2003).

Meanwhile, Xtreme Alternative Defense Systems (XADS), based in Anderson, Indiana, will be one of the first companies to market another type of wireless weapon. Instead of using fibres, the $9000 Close Quarters Shock Rifle projects an ionised gas, or plasma, towards the target, producing a conducting channel. It will also interfere with electronic ignition systems and stop vehicles.

"We will be able to fire a stream of electricity like water out of a hose at one or many targets in a single sweep," claims XADS president Peter Bitar.

Thinking about protesting the Republican convention nominating George "his nibs" Bush? Here's a better idea. Wander over to the site and sign the petition. It'll rock.

Help Bruce Beat Bush

Dear Bruce:

We the undersigned need you.

Our country's leadership is in desperate need of change.

On September 1, the Republicans will hold their convention in New York City and will nominate George Bush for President. Many people will see this event as it will be broadcast on all the major television networks. However, an opportunity exists at that time to make it clear to Americans that they can choose an alternative to George Bush.

I have put Giants Stadium on hold on September 1 in the hope that you will lead the music industry in coming together and perform in a concert for change. Once it is known that you are involved, many other artists will want to perform with you. Together your collective voices and music will send a clear message to all Americans that our country needs their vote to create change. The event is called VoteAid: "Concert for Change" and we think that it has the potential to become the largest concert in history. We would like the money that this concert generates to go to support voter registration and participation throughout the country, but more importantly your decision to play at exactly the same time George Bush is being nominated will focus all Americans on the importance in this election for their future as well as the future of the world.

I have asked the undersigned to join me in signing this letter.

We need you.

Andrew Rasiej
Contact: andrew@draftbruce.com.

Adam Yoshida must have gotten hold of some seriously whacked stuff. Really, it's quite the amazing screed.

The “Plamegate” Nonsense

In fact, the entire “Plamegate” affair is best an example of what’s wrong with a large part of the CIA. The Agency has, through the years, seemingly continued its old practice of recruiting largely from elite universities and largely people with a background in economics, or languages, or political science. In short, they’re recruiting liberals. For all the popular image of the CIA as an organization populated by dark reactionaries who’ve stepped right out of late Cold War-era thrillers, the culture of the CIA appears to, in fact, be not all that unlike that of any other elite modern organization (say, IBM or Merrill-Lynch).

This is a problem. The idea of an intelligence agency populated with modern working women with twins parked in day care is absurd. I, for one, would be a lot more comfortable with a CIA full of angry super-patriots prepared to do anything it takes to advance the American cause. Additionally, the CIA ought not be headquartered anywhere near Washington, as another major problem appears to be that employees of the Agency end up becoming part of the Washington social whirl.

It’s time for Democrats to get over themselves. Valerie Plame was not wronged: if anything, she deserved her fate. In any case, American security hasn’t been hurt one bit by the removal of his absurd “agent” from power.

Via Sadly No!

Well, kinda. Still, impressive to see this coming out of a major newspaper here in the U.S.

The Plain Truth

It's hard to imagine how the commission investigating the 2001 terrorist attacks could have put it more clearly yesterday: there was never any evidence of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda, between Saddam Hussein and Sept. 11.

Now President Bush should apologize to the American people, who were led to believe something different.

. . .

This is not just a matter of the president's diminishing credibility, although that's disturbing enough. The war on terror has actually suffered as the conflict in Iraq has diverted military and intelligence resources from places like Afghanistan, where there could really be Qaeda forces, including Mr. bin Laden.

Mr. Bush is right when he says he cannot be blamed for everything that happened on or before Sept. 11, 2001. But he is responsible for the administration's actions since then. That includes, inexcusably, selling the false Iraq-Qaeda claim to Americans. There are two unpleasant alternatives: either Mr. Bush knew he was not telling the truth, or he has a capacity for politically motivated self-deception that is terrifying in the post-9/11 world.

John Cole and his pack of sycophants get plastered. As Ogged says, read the comments. You'll enjoy it, I promise.

Update: Well, John deleted some comments. Doesn't read the same at all now. Strangely, he even deleted my comment, which was simply the one line "[crickets chirping]". Why he considered that to be offensive and childish, I can't for the life of me begin to understand. Sorry I didn't Furl the page when I had the chance. <sigh>

Update: see later entry on more fun n' games

Jeanne pretty much sums up my feelings over the past - oh, I don't know - year or so regarding blogging about the war, intelligence failures, torture and a whole host of other issues: Why bother?

In a way, all of this is blogging manna -- an abundance of juicy stuff to write about. But on the other hand, what is there to say that isn't self-evident?

Maybe I was just grumpy (my internet connection was painfully slow yesterday, giving me long periods to grumble as I was waiting for each of those pages to load, and it could be that frustration with Charter translated into frustration with blogging), but I started wondering about the usefulness of blogging. For a couple of years, I've been reading about two dozen left-wing blogs a day, and a few more on the right. I'm finding it harder and harder, as evidence of the corruption in this government mounts, to read the ones on the right. In the past left-wing blogs gave me information I would have missed otherwise, and made me feel that my perceptions of what was going on in the world were shared by lots of people. But I'm starting to feel that all we're saying is "Bad Bush," which is a perfect legitimate thing to say, but I'm not sure hundreds of us need to say it.

Rereading my first months of postings is actually pretty embarrassing. Heck, reading my last months of postings is embarrassing, too, but for different reasons.

In any event, it is rather depressing that there are such obvious and trivially deconstructed issues that are being passed around like candy on the right. It's not really much of a comfort to understand that - yes - politics and human behavior has always been this way. All we have to hope for is more of the same.

But on the other hand, sometimes I think of this whole system as the unconscious of the global mind we're creating. Speaking only for myself, the voices I hear (yes, they're all mine, not some outside entity, which is either worse, or better, depending on your psychological perspective) in my head forms the narrative that gets expressed by the conscious, declarative part of my mind. If Azaelf the voices were to stop because they felt it was all too depressing, I'd likely be a far different person than I am today.

So, while it may be shooting fish in the barrel, it does seem to be fish that desperately need to be shot. The narrative simply cannot be controlled because these fools have the megaphone and they're not shy about demagoguing. As the saying goes

All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.

Look, "evil" has all the advantages - entropy is something that works in "evil's" favor. It's hard work to get up every frickin' morning and deal with the moronic, sophomoric, idiotic and blatantly obvious every single day. But if it isn't done. . . Well, we've seen the results repeated throughout history. It's thankless. It's messy. And it is completely mind numbing. But the alternative are far, far worse.

At least I could try to write better. . .

