January 2005 Archives

Yea, Iraq had an election. Hope to "Bob" that it all works out for them. Don't have much hope of that because - well - having the US fuck up everything that it touches has got to be a huge impediment in the whole "starting a democracy" thing.

I read with immense amusement the last paragraph of a rather precious post by Steve Vincent

Bloggers. I can't imagine how the liberation of Iraq would have progressed without the hundreds, the thousands, of blogs that cut through the anti-war bias of the MSM. By giving a voice to people and viewpoints which otherwise would have gone silent, bloggers helped articulate the cause of democracy and civil rights that lies at the base of this conflict. Which make me wonder: how would bloggers have affected the course of Vietnam War?

And even James Leopold can't help but use the Iraqi elections to bitch slap dKos and his readers. Bonus points to James Leopold for using "solidarity", which we all know is a well known commie code word for "brothers in arms". Come to think of it, it seems like James Leopold just called dKos readers a bunch of anti-democratic terrorists - or terrorist supporters (same thing).

The whole semantics thing is getting to be too much for me. I figure if you ever catch yourself basing your defense on the meaning of the word "imminent", you really don't have an argument anyways and you're just blowing smoke - I digress.

But solidarity with terrorists? Ouch!

It'll be interesting to see where we are in six months. James Leopold is boldly predicting that Dr. Z will be planning his exit strategy by end of year. On what basis this claim is based, I know not. But hey, maybe these bloggers all know something I don't.

What I do know is that Iraq doesn't have very many trained people to protect them. As Rice was corrected (whoops!) in her confirmation hearings, Iraq has only 5K or so of reasonably trained people. Not 120K. And this is not a very good sign at all - regardless of what percentage of people voted on Sunday.

So, I'm glad they voted. Let's see if we can start having success in some metrics besides the symbolic right to vote.

JJ updates his poke in the eye with a sharp stick using the Power of Blogs^tm

: LATER: I just got email from Edward who says:

I can't resist offering this minor observation to Alterman's "question" about "an election where candidates have to remain in hiding for fear of their lives"...

Yeah, I've heard of one Eric...America, 1860. Abraham Lincoln had to enter Washington DC dressed as a woman in a shawl for fear of assassination by Confederate nutjobs. And not unfounded as we know since one of them caught up with him five years later.

Myself, I don't think I would go baiting a professor in history - that being Dr. Alterman - about historical matters and allusions to the Civil War. But hey, I guess I'm not the poster child of the golden age of propaganda, either.

Who knows what mighty blog weapons he'll bear down upon the good Dr? Maybe he'll call up his mindless zombie commenters and command them to hurl abstract 1's and 0's which wind up in /dev/null on Eric's mail server.

Maybe he'll get all FOIA on Eric's ass.

JJ picks a fight with Eric Alterman. Be sure to read the comments, as they are some of the most fawning, sycophantic meta-toadies I've seen in quite a while. He really collects some gems.

Anyways, give it a read and gaze upon the poster child for the golden age of propaganda.

But despite the relatively low ranking for Alan Colmes (hey, I understand. He's more disgusting and embarrassing than loathsome.), I do agree with putting John Negroponte into the top ten.

10. John Negroponte

Crimes: US Pro Consul (a title that was given to de facto rulers of dependencies or occupied countries in colonial times) of Iraq. Garnered his reputation as professional thug with his assignment as ambassador to Honduras by Ronald Reagan in 1981. Collaborated with the Honduran military while lying to Congress as they kidnapped, tortured and killed hundreds of people, including US missionaries. Was responsible for implementing the Reagan administration covert strategy to crush the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, resulting in it becoming 2nd to Haiti as poorest country in the western hemisphere but with the special distinction of having the largest disparity between rich and poor. Appears to be carrying out the same plan in Iraq, as recent disclosures about the Pentagon's plans to utilize death squads to achieve our kind of democracy indicate.

Smoking Gun: As Iraqi occupation grew bleaker from the start of 2004 a new tactic was employed, assassinating intellectuals opposed to the occupation. A senior commander working for the American-installed Iraqi police said "They are politicians that are backed by the Americans and who arrived to Iraq from exile with a list of their enemies. I've seen these lists. They are killing people one by one." Sounds like a job for Negroponte; he went from appointment to confirmation in a blistering eight days.

Punishment: Being skinned alive would be a nice start.

White House: Deficit Will Hit Record $427B

the latest proposal would bring war spending so far to about $308 billion, including $25 billion to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the Congressional Research Service, which provides reports to lawmakers.

“Well, the reconstruction costs remain a very -- an issue for the future. And Iraq, unlike Afghanistan, is a rather wealthy country. Iraq has tremendous resources that belong to the Iraqi people. And so there are a variety of means that Iraq has to be able to shoulder much of the burden for their own reconstruction."

