March 2006 Archives

Iraq at the 11th Hour

C'mon lucky seven! Momma needs a new pair of shoes!

Via Shriekback

This is the sound of poisons the sickness no one knows
No one is crying for us this time
as shapes are blown under miracles of snow
Weave a circle around hime three times
You have to plan your moves at these times
Our hearts are breaking one more song to go

These eyes are blind this is a pure thing
These hands I kiss tragic as anything
These eyes are blind this is a pure thing
All splash and hiss beyond my measuring

Only anacrusis the main event remains
Shameful and Naked out there in the great cold outdoors
We have to learn these things again
Bask in the iridescent glow
They lead to something I don't know
There is no doubt upon us when the greasy men come back again

These eys are blind this is a pure thing
These hands I kiss tragic as anything
These eyes are blind this is a pure thing
All splash and hiss beyond my measuring

These faded flowers precious as memories
A vail of cloud correct as energy
We had some good machines but they don't work no more
I loved you once don't love you anymore

These eyes are blind this is a pure thing
These hands I kiss tragic as anything
These eyes are blind this is a pure thing
All splash and hiss beyond my measuring
These faded flowers precious as memories
A vail of cloud correct as energy

Jane Smiley has quite a nice rant up over at HuffPo. You should read the whole thing, of course, but one part in particular stood out

Tyranny is your creation. What we have today is the natural and inevitable outcome of ideas and policies you have promoted for the last generation. I once knew a guy who was still a Marxist in 1980. Whenever I asked him why Communism had failed in Russia and China, he said "Mistakes were made". He could not believe that Marxism itself was at fault, just as you cannot believe that the ideology of the unregulated free market has created the world we live in today. You are tempted to say: "Mistakes have been made", but in fact, psychologically and sociologically, no mistakes have been made. The unregulated free market has operated to produce a government in its own image. In an unregulated free market, for example, cheating is merely another sort of advantage that, supposedly, market forces might eventually "shake out" of the system. Of course, anyone with common sense understands that cheaters do damage that sometimes cannot be repaired before they are "shaken out", but according to the principles of the unregulated free market, the victims of that sort of damage are just out of luck and the damage that happens to them is just a sort of "culling". It is no accident that our government is full of cheaters--they learned how to profit from cheating when they were working in corporations that were using bribes, perks, and secret connections to cheat their customers of good products, their neighbors of healthy environmental conditions, their workers of workplace safety and decent paychecks. It was only when the corporations began cheating their shareholders that any of you squealed, but you should know from your own experience that the unregulated free market as a "level playing field" was the biggest laugh of the 20th century. No successful company in the history of capitalism has ever favored open competition. When you folks pretended, in the eighties, that you weren't using the ideology of the free market to cover your own manipulations of the playing field to your own advantage, you may have suckered yourselves, and even lots of American workers, but observers of capitalism since Adam Smith could have told you it wasn't going to work.

You don't hear a lot of it lately, but I do remember the big push to run government like we run businesses.

Seems like it's been a roaring success, hasn't it?

Know it's not an original thought, but it does strike one as a somewhat obvious question to those complaining about the lack of reporting regarding the "real" situation in Iraq. I think we should start a blog-a-thon, pool up our hard earned cash, and - red rover, red rover - send one of them whiners right over. Maybe Jeff Goldstein.

And speaking of he who's wisdom is limited to the molecular level, I must say that I'm enjoying the hell out of watching his well deserved descent into madness. It's like watching a slow motion implosion of a very large TV set. He simply cannot stop making a huge ass out of himself. Every post is another nail in that plush coffin he's been building. Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

Can't you just imagine him in a taxi from Baghdad airport to the green zone. He'd go through 15 pairs of boxer shorts within the first 700 yards.

Got to agree with Jim: Best Troll Evah

more of the typical college-squid guilt by association: one shows some support for the war, thus one supports Limbaugh and is another cad. Bogus. Russell was not a pacifist during WWII, btw. But that’s beside the point.

Like most of the cafe-liberal sentimentalists, you are assuming (or have been indocrinated by some pathetic marxist professors) that war at any cost is wrong (unless perhaps waged by marxists, right). That’s not always justifiable. There were grounds for going into Afghan. and Iraq. BushCo might have botched Iraq to some extent. But you’re not there; you don’t know what the intelligence people know; and you have no sense of respect or indeed honor or valor—even Ezra Pound would have called you a bitch.

Give War a chance.

And the real “mirage” is that anyone opposed to the muslim barbarians is like taking side with Hermann Goering. Hitchens however arrogant is not a fascist: the fascists are in Iran calling for an end to Israel and all sorts of other things.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen. This is the fiery intellect that led us into war. All those who thought this war was a great idea, kindly follow Jake when boarding the "B" ark.

I'll take my chances with the phone virus.

So, I think it's time to give up the Liberal brand. As many have pointed out around the 'sphere, liberals can't get a break. If we speak, it's good for Republicans. If we keep silent, it's good for Republicans. We can't even get the Liberal media flagship to whore for our trademark Liberal cause: Abortion On Demand.

So, quite frankly people, it's time to give up the brand.