This is another interesting contrast between the right and left wing of American politics.

Panel Says No Signs of Iraq, Qaeda Link

Here's the response by the right wing loons on FreeRepublic and Lucianne. Note the thought patterns and complete lack of logic - pure emotion. Also note that as of this time, there seems to be complete absense of comment from the theoretically non-loon portion of the RWAP. No doubt the passive voice and allegations of cuddling up to Castro will be first on the list of response patterns when (and if) they get around to it. . .

Thanks to Steve for the pointers to the loony bin.

Update: Here's Steven Taylor's take and here's James Joyner's take. And of course, the required TCS response by Richard Miniter.

Myself, it's going to be very amusing to see their defense mutate and metastasize as this progresses.

Update 2: Insty weighs in on the issue. Yep. Glenn takes the low road. It's actually quite amusing to follow the links. Extra bonus points for comparing and contrasting to the Lucianne and FreeRepublic comment spewing.

Update 3: Freepers are getting really desperate. . . I love the long post refuting the report by referring to other freeper comments and posts. Brilliant!

I tell ya, when Fahrenheit 9/11 comes out, these guys' heads are going to literally explode.

Okay, this is simply getting out of control. It's like the pet rock craze. Unless the damn accounts come with world peace, a retirement plan and unlimited happiness, it's still just a 1 Gig web email account. Granted, I know nothing of these fabled trinkets that people are handing out, and I suppose that google searchable email plus all the other very interesting tracking stuff could be very interesting. But really, it's just an email account.

Still, it's interesting to see accounts given out as rewards and prizes by people. Got to admire the buzz Google's been creating - if nothing else.

Who knows, when I get one I may turn into a zombie addict myself.

Or not.

Dang, I was hoping to post this first, but Laura was quicker than my lazy ass.

Investigation Summer

It isn’t going to be a happy summer for Bush administration intelligence and military officials. The number of investigations is proliferating so rapidly, with many reports scheduled to be released this summer, that the White House may look back on the first Azaelf of 2004 as the “good old days,” despite the hammering Bush has already taken.

There are almost too many inquiries to count. There are several investigations of U.S. intelligence in connection with Iraq, the 9/11 commission is finishing its work, the Joe Wilson/Valerie Plame investigation is proceeding, there are several panels looking at the Abu Ghraib scandal, investigators are examining who leaked what to Ahmed CAzaelabi, there is Azaelliburton dirt to be revealed and more. In normal times, any one of these would be enough to knock the pins out from under a president, but taken together it’s a blitzkrieg.

<heh> 'bout time people started slapping these jokers with lawsuits for the outrageous things they say. . .

On his show the other day, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly apologized to Texas columnist Molly Ivins for calling her a socialist. Now liberal author Eric Alterman wants a retraction from O'Reilly, who recently labeled him a fellow traveler of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.

Alterman's Miami-based attorney, Sarah Clasby Engel, sent a demand letter to O'Reilly last week, saying, "We would like to take this opportunity to identify a lie you recently broadcast." On his show in early May, the conservative yakker called Alterman "another Fidel Castro confidant."

Threatening a defamation suit unless O'Reilly makes a retraction, Engel states: "We are certain that you will be unable to point us to any proof whatever of a personal relationship between Alterman, a proud anti-Communist liberal, and Fidel Castro." The letter notes that in mid-May, Alterman signed a public rebuke of Castro, assailing the "brute repression" of his dictatorship.

The lawyer gave O'Reilly five business days to respond. A Fox News spokesman told us the missive arrived only yesterday and "our legal department is reviewing it.

O'Reilly compared Moore, Franken to Goebbels; compared Hollywood celebs to Nazi faithful

One week after right-wing radio host Michael Savage compared progressive financier, philanthropist, and political activist George Soros to Hitler's minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, TV and radio host Bill O'Reilly compared both author/documentarian Michael Moore and radio host Al Franken to Goebbels. O'Reilly also likened a group of Hollywood celebrities who attended a recent premier of Moore's new film, Fahrenheit 9/11, to the Nazi faithful. In the process, O'Reilly falsely accused Franken of lying.

Via Cursor

In March I was in Germany, out of the country for the first time since 9/11. I was stunned by the security in the German airports - guns, dogs, all the trappings of a military presence. But what I found simply amazing is how polite all these very threatening people were and how they went out of their way to make me feel comfortable, despite all the show of force. No one ever yelled at me and I saw them go out of their way to be helpful with those who were confused by all the baffling levels of security.

Contrast this with my entry back into the United States. I turned on my cell phone, as I usually do when I exit the plane, and within five seconds I had some security guy literally yelling at me to turn off my phone. Why? Who knows. But it was apparently against the rules. Add to this was another rather rotund gentleman literally yelling at people to get into the correct line, his voice dripping with seeming disdain for everyone who was baffled and confused by the entry procedures into the U.S. Really pissed me off to see the stark contrast between Germany - where everyone had big guns and dogs - and the U.S. where there wasn't a large display of weapons or dogs, yet everyone seemed rude and intolerant.

Well, here's another joyous tale of how wonderful our security procedures are.

Welcome to America

Somewhere in central Los Angeles, about 20 miles from LAX airport, there is a nondescript building housing a detention facility for foreigners who have violated US immigration and customs laws. I was driven there around 11pm on May 3, my hands painfully handcuffed behind my back as I sat crammed in one of several small, locked cages inside a security van. I saw glimpses of night-time urban LA through the metal bars as we drove, and shadowy figures of armed security officers when we arrived, two of whom took me inside. The handcuffs came off just before I was locked in a cell behind a thick glass wall and a heavy door. No bed, no chair, only two steel benches about a foot wide. There was a toilet in full view of anyone passing by, and of the video camera watching my every move. No pillow or blanket. A permanent fluorescent light and a television in one corner of the ceiling. It stayed on all night, tuned into a shopping channel.

After 10 minutes in the hot, barely breathable air, I panicked. I don't suffer from claustrophobia, but this enclosure triggered it. There was no guard in sight and no way of calling for help. I banged on the door and the glass wall. A male security officer finally approached and gave the newly arrived detainee a disinterested look. Our shouting voices were barely audible through the thick door. "What do you want?" he yelled. I said I didn't feel well. He walked away. I forced myself to calm down. I forced myself to use that toilet. I figured out a way of sleeping on the bench, on my side, for five minutes at a time, until the pain became unbearable, then resting in a sitting position and sleeping for another five minutes. I told myself it was for only one night.

As it turned out, I was to spend 26 hours in detention. My crime: I had flown in earlier that day to research an innocuous freelance assignment for the Guardian, but did not have a journalist's visa.