Man, I don't think anything can get more surreal than Terry Gross interviewing John Yoo. Yoo was interviewed after the Terri's interview with the editors of the new compilation of The Torture Papers. John Yoo being cited at several key points in the compilation.

A rather excellent piece by the assistant secretary of the treasury under Reagan and former editor of the WSJ. Quoted in full, because it begs to be read. (emphasis mine)

I remember when friends would excitedly telephone to report that Rush Limbaugh or G. Gordon Liddy had just read one of my syndicated columns over the air. That was before I became a critic of the US invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration, and the neoconservative ideologues who have seized control of the US government.

America has blundered into a needless and dangerous war, and fully Azaelf of the country's population is enthusiastic. Many Christians think that war in the Middle East signals "end times" and that they are about to be wafted up to heaven. Many patriots think that, finally, America is standing up for itself and demonstrating its righteous might. Conservatives are taking out their Vietnam frustrations on Iraqis. Karl Rove is wrapping Bush in the protective cloak of war leader. The military-industrial complex is drooling over the profits of war. And neoconservatives are laying the groundwork for Israeli territorial expansion.

Without further comment, I give you

Just this weekend, Tim Blair, an Australian blogger, a very good blogger, took a "Washington Post" piece that was completely silly -- and the term is fist -- destroyed it, deconstructed it, proved that it was all spin.

Well, Bush finally gets to really be president this time. After an embarrassing first attempt, he now gets to claim a legitimately won election. Well, I certainly don't begrudge him that. True, I think he's pretty much a clone of every single frickin' evil CEO I've ever had to work with. And granted that his administration looks like every single crony packed corporate board I've ever banged my head up against in sheer surreal scenarios from hell. And yes, all the first tier management chain is populated by jackals in suits.

But he was elected by 59 million people in what was close (hey, 100K votes in Ohio and my favorite troll would be my bitch) but by all measurements a fairly held election.

And I listened to his inauguration. Sounded pretty good. Didn't make a dick out of himself by bitch slapping Kerry. And to be quite frank, I actually do share the goals he professes. The problem I have with Bush is that I completely disagree with his implementation strategy.

No prize other than the satisfaction of satire well done. Be creative. . .

Right on cue, the political movement formerly known as the republicans are pulling out their favorite club and proclaiming that the media is the sworn enemy of the United States. It’s kind of like the return of the swallows to Capistrano, or the yearly migration of the monarch butterflies. When ever Seymour Hersh comes out with yet another block buster, something stirs in these morons and their first instinct is to start proclaiming “treason” at the top of their lungs.

In the interest of raising the debate regarding the flaming bag of stinky shit P.J. O'Rourke left on the liberal's doorstep this morning, I bring to you the pornolized version of the Weekly Standard article.

(WARNING: Lark's vomit. The transformation done by The Pornolizer^tm is somewhat graphic and rather repetitive)

JJ has another long winded post on the latest kerfluffle of ethic proportions. There's a number of things I find hilarious about the whole thing. The first, of course, is the irony of JJ's pulpit preaching and tsk, tsk'ing the Dean crowd right after going thermonuclear on Juan Cole. I mean, there's something magical about seeing someone's confirmation bias so prominently displayed. JJ ran around whipping up his own mob into a murderous frenzy (over nothing, I might add), and then he climbs onto the pulpit and wags his fingers while using the whole thing to reaffirm his political bias (those awful Deaniacs!).

I think the thing that I like most about the modern right wing in America is their complete and utter lack of a sense of irony. Case in point, today being Friday - the traditional day to dump bad or embarrassing news - we find that James A. Baker III (that would be Bush's dad's architect of the first Iraq war) pretty much called for an orderly bug out of Iraq. Robin Cook - that would be the guy who resigned before the 2nd Iraq war because he thought that a war run by wankers wasn't going to end well - called for Britain to simply bug out. Seems that the Brits feel they've been pretty much shafted by this wild ride of one Mr. Toad.

This is really all just icing on the cake, considering the characterizations that have been leaked about the true situation in Iraq - i.e. it's really fucked up and certainly will only get worse and not anything remotely looking like a better situation. I mean, when you have it reported that Bush is living in his own private Idaho, refusing to hear anything bad about the situation, I think you pretty much have to admit that things are going to get frightenly worse very, very quickly.

It's not like there's a happy sunrise peeking over the horizon.

I think the entire right wing of the blogosphere can now congratulate themselves for truly being master debaters (for the republican impaired, say the phrase fast, three times).

Powell gives bleak assessment of Iraq security problems

Mr Powell's bleak assessment, less than three weeks before Iraqis are due to elect a parliament, reflects what advisers close to the administration and former officials describe as an understanding in the State Department and Pentagon of the depth of the crisis.

