June 2006 Archives

Ask yourself a question now there's a multiple choice
"You've only one shot, get it right", says a distance voice
Don't get your head into a spin
If only you could see the mess you're in
The enemy is closing in see the white of his eye
He's taking in his prey in sight it's just a matter of time
May the games begin the best man win
If only you could see the mess you're in

And when the heavens opened up and the walls come tumbling down
You know it is the only place to go
And when you've had enough of fighting
And every mean trick under the sun
But still you fear the worst is yet to come
Take the money and run

Ah, serendipity. I, for one, welcome our new moral overlords.

First, a letter to Romenesko from Dennis Persika (no relation, I'm sure)

What would we as a profession do, and what would the rest of the American citizenry do, if, for example, the U.S. Attorney's office in New York, bolstered by a cadre of armed federal marshals, barged into the offices of The New York Times today?

They could claim that the Times is a threat to national security and that they need to scour the filing cabinets and computers of Times staffers to see if they can find the source of the stories that the administration and its supporters say are threatening national security. And they could also claim that they are trying to protect the nation against future stories that they fear could be a threat to national security.

The rest of us could rail all we wanted about the raid, but if the marshals are in the Times building I think you could accurately say that they have the upper hand.

Indeed. And, as an aside, I direct your attention to this rather shocking display of Dolchstoßlegende that I have ever witnessed (link from the letter). Really. It's breath taking to see such eliminationist rhetoric so nakedly displayed.

Next up, this panel organized by Harpers discusses the "unthinkable": American Coup D'Etat. Lot's of interesting stuff in that article. Just a few choice bits.

The question that arises is whether, in fact, we’re not already experiencing what is in essence a creeping coup d’état. But it’s not people in uniform who are seizing power. It’s militarized civilians, who conceive of the world as such a dangerous place that military power has to predominate, that constitutional constraints on the military need to be loosened. The ideology of national security has become ever more woven into our politics. It has been especially apparent since 9/11, but more broadly it’s been going on since the beginning of the Cold War.

Duh. Another bit that explains a lot about the increasing politicization of our military that I hadn't thought of before.

Which brings up a crucial point. Let’s accept as a fact that the U.S. military has become more overtly ideological since 1980. What has happened since 1980? Roughly, that was the beginning of the all-volunteer force. What we are seeing right now is the result of twenty-five years of an all-volunteer force, in which people have self-selected into the organization.

Everything has unintended consequences... Didn't really consider that an all volunteer military would have the effect of self selecting evangelicals (I suppose, as they say in the Harper's article, that recruiter's mining the rich fields of the evangelicals probably reinforces this self selection)...

BACEVICH: Let us also consider the classic case of gays in the military. Bill Clinton ran for the presidency saying he would issue an executive order that did for gays what Harry Truman did for African Americans. He wins the election. When he tries to do precisely what he said he would do, it triggers a firestorm of opposition in the military. This was not the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff merely saying, in private, “Mr. President, I would like to give you my professional opinion.”

KOHN: It was the most open revolt the American military as a whole has ever engaged in.

LUTTWAK: Ever?

KOHN: Open revolt, yes.

But you see, Clinton was a democrat, and as Michelle Malkin has so clearly demonstrated in the link above, Liberals are the enemy. And since the military is the most ideological it has ever been - becoming just another wing of the Republican army (hey, why else do the Republicans have the military show up - in uniform - at political rallies against regulations? It isn't for the free air freshener give aways), we seem to be pretty much up shit creek without a paddle.

But there is a more subtle danger too. The civilian leadership knows that in dealing with the military, they are dealing with an institution whose behavior is not purely defined by adherence to the military professional ethic, disinterested service, civilian subordination. Instead, the politicians know that they’re dealing with an institution that to some degree has its own agenda. And if you’re dealing with somebody who has his own agenda, well, you can bargain, you can trade. That creates a small opening—again, not to a coup but to the military making deals with politicians whose purposes may not be consistent with the Constitution.

But hey, everything changed on 9/11.

Finally, I want to point y'all to an old speech by Norman Mailer that was given in the run up to the latest war with Iraq at the Commonwealth Club of California. The whole piece is good, but there's a bit at the end which put a chill down my spine when I read it. And it's an observation that kind of ties everything together in a nice little bow, explaining the unholy alliance of the Right wing, the Evangelicals and the Military...

That is a very large statement, but I can offer this much immediately: At the root of flag conservatism is not madness, but an undisclosed logic. While I am hardly in accord, it is, nonetheless, logical if you accept its premises. From a militant Christian point of view, America is close to rotten. The entertainment media are loose. Bare bellybuttons pop onto every TV screen, as open in their statement as wild animals' eyes. The kids are getting to the point where they can't read, but they sure can screw. So one perk for the White House, should America become an international military machine huge enough to conquer all commitments, is that American sexual freedom, all that gay, feminist, lesbian, transvestite hullabaloo, will be seen as too much of a luxury and will be put back into the closet again. Once we become a 21st century embodiment of the old Roman Empire, moral reform can stride right back into the picture with all the hypocrisy attendant on that. The military is obviously more puritanical than the entertainment media. Soldiers are, of course, crazier than any average man when in and out of combat, but the overhead command is a major everyday pressure on soldiers and could become a species of most powerful censor over civilian life.