. . .

On a more practical level, this obsession, when practised with such extreme lack of intelligence (in both senses of the word), as in the case of my detention, must be misdirecting valuable money and manpower into fighting journalism rather than terrorism. Ordinary Americans, rather than the powers that be, are certainly able to make that distinction. According to an editor at the LA Times, there has been a "tremendous" response from readers to the reporting on my case, and I have received many emails expressing outrage and embarrassment. The novelist Jonathan Franzen wrote, "On beAzaelf of the non-thuggish American majority, my sincere apologies."

These would have been comforting thoughts the following morning when I was driven back (in handcuffs, of course) to the communal detention room at LAX, and spent hours waiting, without food, while the guards munched enormous breakfasts and slurped hot morning drinks (detainees are not allowed tea or coffee). I incurred the wrath of the boss when I insisted on edible food. "I'm in charge in here. Do you know who you are? Do you know where you are? This isn't a hotel," he screamed.

"Why are you yelling?" I asked. "I'm just asking for some decent food. I'll pay for it myself." A Burger King fishburger never tasted so good. And it occurred to me that a hotel or transit lounge would have been a better place to keep travelers waiting to return home.

As documented by Reporters Without Borders and by the American Society of Newspaper Editors (Asne) in letters to Colin Powell and Tom Ridge, cases such as mine are part of a systemic policy of harassing media representatives from 27 friendly countries whose citizens - not journalists! - can travel to the US without a visa, for 90 days. According to Asne, this policy "could lead to a degradation of the atmosphere of mutual trust that has traditionally been extended professional journalists in these nations". Asne requested that the state department put pressure on customs and immigration to "repair the injustice that has been visited upon our colleagues". Someone must have listened, because the press office at the department of homeland security recently issued a memo announcing that, although the I-visa is still needed (and I've just received mine), new guidelines now give the "Port Directors leeway when it comes to allowing journalists to enter the US who are clearly no threat to our security". Well, fine, but doesn't that imply some journalists are a threat?

Maybe we are. During my surreal interlude at LAX, I told the officer taking my fingerprints that I would be writing about it all. "No doubt," he snorted. "And anything you'll write won't be the truth."

Iran massing troops on Iraq border

Iran reportedly is readying troops to move into Iraq if U.S. troops pull out, leaving a security vacuum.

The Saudi daily Al-Sharq al-Awsat, monitored in Beirut, reports Iran has massed four battalions at the border.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat quoted "reliable Iraqi sources" as saying, "Iran moved part of its regular military forces towards the Iraqi border in the southern sector at a time its military intelligence agents were operating inside Iraqi territory."

Wish we had an intelligence agency we could trust, don't ya?

A Moral Chernobyl

There appear to be limits to the extent of which I will sell my soul to support the neocon vision.

Man, sometimes things just get a little too weird. In a stunning display of how group interactions can modify the genetics of an individual (group based genetic evolution), Moxie of Moxie vs. Moxie^tm fame is looking for a meme-mate for genetic experimentation in pursuit of world domination.

This whole liberal troll discussion led me to poke around the past trail of Moxie vs. Moxie^tm and was led to her site. Never really bothered to check up on the blog owners so I followed the link to the Ann Coulter-like Moxie. Imagine my surprise to see this as the latest entry.

Mox-eugenics

Although there are few things I enjoy more than gratuitous eating of pork products, engaging in capitalism and bleeding monthly all while hanging around the local extremist-mosque (all three make terrorists cry), I do look forward to my Moxtopia Selective Breeding program™.

Since my quest to have all liberals chemically sterilized has failed, I’ve resorted to creation of those who can render a liberal infertile with only an evil glare.

She is darn cute, though. Evil, naturally. But with a very pretty smile. I wish her luck in her quest. Where do we send gifts?

Coming from a long line of Republicans, I know how to avoid the unfortunate result of hairy liberal feminist children. Some say the sight of a newborn with hairy limbs and armpits kills the conservative mother upon first sight.

Likewise I will bear no boy-children who hug trees (and hump men) while being physically indistinguishable from their pinko feminist sisters.

Only men with the right brain power, looks and attitude will make the cut for the mox-VRWC eugenics program.

Update: need I say that snarky personal remarks about this young woman are not welcome and will be edited/deleted?

Saddam, apparently, is a case in point. Why, oh why isn't this a slam dunk? What? You have to gather more evidence? Gee, isn't there procedures for dealing with this? What? We can't follow the rule of law in such an obvious, trivially prosecutable case as Saddam?

Ye gods. Truly a nation of complete wimps who can't get their frickin' act together enough to prosecute Saddam Hussein.

We're a bunch of frickin' morons.

Appeals to the adult in any dysfunctional family. Well, anyone in a dysfunctional family - the narrator, the incredulous fool, the innocent oaf, whatever. . .

Katherine R over at Obsidian Wings has done yeoman's work slogging through the Human Rights Report (from our own State Department, not some panty waisted, limp wristed human rights organization) and looking at the countries that we have reportedly "rendered" terrorism suspects - in other words, countries that we have shipped people to who will do the torturing for us. Something that is expressly forbidden by law (not to mention just plain human decency).

This kind of hearkens back to the post Sebastian Holsclaw (an occasional Obsidian Wings contributor) did berating Amnesty International for protesting shipping ex-prisoners at Gitmo back to some of these very same countries where they faced almost certain torture (see my irony report regarding the same).

I tell ya, if ever there was a slippery slope in life, this whole torture thing is one of them. . . I know this is ugly to look at, and even uglier to think that we - as country - have been doing it ourselves, but really. Unless we look it square in the face and take care of this crap, it's only going to get worse - in so many "wonderful" ways. . .

This poor woman had the misfortune of committing a fairly huge blunder and getting noticed by some very high traffic blogs on the left. Heck, we're all amateurs, so mistakes are generally the rule rather than the exception. Still, it's a classic example of trolling behavior, and they are trolls from my side of the fence, politically speaking.

The comment swarm is an interesting phenomena. A vicious phenomena.

I'll bet there's more than one or two good papers waiting to be written about it. Just the data alone would be interesting to look at. It'd be really cool to do IP correlation of the comments and the purported identities and track the multiple identities in the storm.

There's got to be people out there looking at this kind of stuff, right? The sheer size of the group involved is amazing. You could never fit this many people in a room to have this kind of swarm, nor could the swarm exist vocally (unless it was recorded, but even then. . .). And the geographical diversity alone would make for some interesting data.