But, they say, this is not a view accepted by President George W. Bush.

One counterinsurgency expert said Donald Rumsfeld, defence secretary, had a "brutally accurate" picture of the situation and the potential dangers.

But a member of an influential neoconservative policy group said that such warnings "stop well short of the president".

I know that OIL was probably the logical TLA for the Iraq war, and discarded for the obvious reasons.

And I do find the coincidence between the tragic congruence between oil and OIL somehow beyond mere chance. Million to one shots do happen all the time, though, so I usually can dispel those daemons of Michael Moore whispering in my ear.

But OIF? It just sounds like the sound one would make when one is being gut punched.

Which seems strangely appropriate at the moment. . . and on so many levels.

Proving that the Marianas Trench is not the lowest place on the crust of the earth, the Bush administration is busy lowering expectations about the impending Iraqi elections. Apparently, the point of these elections is that they happen at all, not the results or the turnout of the electorate. Seems to me that if that is the standard of the elections, the one that Saddam held where he won 100% of the vote easily exceeds the standard of success set by this Administration.

"I don't think they're thinking of a Plan B. What they have is permutations of Plan A: You go for elections, hope for the best and if it doesn't materialize, you go with whatever emerges -- probably a heavily Shiite government," said Henri J. Barkey, a former State Department Iraq specialist who is now head of Leheigh University's International Relations Department. "Then you hope that this new government will be smart enough and enlightened enough to make an outreach to the Sunnis."

I know that this is not an unusual thought, but Jeff Jarvis is a dick. And I don't say that because he's "all over" kerning gate. I mean, CBS messed up royally, so I'm all for the market working its magic. And I don't even say that because Jeff is promoting blogs as the replacement for the dinosaurs that make up our media (really guys. A gun can be shot by anyone. Even skill with a gun is no indicator of whether shoot bad people or shot good people with it. Using a powerful tool effectively and not doing far more damage than if you'd simply have left it alone is far more difficult than it may at first appear to the childishly naive). I'll just concede that Dan Rather in particular and CBS in general need to have a sound capitalist thrashing for being a dumb shit. I'll even concede the dubious fact that blogs had something to do with pointing this fact out.

What makes Jarvis a dick is that the story of kerning gate is probably number 2 million, five hundred and thirty six on the list of really fucked up things that our media has done in the past four years.

I love this graph.

This is from a report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities which shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that Republicans are either:

a) Illiterate
b) Innumerate
c) Jackals

Focus in on something trivial. Make a microscopic bump into mount Everest. And then laugh all the way to the bank.

Eat the poor.

Just wondering. Oh, and since when is El Salvador a model for Iraq?

Torture. Death squads. Heck, Negroponte must be feeling right at home.

Anyone who thinks there is shred of hope of Iraq turning out to be anything but a complete and utter disaster on almost every metric possible is living in complete fantasy land.

Hey, I know it's a cute saying that people use in a sarcastic way. But since we're talking about calories and the poor, it seems fitting that we should seriously discuss eating them.

And I think we could also take care of that nasty little "prisoner for life" problem we have (wink, wink). Come to think of it, this same solution can be applied to the whole issue of rounding up all the Muslims.

We just eat 'em.

Look, it's just going to cost us even more money to give them even the bare necessities of housing, clothes and sustenance. Just keeping those nosy treasonous reporters from filming the place is going to cost a lot of money - in bribes alone. Everyone and his brother will have to be on the payroll, and in a time of budget deficit we have to cut costs. To the bone, so to speak.

Even better, perhaps we can turn the poor into oil. Then we could literally power our SUVs on gasoline refined from the sweet crude made from poor people and "suspected" terrorists.

Think how cool that would be.

Just thought I'd note this little gem regarding the horror of the Tsunami. As I suspected, people would only have had to go inland a distance of 1 kilometer to almost entirely escape the Tsunami. There are those that seem to think that this kind of thing would be impossible to do with large populations with only two hours warning and castigated me for even suggesting that such a thing was possible. Myself, I can walk 1 kilometer in under 10 minutes - using a relaxed walk. Even with a mass of people, I'm willing to bet that under an hour they could do the same - given any warning what-so-ever.

Again, just noting this for the record.

So, I only caught a bit of the single day that Senators had to probe (so to speak) the man at the center of the whole torture thing that's been going on. It was pretty surreal. Well, I guess not - not really. These days, talking about torture seems to be a part of the normal political conversation.

And I have to say that I do find it absolutely unbelievable that people are saying that torture is a losing issue for the Dems and that we should just stop bringing the subject up. Seems that doing so will just make the Dems look soft on terrorism again and lord knows that we can't have that Albatross around our neck.