In theory, it's easy to do. Look at Phillip Morris. Yesterday, Phillip Morris was an overarching conglomerate of consumerism. Today, it's a lowly shell company cradling cancer sticks as its only child. Betcha don't even know who the replacement company is, do you?

And if Alitra can shed the cancer monkey from its back within a two year span, I can't imagine that the Democrats can't do something similar. Sure, maybe we can't afford the third stage Guild navigators that it takes to brush away the cigarette ashes from the malleable consumer's mind. But maybe we can get a second stage navigator.

Lord knows we don't have Paul Mau'dib waiting in the wings as our ace in the hole. Desperate times call for something resembling desperate measures.

Something that has amused me (amused me in the way that tripping over your shoelace on the stairway to your gallows is amusing) is the way the whole Feingold censure movement has so beautifully displayed the fault lines in the Democratic party. I've never really seen a litmus test so artfully applied to this party such that the contrasts couldn't be made more clear.

Strangely, even uber diagrammer Uggabugga - a blogger hive which I have enormous respect for - has come down on the side of "cut n' run" (note: see later post softening this position somewhat).

When you read Uggabugga, the reasoning is profoundly rational and supremely pragmatic - i.e. if it helps us win in '06 and '08, then great. Otherwise, forget it. Uggabugga also throws in what I found as a bizarro world reference to the '04 campaign

Instead of pointing the blowtorch solely at Nader and the Greens, let's go back to 2002. Remember that election year? Remember how it was considered important to unseat Jeb Bush? Remember how Terry McAuliffe spent precious money in Florida? That money might have been able to make the difference in senate races. Races that could have allowed the Democrats to maintain a toe-hold in the Senate?

But no, the moral certainty crowd wanted blood and didn't consider the welfare of the nation as a whole, which would have been best served by ignoring Jeb and focusing on the national governance.

If the Democrats had some power in the Senate after the 2002 election, just imagine how different things would have been. Real investigations into Bush's intelligence claims. Real investigations into torture allegations. And a better prospect for whoever would run in 2004.

What I found profoundly ironic in this post is the use of Terry McAuliffe as a battle axe against the likes of Glenn Greenwald. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the intent, but McAuliffe's strategy was universally reviled and that humiliating and strategic loss was one of the primary reasons Howard "Yeeearrrrg" Dean is at the helm today.

Uggabugga's argument would be reasonable sound if, in fact, you didn't have Senators and Congresspersons not simply treating this was a tactical issue, but literally jumping into the arms of this administration and cozying up in a seriously yucky way with the very people trampling over the constitution. As Glenn has pointed out numerous times in the past, it's extremely hard to win when the entire voting population thinks you're a spineless wimp. And the strategy of out Republicaning the Republicans is unlikely to work in the long run.

You see, from my point of view, I don't believe for a moment that if the Democrats were to suddenly win overwhelmingly in '06 that they'd all the sudden start congressional oversight over such things as torture, warrantless spying.

You see, it's been my observation that people who are unwilling to stand up for a principle are likely to sit down on their own stool. Look at Lieberman - the king of pragmatic agreement. He's Bush's favorite Liberal and if the party was suddenly thrust into power in Congress I have now doubt that this would simply propel his nose three feet farther up Bush's ass - thus making the transition from brown noser to full fledged colon parasite. A feat that only Bob Woodward has been able to accomplish so far.

I know that principle isn't everything. I'm well aware that principles have to bend for pragramtic realities - tactics are adapted to strategy. However, there is a limit. But forget the limit for a moment and just look at the tactics. What on earth gives anyone the confidence that - given a majority in congress - the current residents would do anything but bend over further in their sycophantic attempt to out Republican the Republicans? Really, what on earth leads one to believe that people who won't fight for their beliefs will suddenly remember those beliefs when they come into power?

Nothing.

So, I say let's give up the brand. Let's fold up the tent and be done with this party of the scapegoat. We don't have to create a third party, we just have to give up the name. The symbols are - as they say in the trade - tainted goods.

I say good riddance to them.

Maybe we'll get lucky and the vitchy idiots will cling to the old brand and we'll be able to truly "triangulate" in a good way.

Rumsfeld's Blinkers

If the Pentagon had had the foresight to listen to my hindsight, we wouldn't be in the mess we're currently in

Click the image for a larger version.

From Deviant Art

For those of you who don't /. (and you know who you are), here's the link to the new live action opening sequence of the Simpsons. It's pretty darn good.

"We used regular actors, not so much for their resemblance - as you can't copy a bunch of yellow characters - but because you can easily identify with them."

A balding actor plays Homer as he leaves work dropping some nuclear waste out of the window on the way home.

While a baby girl copies the scene where Lisa appears to be driving Marg’s car.

The opening montage ends with the whole family squeezed on the settee ready to watch the cartoon version of the show.

The settee. God, don't you just love the British?

National Association for Information Destruction

Then there's this old article: Google Announces Plan To Destroy All Information It Can't Index

Information destruction is big business.

Of course, Hawking may have a thing or two to say about that. Myself, I giggle at titles like this: Hawking cracks black hole paradox.

Of course, sometimes that which is lost can be "found" - much to the chagrin of Libby, et. al.

The prodigal son of email records.

At War With Ourselves

I find your lack of faith disturbing