I guess the old Usenet was similar to this and certainly had its swarms, but the population to draw upon was pretty small (relative to what it is today) and pretty narrowly selected (the group of people likely to have computers and access to the threads through the internet was primarily limited to scientists and computer geeks). Also, the notion of blogs implies a certain ownership to the swarm which was, I think, far more loosely defined in the Usenet - i.e. the moderator(s) "own" the threads.

In any event, hopefully some enterprising people will study this stuff and mine the weird behavior with good research. It'd make for fascinating reading.

Getting really weird out there.

Interrogation abuses were 'approved at highest levels'

The Telegraph understands that four confidential Red Cross documents implicating senior Pentagon civilians in the Abu Ghraib scandal have been passed to an American television network, which is preparing to make them public shortly.

According to lawyers familiar with the Red Cross reports, they will contradict previous testimony by senior Pentagon officials who have claimed that the abuse in the Abu Ghraib prison was an isolated incident.

"There are some extremely damaging documents around, which link senior figures to the abuses," said Scott Horton, the former chairman of the New York Bar Association, who has been advising Pentagon lawyers unhappy at the administration's approach. "The biggest bombs in this case have yet to be dropped."

This is really amazing. Lately there has been much talk about the Bush administration's efforts to change the law such that religious groups can have a free hand when it comes to helping out George Bush in his reelection bid. And as is usual regarding these topics, a little bit of hay has been made about how the Democrats have been over reacting in that liberal way they have about the issue of seperation between church and state. Well, I think we can cast aside such petty arguments now as George Bush has pretty much pulled aside the veil and has cleared everything up for us.

Bush sought Vatican help to get U.S. bishops' support

Citing an unidentified Vatican official, Allen wrote: ``Bush said, `Not all the American bishops are with me' on the cultural issues. The implication was that he hoped the Vatican would nudge them toward more explicit activism.''

Allen wrote that others in the meeting confirmed that the president had pledged aggressive efforts ``on the cultural front, especially the battle against gay marriage, and asked for the Vatican's help in encouraging the U.S. bishops to be more outspoken.'' Sodano did not respond, Allen reported, citing the same unidentified sources.

A Vatican official declined Saturday to disclose the contents of the meeting, which followed the president's brief meeting with the pope. Jeanie Mamo, a White House press officer, said: ``They had a good, private discussion. They discussed a number of priorities of shared concern, and the president's and the Vatican's positions on these issues are well-known.''

The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, called the report ``mind-boggling.''

``It is just unprecedented for a president to ask for help from the Vatican to get re-elected, and that is exactly what this is,'' Lynn said.

Linda Pieczynski of Call to Action, a liberal Catholic group, said, ``For a president to try to get the leader of any religious organization to manipulate his fellow clergymen to support a political candidate crosses the line in this country.''

Digby has a post up about something I've been wondering for some time.

Bad Books For Stupid People

This business of using dogs to torture Iraqi prisoners actually is more depraved than is obvious, if you can believe that.

Islam has a prohibition against keeping dogs in the house or touching them. They are considered impure. I would guess that the brain trust who is putting together this new torture regime thought they were being very clever by doing something that "the ayrabs" would find particularly unpleasant.

We know that big tough American guys like Trent Lott wouldn't piss all over themselves if they were tied up naked while a 150 lb snarling German Shepard was allowed to back them into a corner and take a piece out of their flesh. They don't have a problem with dogs like those arabs do.

This is but another example of the crude, stereotypical approach we seem to have taken toward the Iraqis (and undoubtedly the Afghans, as well.) And it is likely because the "intellectuals" who planned and implemented the war don't have a clue.

Really. If I - your average white American guy - were thrown in a prison, pretty much any of the techniques used (or ever imagined) would work on me. There's not anything "cultural" about being threatened by a German Shepherd. There's not anything particularly middle eastern regarding being shuffled around in the nude and being forced into homo-erotic acts. Really. It'll humiliate pretty much anyone and apply unbearable pressure.

And so I am simply left stunned - yet again - at the intellectual immaturity of the pro-war side. The whole last three years has been driven by a literal comic book mentality of how the world works.

Words fail me. I simply cannot describe how repulsed I am at the level of intellectual discussion that has gone on. From the "Hulk Must Crush" attitude on the military side to the incredible semantic squirming from the so-called intellectual side.

And now we're justifying torture and quibbling about the constitutionality of the president's ability to "set aside" laws by fiat. . .

Wow, the silence is really getting quite deafening. Back in May, all we heard was that the torture was the result of a few bad apples and the horrible liberal, anti-war partisans were just blowing all of this out of proportion. Then in June we saw an all out assault on Seymour Hersh because he dared to suggest that the responsibility for this ugly, loathsome behavior went far higher up the command chain than was being suggested.

Now we have not just one, but several leaked memos from the Bush administration which pretty much state that this kind of interrogation techniques were authorized at the highest levels of our administration. Ashcroft, while not invoking executive privilege, has refused to release the memo. A memo which essentially says our chief executive can set aside the law when ever he wants. [for the whole, well linked shebang, go here].

Myself, I can only assume that things are going to get worse on this front, not better. After Ashcroft's performance this week, it seems the line in the sand has been drawn pretty clearly.

At least one conservative mind has decided to hit the eject button and remain silent on the issue. . .

The editors at The Poor Man have another story board up for the Bush campaign.

Just found this little gem off of the main Furl feed. Here's a few of my favorites.

The Two Things about Philosophy.
1. Plato was wrong.
2. Wittgenstein was right.

The Two Things about Project Management:
1. The schedule will slip.
2. It's about how you manage the schedule slippage.

The Two Things about Blogging:
1. Everyone who runs one is a kook.
2. Everyone who comments in one is a kook.

The Two Things About System Design:
1. Build a system any fool can use and only a fool will want to use it.
2. A fool and his money are soon parted.

Due to the wonderful service that is Furl, I have changed my blogging process over the past 2 months - for the better, I believe. On the right of the blog pages is the latest 20 entries into my Furl clipping archive, generated using the most excellent "Feed to JavaScript" service.

At first I was rather skeptical about Furl's claim, but I find that I'm using it all the time now. As I'm searching around the net in the various directions that one gets led, I just "Furl" the page and a local copy is saved on their web site. There's several sites out there which provide a bookmark service, but what sets Furl apart is the fact that they archive a copy of the page so when they disappear you still have it. But that's not all. They also provide a pretty darn good search feature for all your archives (and other user's public archives) which is something that mere bookmarking of URLs doesn't supply. In addition, they allow annotations of the archived copy so I can add any snarky comments, or extracts I see fit.