To flag conservatives, war now looks to be the best possible solution. Jesus and Evel Knievel might be able to bond together, after all. Fight evil, fight it to the death! Use the word 15 times in every speech.

There is just this kind of mad-eyed mystique to Americans: the idea that we Americans can do anything. Yes, say flag conservatives, we will be able to handle what comes. We have our know-how, our can-do. We will dominate the obstacles. Flag conservatives truly believe America is not only fit to run the world but that it must. Without a commitment to Empire, the country will go down the drain. This, I would opine, is the prime subtext beneath the Iraqi project, and the flag conservatives may not even be wholly aware of the scope of it, not all of them. Not yet.

Three an a half years after that speech, with everything that has happened since then, I think we can safely assume that they are not only aware of it now, they are fully behind the program one hundred percent.

I know Malkin is.

The Hitler vs. Coulter Quiz: can you match the quotes?

I misattributed three Ann Coulter quotes to Hitler and two Hitler quotes to Ann Coulter. But then, I haven't read a lot of Hitler.

Via BMM

Liberators "R" Us.

War's Iraqi Death Toll Tops 50,000

At least 50,000 Iraqis have died violently since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, according to statistics from the Baghdad morgue, the Iraqi Health Ministry and other agencies — a toll 20,000 higher than previously acknowledged by the Bush administration.

Many more Iraqis are believed to have been killed but not counted because of serious lapses in recording deaths in the chaotic first year after the invasion, when there was no functioning Iraqi government, and continued spotty reporting nationwide since.

The toll, which is mostly of civilians but probably also includes some security forces and insurgents, is daunting: Proportionately, it is equivalent to 570,000 Americans being killed nationwide in the last three years.

In the same period, at least 2,520 U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq.

Iraqi officials involved in compiling the statistics say violent deaths in some regions have been grossly undercounted, notably in the troubled province of Al Anbar in the west. Health workers there are unable to compile the data because of violence, security crackdowns, electrical shortages and failing telephone networks.

The Health Ministry acknowledged the undercount. In addition, the ministry said its figures exclude the three northern provinces of the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan because Kurdish officials do not provide death toll figures to the government in Baghdad.

Respect Must Be Paid

When the blogger of Redstate came in and danced, he pleased Rove and his guests; and Rove said to the blogger, "Ask me for whatever you wish, and I will give it." And he solemnly swore to him, "Whatever you ask me, I will give you, even half of my kingdom." He went out and said to his master, Tacitus, "What should I ask for?" Tacitus replied, "The head of Moulitsas the Kossak." Immediately he rushed back to the Rove and requested, I want you to give me at once the head of Moulitsas the Kossak on a platter." The Rove was deeply grieved; yet out of regard for his oaths and for the guests, he did not want to refuse him. Immediately the Rove sent David Brooks with orders to bring Moulitsas' head. He went and beheaded him on the OpEd pages of the NY Times, brought his head on a platter, and gave it to the RedState blogger. Then the blogger gave it to Tacitus. When the rabid lambs heard about it, they came and took his body, and blogged about it with much venom.

Strings of comments with numbers in them. No point to the comment at all, and usually not even close to on topic. So, in the bit bucket they go.

Still, odd.

Talk about slowly boiling a frog...

Hey, Journalists - Remember That Other "20th Hijacker"? The One Abused at Guantanamo?

Let's go over that again. The military, under the direction of the current secretary of defense, abused al-Qahtani to a degree that horrified at least one Army investigator, allegedly forced a confession out of him, and then government officials trumpeted him as the definitive 20th hijacker. Now it turns out all that -- the sleep deprivation, the humiliation, the "degrading and abusive" treatment -- may have been aimed at the wrong man.

And no one, apparently, finds this worthy of mention.

Well, to be fair. At least al-Qahtani wasn't mentally deficient. If he was, you would be assured that our intrepid reporters would be all over this story like white on rice.

Totally.

Really, folks, it's time you simply got with the program. In a regime where torturing the mentally ill is part and parcel of protecting the boy emperor's illusion of new clothes, the latest on the NSA domestic spying case comes as no surprise.

Essentially the Government is saying that, even if the Judiciary found the wholesale surveillance program was illegal after reviewing secret evidence in chambers, the Court nevertheless would be powerless to proceed, because the Executive has asserted that the Program, which has been widely reported in every major news outlet, is nevertheless still such a secret that the Judiciary (a co-equal branch under the Constitution) cannot acknowledge its existence by ruling against it. In short, the Government asserts that AT&T and the Executive can break the laws crafted by Congress, and there is nothing the Judiciary can do about it.

Breath taking, isn't it?

And, just to be clear here, there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that the right and center right have absolutely no problem with this. None. I'm pretty sure Jeff Goldstein is defending it on originalist terms even as I type this.

Oh, and to be clear, I'm positive that the center left (that's you, Leiberman, Klien, et. al.) are 100% behind this as well. Which leaves only the mangy, radical, stinky left behind any semblance of what our Constitution used to stand for.