It really makes me sad to hear such things from otherwise sane people. I mean, this seems to me to be the most crass kind of political calculation that I have witnessed. Ogged seems to be of the opinion that, well, we're only one more attack away from the entire country setting up their own little torture chambers and helping out the cause in a mass uprising. The best we can do is hide out and hope that the storm blows over. I presume that this strategy also requires amnesia of the entire American population so that they don't remember the Democrats running and hiding. Going to be a little hard to re-pick up the mantle of being the champion of the little guy after that episode. But maybe not. Seems like the whole issue is a non-story anyway.

The part of the hearing I heard was Ted Kennedy trying desperately to get an answer out of Gonzales - any answer. Listening to Gonzales was an exercise in chasing one's own tail. You've seen cats and dogs do it - it's hilarious. However, it's not so hilarious when a Senator can't get anything even approaching an answer - much less a straight answer to a simple question - in the confirmation hearings of the person who his nibs has chosen to be the protector of our constitution.

Sad, really. Unexpected? Nope. Not any more.

As I said, it was pretty amazing to hear Gonzales speak. He would cast off any questions by pointing to the fact that the memo had just recently been replaced by a different memo. So, in Gonzales' mind, that meant that he didn't have to answer ANYTHING about the previous two years when the memo was still in force. Kennedy, to his credit, hounded Gonzales pretty well. But, as they say, you can't grasp smoke with your bare hands.

So this has been quite an education for me. I found out that my uber Christian parents think that torture really isn't a big deal. I've found out that most republicans believe that torture isn't a really big deal, either. In fact, being pro-torture a badge of honor and a measure of your commitment to the war on terror.

I used to think that I knew this country. Now, I know far more than I ever wanted to know.

Used to be surreal, now it's the every day experience.

Can't wait for the day when Gonzales is inevitably nominated for the Supreme court. Maybe they'll devote another day or so to chasing their tails. Probably not. After all, they've already gone through the ritual once. No need to do it again.

Mark Schmidt asks

I agree with every bit of Sullivan's rationale for "real tax reform," and I agree that it is a "true conservative" policy. But how can he still even imagine that such a reform would come from this White House?

And then there's the whole WMD thing. Then there's the whole torture thing. And then there's the whole thing about calling all liberals part of a Islamist 5th column after 9/11. Well, the last one isn't particularly relevant to the useful idiot rant except that it explains why he jumps up on his hind legs whenever his republican masters yank the leash and begs like a circus poodle when he strays.

I mean, one does not expect rational thoughts to be transcribed by someone like this. Yes, they're clever. And yes, they're preternaturally gifted in gab.

Andrew is a mess of cognitive dissonances and is the toady supreme. His soul has been sold long ago and the noises in his head no longer bother him anymore.

He is the stereotype - personified - of the useful idiot. In fact, if you look up "useful idiot" in the Wikipedia, it says "See Andrew Sullivan".

So, you just got to love the proposals coming out of the White House regarding Social Security. Since they manufactured a crisis out of thin air, their solution is to steal money from me so they can use it to pay for their tax cuts which go - overwhelmingly - to the top 1% income earners. Brilliant!

This is what I truly love about the modern right wing of American politics. They don't even try to hide it any more. They pretty much assume that everyone is so stupid that they won't notice that this is simply highway robbery - regardless of how you feel about Social Security as a program.

It's stunning, really. For as long as I can remember, conservatives have been railing against SS and showing their complete ignorance when they'd count it as a wealth transfer tax - i.e. welfare. When they finally realized that everyone was rolling on the floor laughing at them, they float proposals that ensure this "prediction" will come true - except the money goes to the super rich, not getting anywhere near the poor where it most certainly does not belong.

Bush is proposing to default on bonds made on the US Government's beAzaelf to my generation when they borrowed to pay for the OUTRAGEOUS tax give away over the last 4 years.

I gotta hand it to them, though. Apparently P. T. Barnum was right. 51% of us certainly seem to be complete suckers. Rubes of the highest order. And these jokers are loading up the gold bars in their master's dump trucks heading off to the Caymans.

I doubt our international creditors will see things the same way. It's pretty clear that Bush is willing to steal from the US population so that he can keep bleeding the government dry so Norquist can finally realize his wet dream and strangle it in the bath tub.

Hope y'all have really good 401K's in Euro denominated stocks n' bonds.

If you have a movable type blog, you have comment spam. I strongly suspect that the business my favorite troll, Mark, is in is comment spamming blogs and/or sending out spam email. In any event, give this guide a read. This is an excellent document and contains a number of extremely good suggestions and techniques that you can use to keep comment spammers out.

I must say that with MT 3.14 and the latest beta for the MT-Blacklist, I haven't had all that many problems (well, except when Mark comments. Then I seem to get a new wave of spam that immediately follows - I'm just sayin). But there's some new techniques and such that I learned from reading this excellent document that I'm going to put into use.

Die comment spammers, die.