So, the up shot is that I no longer just use this blog to post all the pointers to interesting articles that I find in my random walk through the web. This has resulted in a lot less posting on the blog which I think is for the better. There's plenty of sites out there which do this far better than I and since I have a tendency to find a lot of interesting articles out there, my blog fills up with a lot of posts which tend to obscure my posts which contain the deep and penetrating insight that I'm famous for (hey, that's called irony).

What's also cool about Furl is that they provide a general RSS feed for the entire public archive of the members, so by subscribing to this, you then get a quite broad and eccletic feed of information coming from the other Furl members - quite cool in its own right.

So anyways, the upshot is that while I might not be posting the number of posts I used to, you can still look over to the right to see the recent clippings I've been gathering from around the net. You can go to view the Hellblazer Furl archive, or you can subscribe to the Hellblazer Furl RSS feed.

Again, I can't stress what a great service Furl is. It's free and I keep finding new uses for it. The ability to search what I've archived and the use of the RSS feed to clean up my blog has been well worth the dollar. They've been nothing but responsive to support requests and they keep adding features.

Via John David Stone:

I wept because I had no answers, until I met a man who had no questions.

Case in point: Iraq.

How to explain the insanity? Lot's of those who consider themselves on the left side of the political spectrum wonder about this a lot. Conspiracy theories. Evil. Corporate greed. Alien colonization. The list is way too long to enumerate.

The easy answer to this complex issue:

Smart people believe weird stupid things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons

It's called the Confirmation Bias.

Here's what Francis Bacon had to say about this in 1620

The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects; in order that this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate...

And the world has been getting a painful object lesson of this quirk of human nature in the prosecution of the war on terror.

Drezner responds to Matt Stoller's calling him out on the blogosphere floor. The comments to Drezner's post are well worth the read (so far, at least. Who knows when the trolls drop by and Godwin's law is invoked).

Here's my shorter version of Drezner's response

1) I don't agree with the way Blankley said it, but I agree with the point he was trying to make.

2) While I agree that Iraq has been incompetently planned, executed, and prosecuted on a lie, the idea itself is a pretty darn good one.

3) I didn't cheat when I bashed Soros, here's a taste of how I thoroughly trash his book by misrepresenting Soros' arguments and assuming he's a loon as my working premise.

4) Let me conclude by implying Stoller is anti-semitic and finish on the high note of an ad hominem attack.

Via Ara, I'm led to a rather frightening article in the L.A. Times.

U.S. Will Revise Data on Terror

The State Department is scrambling to revise its annual report on global terrorism to acknowledge that it understated the number of deadly attacks in 2003, amid charges that the document is inaccurate and was politically manipulated by the Bush administration.

When the most recent "Patterns of Global Terrorism" report was issued April 29, senior Bush administration officials immediately hailed it as objective proof that they were winning the war on terrorism. The report is considered the authoritative yardstick of the prevalence of terrorist activity around the world.

"Indeed, you will find in these pages clear evidence that we are prevailing in the fight" against global terrorism, Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage said during a celebratory rollout of the report.

But on Tuesday, State Department officials said they underreported the number of terrorist attacks in the tally for 2003, and added that they expected to release an updated version soon.

Several U.S. officials and terrorism experts familiar with that revision effort said the new report will show that the number of significant terrorist incidents increased last year, perhaps to its highest level in 20 years.

"It will change the numbers," said one State Department official who declined to comment further or be identified by name. "The incidents will go up, but I don't know by how many." [emphasis added]

This should demonstrate once again for some people that the news media prefers to sensationalize violence and bad news, and not to look at successes. It should also demonstrate that certain people are not above using this tendency of the media in order to forward their own narrow agendas--either anti-war or simply anti-Bush.

Indeed, you can pretty much assume that, aside from glancingly mentioning this--the fact that things are going astoundingly well, I mean--the news media will quickly return to hyping every negative development, every nasty surprise, and every successful attack as top news. Even if there are fewer all the time, even if things get better all the time, even if things will never be perfect or ideal, you will rarely see the fact that we're doing so well pointed out.

It will be the job of those of us who actually care about the facts, and view them as more important than partisanship, to try to get the truth out. I hope you'll all join me in that. Think of it as your contribution to the war effort--it's what I think of as my main contribution, that's for sure.

[crickets chirping]

Over at Share Your Experience, I seem to have two people who are willing to give information regarding me and someone who is looking for information about me. The two that are information providers work with me (or have in the past). One knows claims to know me very well and the experience is "current", meaning, I suppose, that they currently work with me. The other declines to state how well they know me and the experience is within the current year. The person looking for information regarding me apparently knows me socially and claims to know me well.

I'm of two minds about this service. It's anonymous, so you don't have a clue who is saying what to whom. But on the other hand, this is pretty much the way things work in real life so there's hardly any thing new going on here. It's just amplified because of the internet.

I can only hope they're saying good things about me. . . I really don't have any recourse anyway. But I do find it odd that someone who claims to know me well should be casting around the net looking for more information about me, anonymously. Hmmm... What enemies do I have? They would know me well, I suppose. But I would hardly be social with them.

Oh well. The whole thing still kind of freaks me out. After all, talking about someone behind their back is... well... supposed to stay behind your back. It's a little alarming to receive an email from "Share Your Experiences" notifying you that people are talking behind your back.

I mean, it really does nothing more than feed one's natural paranoia to find this out without any way to figure out what's going on.

Over at Turning the Tide, they learned the hard way that comments are more than a mixed blessing. Now you have to be a registered Z sustainer to comment. Interestingly, they have retroactively restored the comments. I had missed all the nonsense when it occurred, so it was interesting to go read all the juvenile crap these right wing loons decided to spew all over the place.

Really, it is pretty sickening. I've thankfully never been witness to such raw bile and hatred in my life. It's stunning to see.

Heart of Darkness, Chris? It's no surprise. The only thing I find surprising is that there's any light left at all.

Christopher Allbritton has a rather depressing post up from Iraq.

I write this not as a plea for pity or understanding. I don’t understand this country myself, so that may be impossible. And I know I have written things that will anger people: I am ashamed of many of the emotions I feel these days. But I care about the truth as best as I can see and tell it. I once believed that telling the truth — or a small part of it — could help the world. It could help people understand things better and thus make the world better. But this war defies comprehension. It’s so stupid and there seems to be no point to anything that happens here. People die on a daily basis in random, terrifying attacks. And for what? Freedom? Stability? Peace? There is none of that here and it’s likely there won’t be after the Americans leave. Iraq has spiraled into a dark place, much worse than where it was a year ago during the war. There is no freedom from the fear that is stoked by mutual hatred, cynicism and an apprehension about the future. So what if one side has superior firepower? Every bullet fired helps kill souls on both sides of this war, whether it hits flesh or lands harmlessly.

We — Iraqis and the Americans here — are caged by fear, and we are all conquered people now.

Philosoraptor has a provocative post up about a topic that I have been thinking about lately.

Deification and Related Types of Exaggeration on the Right

And speaking of Clinton, there's the bizarre phenomenon of seething, frothing-at-the-mouth Clinton hatred to be explained as well. It seems that the right has a tendency, more pronounced than that of the left, to exaggerate the virtue of their own leaders while exaggerating the vices of their opponents.

But this doesn't seem to be limited to their opinions of leaders. Although the right and the left each seem to have low opinions of the other in general, again this tendency on the right seems more pronounced. It is not uncommon for those on the right to attribute to liberals every imaginable vice, including contradictory ones--liberals are stupid, yet they are effete intellectuals; they are wimps yet vindictive and prone to the use of political violence; they are overly-emotional, yet heartless and soulless, etc. It is even common now for prominent voices on the right to characterize liberals as traitors.

So, is the conservative mind more inclined to these types of exaggerations? Or is relative extremism, rather than conservatism, the culprit? Or is the left really as bad as the right? WTF is going on here???

Fahrenheit 9/11 opens June 26. I can't wait to see the RWAP bloom into full blown frothing at the mouth in their desperate attempt to censor the film. Naturally, this will severely turn off any centrist voter up for grabs and lend even more credibility . And those that go into fisking mode will just bore the tears out of those same voters. They'll look more like the guy in the back of the class who couldn't figure out how to round figures and kept correcting the teacher on the last 5 decimal places. Facts on the ground, baby. Facts on the ground.

And speaking of facts on the ground, the second reason to be optimistic is The Hunting of the President. If any of the RWAP's buttons haven't been pushed by Moore - and it's hard to imagine that scenario - then this film will set them off, screaming gibberish as fast as they can type. I'm setting aside July 16th for the screening at the Roxie theatre here in SF. Gonna be good.

My, my, my. It's going to be an interesting summer. I just love it when the RWAP goes into full rabid dog mode. They make such complete asses of themselves. Precisely the kind of thing that will drive up their negatives.

Gaddafi Regrets Reagan Died Without Facing Trial

"I express my profound regrets over Reagan's death before he appeared before justice to be held to account for his ugly crime in 1986 against Libyan children," Gaddafi told the official JANA news agency.

Ronald Reagan was the first president I had the privilege to vote for. Growing up in a solidly republican, evangelical Christian family, it really wasn't a surprise that I started out my political life in that camp. Heck, back when I was a kid on the playground, I can remember pushing the whole "don't change horses in mid stream" line for Nixon.

Ronald Reagan, though, is the primary reason why I became a democrat.

I won't go into a long litany of what happened to make me change my mind politically, as this is the time for mourning the passing of a president. Regardless of how I felt about his policies and actions while he held that office, he was a man who served his country. I never hated Reagan the man, but I did despise his policies. I never thought he was evil, but I did think he had a major mean streak.

I must also say that I never thought I would live to see a president who would make me nostalgic for the eight years that Reagan ruled this country. Whatever Reagan was or was not, he was better man than Bush.

Kissinger Accused of Blocking Scholar

Whether or not there were any hidden strings pulled to give Mr. Rogers the final word, as Mr. Maxwell claims, the dispute underscores an intense competition under way to shape the way that history is told, particularly regarding the United States involvement in Chile, as more and more documents touching on Mr. Kissinger's legacy are released.

"The key is the suppression of debate on foreign policy by a major figure in a major foreign policy magazine," said Mr. Maxwell, who is now headed for Harvard University as a senior fellow at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies.

Nor was Mr. Kornbluh pleased. He, too, had tried to submit a letter, but was also turned down.

"I thought that Foreign Affairs was being grossly unfair to me as the author of the book that was the foundation for the entire debate, and to Ken Maxwell, who was obviously their own analyst and their own reviewer," Mr. Kornbluh said.

The incident has sparked dismay in some quarters. A letter to Foreign Affairs from Latin American experts who are members of the council severely criticized the way the prestigious journal handled the dispute, particularly in denying Mr. Maxwell the right to reply. The decision, it said, "denied readers an opportunity to weigh competing views, contrary to the journal's policies and traditions."

This time, Mr. Hoge said, the dissent would appear in the letters column of Foreign Affairs' next issue.

I say "nice shot". It's a good shot man.

Spain and U.S. at Odds on Mistaken Terror Arrest

At the door were two agents with the F.B.I., a pair Mr. Mayfield described in an interview as "good cop, bad cop," "tall one, short one," a burly male agent and a diminutive female agent. Reading from a list on the search warrant, which was contained in court records unsealed last week, the agents told Mr. Mayfield they were searching for, among other things, "explosives, blasting agents and detonators."

The court records show that the agents confiscated a large number of items from the office, including computer disks, bank statements, yellow Post-it Notes and confidential client files. Meanwhile, agents were confiscating things from the Mayfield's home, including a .22-caliber handgun and .22-caliber rifle, his Koran, and what was described in the search warrant return report as "miscellaneous Spanish documents," which turned out to be Spanish homework belonging to Mr. Mayfield's children, family members said.

In the office that morning, Mr. Mayfield, not yet understanding the gravity of the situation, was almost dismissive of the agents. He recalled telling the agents, "If you have questions, put them in writing, I'll review them and I might get back to you."

This did not go over well, Mr. Mayfield recalled, and soon enough, he was frisked and handcuffed and marched out to a Ford Explorer that would take him to the federal courthouse in downtown Portland. On the way to the courthouse, one of the agents, "the bad cop," said something that Mr. Mayfield found particularly scary, he recalled.

"Brandon think long and hard," he quoted the agent as telling him. "You remember how the Muslim brothers stood up for Mike Hawash," one of the Muslim defendants in the terrorism case here known as the "Portland Seven," who pleaded guilty to last year to a charge of aiding the Taliban. "Well, they are not going to be there for you."

F.B.I. officials in Portland, including Mr. Jordan, declined to be interviewed about the case. Many Muslim leaders say they suspect the F.B.I. zeroed in on Mr. Mayfield because he was a Muslim who had connections to the Portland Seven and who visited a mosque that was under suspicion. But F.B.I. officials emphasized that the examiners who made the initial match between the Madrid print and Mr. Mayfield did not know his name, much less his religion

Kristoff get's it right.

Beating Specialist Baker

Mr. Baker, who is married and has a 14-year-old son, is now unemployed, taking nine prescription medications and still suffering frequent seizures. His lawyer, Bruce Simpson, has been told that Mr. Baker may not begin to get disability payments for up to 18 months. If he is judged 100 percent disabled, he will then get a maximum of $2,100 a month.

If the U.S. military treats one of its own soldiers this way — allowing him to be battered, and lying to cover it up — then imagine what happens to Afghans and Iraqis.

President Bush attributed the problems uncovered at Abu Ghraib to "a few American troops who dishonored our country." Mr. Bush, the problems go deeper than a few bad apples.

Cheney Reportedly Interviewed in Leak of C.I.A. Officer's Name

Mr. Cheney was also asked about conversations with senior aides, including his chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, according to people officially informed about the case. In addition, those people said, Mr. Cheney was asked whether he knew of any concerted effort by White House aides to name the officer. It was not clear how Mr. Cheney responded to the prosecutors' questions.

I think Karl Rove finally screwed the wrong pooch this time. No amount of Zombie Mind Tricks^tm on the part of the apologist for the Administration are going to stop this one.

The narrative that may take hold in the Military and Intelligence community could be something straight from a Tom Clancy novel. Where Ambassador Wilson is playing the Jack Ryan part and the added bonus of a 90's style wife being played by a real live CIA agent, Valerie Plame - WMD Expert. Think "Clear and Present Danger". I mean, isn't this simply begging for the comparison and framing?

In the hands of some people with a talent for propaganda [ed. - the good kind] and a decent budget, this alone could have Bush leaving in shame before the next election. The CIA doesn't seem like it's going to back down. They wouldn't have come forward with this allegation unless they're were going to see it through - why take the risk?

And the CIA isn't exactly known for playing by the rules, so I'm sure there's a lot of dirty tricks already being prepared. I don't think people who've calmly instigated entire coups as well as selling opium and cocaine to fund their efforts around the globe aren't going to have any problem at all resorting to Karl Rove's level - if it comes to that. I guess that will be up to Rove.

A time to weep

As a Nebraska émigré, I am proud to be made an honorary doctor of laws by another Nebraska émigré, President Kerrey ... at an institution founded by still another, Alvin Johnson.

Considering the unhealthy state of our laws today, they probably could use another doctor.

My reciprocal obligation is to make a speech.

This is not a speech. Two weeks ago I set aside the speech I prepared. This is a cry from the heart, a lamentation for the loss of this country's goodness and therefore its greatness.

Future historians studying the decline and fall of America will mark this as the time the tide began to turn -- toward a mean-spirited mediocrity in place of a noble beacon.

For me the final blow was American guards laughing over the naked, helpless bodies of abused prisoners in Iraq. "There is a time to laugh," the Bible tells us, "and a time to weep." Today I weep for the country I love, the country I proudly served, the country to which my four grandparents sailed over a century ago with hopes for a new land of peace and freedom. I cannot remain silent when that country is in the deepest trouble of my lifetime.

Brad points to an interesting lament about security by Microsoft Windows guru Paul Thurrott. I won't quote the article, so you should really go read the exerpt in Brad's post and his comments. Comments which are, naturally, quite apropopriate.

At times I am quite confused by the libertarian/conservative mind set. Microsoft is the canonical case in the arena of economics/market/regulation philosophy. Here is a corporation that no one seriously disputes is a monopoly. We all root for the scrappy Linux dude and the oh-so-in-style Mac cutie, but in the end it's impossible to look at the market share and come to the conclusion that Microsoft does not have a complete monopoly on the operating system market. Any market share any other operating system has is due to sheer luck or a lot of hard work despite one's best marketing decisions.

And while I'm hardly an expert in the market, it doesn't seem to take a genius to quickly figure out that monopolies don't respond to market forces in the same way as a market that has a "healthy" level of competition. By definition, they can pretty much do what they want to do and change happens only with the monopoly's consent.

So now we have a case where the monopoly in question is quite critical to our national security. Think I'm kidding? Read Paul Thurrott's post carefully. Here's the key bit.

This Trojan horse got through my defenses despite the fact that I was running the Release Candidate 1 (RC1) version of Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) with the firewall turned on.

<irony> Sure, our FBI, CIA, NSA, DOD have some super secret version - call it OP/X - which keeps their laptops safe and prevent any kind of trojan/virus/malware from infecting their systems </irony>. But what about the systems in the power grid? What about our water supplies? What about the myriad of other devices we are now relying upon to run our complicated lives for us?

None of the scary thoughts above are anything smarter people than me haven't been worried about already. But the thing that I scratch my head over is why the root of the problem hasn't been taken care of by Government Fiat^tm. After all, when it comes to national security, the government - our government - can seemingly dictate whatever they want these days. Remember? And so what are we waiting for? One of the most critical problems in our security web is this omni-present operating system delivered by the Monopoly Microsoft.

This isn't a quaint issue about market ideology any more. We now have a bona-fide security issue; the risk it presents goes way beyond any threat immigrants or sophisticated WMD attacks pose. And yet we're wandering around with the computational equivalent of Typhoid Mary as the omni-present operating system. Here in the 21st century, we pretty much understand that to control a virus, you control the vector. And Windows is the vector.

The issue of what to do about Microsoft's monopoly status should really be moved out of the realm of pure economics and into the realm of national security threats. Too bad we didn't do this long ago when we would have had more time to develop a robust market so that the market - itself - could work its magic on solving the security problem. Instead we're now stuck with a lumbering giant who has a lot of lobbying leverage. Everything libertarians/conservatives have bitched about regarding the inefficiencies, corruption and plain ineptitude of the government when it comes to implementing market changes now comes to roost on the shoulders of these same libertarians/conservatives.

And so I say "No Soup For You!" Because of the blind allegiance to the god of the free market and refusal to bend on the issue of regulation in such an obvious case of monopoly, we're now in a particularly dicey position, at the mercy of Luck^tm and the practical impossibility of our Republican dominated government to guide Microsoft to do the "right thing". If we had dealt with this whole monopoly issue 7 years ago when it should have been dealt with, we'd likely have a market that would have already solved this problem.

You know, just like markets are supposed to be able to do.

Instead, we're left with the worst of all worlds:

1) An unresponsive bumbling giant who simply can't get its collective act together to do what is necessary - practically immune to market forces.

2) Worse, we have a midget government impotently trying to whip it into doing the right thing.

Ideology sucks. Worse, it's fucking dangerous.

Upped the center column by 100px or so, upped the fonts (except the side bars), and changed them to the fonts I had before - just like 'em. Understand the particular style interaction of the new MT 3.0 templates much better now so I'm no longer baffled by bizarre font behavior.

Let me know if it's still hard on the eyes.

Go wander over and take another one of those presidential preference matchups. My results were Kucinich @ 92%, Kerry @ 80% and Bush @ 9%. No surprise.

The "test" is one of the better I've seen so far, though. . . Well worth the time it takes to go through the questions.

Font size is still small, but that's the way it used to be back before the great change. Things should be reasonable. If not, let me know. . .

I really apologize. I didn't invent this technology, and quite frankly I think that people like me should be assigned graphic design artists who actually understand layout and style so that the world is spared the inevitable result of not assigning me a graphic design artist. In lieu of that pitifully improbable reality, you'll just have to wait until I figure it out.

My profuse apologies. . .

Next time some bitchy member of the right wing of American politics starts whining about the responsibility to "advise" the president on Judicial appointments, point them at this:

Judicial nomination in doubt amid abuse scandal

Now explain this one to me. Is it really possible that the pool of potential right wing, conservative judges is so small that this Administration cannot come up with someone associated with torture and such? Haynes, as it turns out,

1) Was responsible for making sure that the U.S. military complied with the laws of war, including the Geneva Convention.

2) Snubbed human rights advocates who raised concerns over prisoner abuse and torture in February 2003.

3) Rejected and ignored the advice and concern of Judge Advocate General officials and prohibited them from observing interrogations.

4) Denied that the U.S. military was engaged in torture in a letter to Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), but did not address the issues of illegal and degrading treatment

Via the spunky democrats.org blog.

It's a rhetorical question, really.

Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid.

The question that haunts Speth's book -- all of these books, really -- is, why? Why have Americans refused to face up to the evidence of global warming? The answers are both political and economic. But Ross Gelbspan, a former Boston Globe reporter and editor, makes the case that the news media are also guilty. In Boiling Point (Basic Books, $22, to be published in August), he argues that on matters of scientific fact, journalists employ an essentially unfair idea of ''balance'' -- treating global warming as though it were still a matter of open conjecture, with equal weight on both sides. As a result, the story of global warming as reported in the American press largely reflects the political manipulation of the story, not the science. Accurate coverage, Gelbspan writes, ''would have reflected the position of mainstream scientists in 95 percent of the story -- with the skeptics getting a paragraph at the end.''

To most scientists, global warming is a truly successful hypothesis. The evidence overwhelmingly shows, as predicted, that human behavior is altering the climate, with potentially catastrophic results. And yet it seems strangely difficult to scare or reason or argue Americans, the critical audience to reach, into recognizing the truth and acting on it. The world's population is trapped in a malign paradox. Instead of taking the lead, the United States -- the country with the highest emissions and the most excessive consumption, as well as enormous potential to produce innovative energy technologies -- knows and seems to care the least about global warming. Short-term self-interest is a powerful buffer against reality. So is the lobbying of the fossil fuel industries and the complacency of an administration that lives in thrall to them.

Just keeping an open mind. . .

Bush Likens War Against Terrorism to WWII

BARON VLADIMIR HARKISSINGER: Bush, Bush... I place you in charge of Irakkis. It's yours to squeeze, as I promised. I want you to squeeze and squeeze and squeeze.

Give me OIL! Drive them into utter submission. You must not show the slightest pity or mercy... as only you can... Never stop!

Go.... Show no mercy!

BUSH: Yes, my lord Baron.

Bush leaves just as Kerry steps out of the shower. The Baron turns to him lovingly.

BARON (to Kerry): And when we've crushed these people enough I'll send in you Kerry... they'll cheer you as a rescuer... lovely Kerry... really a lovely boy.

(suddenly he smiles and screams)
WHERE'S MY DOCTOR?

Go watch this flash animation regarding the question posed by this title.

The lying game

An A-Z of the Iraq war and its aftermath, focusing on misrepresentation, manipulation, and mistakes

CAzaelabi Reportedly Told Iran That U.S. Had Code

Ahmad CAzaelabi, the Iraqi leader and former ally of the Bush administration, disclosed to an Iranian official that the United States had broken the secret communications code of Iran's intelligence service, betraying one of Washington's most valuable sources of information about Iran, according to United States intelligence officials.

The general charge that Mr. CAzaelabi provided Iran with critical American intelligence secrets was widely reported last month after the Bush administration cut off financial aid to Mr. CAzaelabi's organization, the Iraqi National Congress, and American and Iraqi security forces raided his Baghdad headquarters.

The Bush administration, citing national security concerns, asked The New York Times and other news organizations not to publish details of the case. The Times agreed to hold off publication of some specific information that top intelligence officials said would compromise a vital, continuing intelligence operation. The administration withdrew its request on Tuesday, saying information about the code-breaking was starting to appear in news accounts.

Mr. CAzaelabi and his aides have said he knew of no secret information related to Iran and therefore could not have communicated any intelligence to Tehran.

American officials said that about six weeks ago, Mr. CAzaelabi told the Baghdad station chief of Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security that the United States was reading the communications traffic of the Iranian spy service, one of the most sophisticated in the Middle East.

According to American officials, the Iranian official in Baghdad, possibly not believing Mr. CAzaelabi's account, sent a cable to Tehran detailing his conversation with Mr. CAzaelabi, using the broken code. That encrypted cable, intercepted and read by the United States, tipped off American officials to the fact that Mr. CAzaelabi had betrayed the code-breaking operation, the American officials said.

American officials reported that in the cable to Tehran, the Iranian official recounted how Mr. CAzaelabi had said that one of "them" — a reference to an American — had revealed the code-breaking operation, the officials said. The Iranian reported that Mr. CAzaelabi said the American was drunk.

David Neiwert has a mind jogger post up regarding CAzaelabi and the central role the INC played in the road to war.

INC and blowback

What has not been widely discussed is the central role the Iraqi National Congress (INC) played in the road to war-- not as puppet but instigator. The role of the INC in generating unreliable "intelligence" on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD - meaning nuclear, chemical and biological weapons) has been mentioned in passing in the media since the occupation started to go sour. Once the investigations move beyond the ability of some as-yet unidentified foreign operation to plant childishly crude forgeries in the State of the Union address, the INC's steady stream of questionable intelligence will deserve more scrutiny.

And that's where the afore-mentioned list of bogus assumptions in the Bush war plan become very interesting. You see, all of them trace back to a single source. If you guessed the Iraqi National Congress, you win the exploding cigar!