We've come a long way since 2000.

Can't wait to hear all the Libertarians tell me why the left is worse than the Republicans and why - even after piling heap upon heap of anti-civil liberties crap by this administration that TAXES and REGULATION are pretty much the straw that forces them to vote for Bush yet again.

Things are looking up for the Republicans lately, eh? Zarquawi gets the deep six, Bush makes like a super spy and fools everyone with his surprise visit to Baghdad. On top of all that, Fitz slips a get out of jail card to Rove. Rove, back in the saddle again, is busy turning the wildly unpopular Iraq war into an invaluable asset for the right come November.

I know, I know. Hard to believe, but it's true. A president with an approval rating stuck in the mid thirties and a war which is quickly joining the president in popularity is now the bedrock of the right's strategy to maintain their stranglehold on this country's national government.

The Democrats, like the proverbial deer in the headlights, just spent the last week in high profile political theatre trying to answer the question of "when they are going to stop beating their wives". As much as it pains me to say it, the entire Democratic party have become the proud recipients of Rove's atomic wedgie.

Democrats are now the Milhouse of American politics.

And at this point, I'm pretty much back to where I was in 2000 when I was so fed up with this party that I voted for Nader. At the time, I remember my argument vividly. To my thinking - and quite frankly, the analogy still holds - the Democrats are like that old National Lampoon cover - vote for us or we kill the dog.

Just take a listen to Biden's latest performance as he announces he's running for president in '08. He literally can't get enough gut punches in at the Democrats as he tells us all about what he thinks we need to do, but for some reason can't manage to do himself. Same with Joe Lieberman. The man can't seem to tire of smacking around the left's mangy base, wagging that stern finger of righteous blame at all those who are driving him out of the democratic party...

Cannibalism "R" us.

Well, I finally upgraded this rickety old site to MT 3.2. So, we'll see if the lords of the Landsraad are pleased with this move and will not knee cap me for the sake of the greater good.

Well, here's a paper that I found incredibly entertaining. It's one of those apocryphal studies that one often quotes the results of, but one never quite remembers where the actual research that backs up your statements actually exists.

Nice to see that it's actually real and not just some urban myth...

Now, whatever you do for the next five minutes, do not think of Karl Rove demonstrating what a "bottom" means

As American as Apple Pie

Why does a dog lick his balls?

Because he can.

Apparently, I'm the darling of the spammers. They wuv me so much, they're melting the servers and my host has done me the favor of disabling my comment script. I'll have to do something about this.

See, this is what happens when Libertarians run things (or, more accurately, put them in charge of not running things).

Beheaded man's father: Revenge breeds revenge

O'BRIEN: There's a theory that as they try to form some kind of government, that it's going to be brutal, it's going to be bloody, there's going to be loss, and that's the history of many countries -- and that's just what a lot of people pay for what they believe will be better than what they had under Saddam Hussein.

BERG: Well, you know, I'm not saying Saddam Hussein was a good man, but he's no worse than George Bush. Saddam Hussein didn't pull the trigger, didn't commit the rapes. Neither did George Bush. But both men are responsible for them under their reigns of terror.

I don't buy that. Iraq did not have al Qaeda in it. Al Qaeda supposedly killed my son.

Under Saddam Hussein, no al Qaeda. Under George Bush, al Qaeda.

Under Saddam Hussein, relative stability. Under George Bush, instability.

Under Saddam Hussein, about 30,000 deaths a year. Under George Bush, about 60,000 deaths a year. I don't get it. Why is it better to have George Bush the king of Iraq rather than Saddam Hussein?

Ann Coulter, you're up on set B3 in five.

Update: Well, right on cue, those loving Christians have ripped off the human mask and have proceeded to tear into Berg with a viciousness seldom seen outside of professional dogfights in Mexico

The moral vanity of these people is disgusting. Attempting to remake themselves into Holy Angels, they instead make themselves into monsters. Does this asshole really think it's an enlightened human response to feel as bad for the death of your son's butcher as for your son's?

He thinks that attitude makes him better than other people?

I think it makes him less than human, personally.

When he dies (which he will, of course, as we all will; no death threat intended), I hope his son slaps this stupid fuck right in the face.

See? It's all about the love. Sadly, there is literally no way you can win with these people. You're either a robot and with them 110% or you're a piece of shit that provides them no end of irritation when they have to bend down to scrape you off of their hobnail boots.

Seriously. This is the party of moral clarity - those who spit upon such quaint concepts as mercy, humanity and pretty much everything that distinguishes us from lower evolutionary forms.

Got to say guys, YOU ROCK.

Oh yea. BECAUSE OF THE HYPOCRISY.

H/T Roy

Today's revelation that U.S. special forces killed Zarqawi has elicited the predictable series of posts, proclamations and column inches. They all start out with the inevitable "it's a good thing" and so let me start off my insignificant observations with the same refrain: It's a good thing - modulo some odd system configuration where Zarqawi's presence was actually preventing worse things from happening (not a completely odd belief, mind you).

But what I continue to find fascinating about the Right Wing of American Politics (RWAP) is how completely tied up they are in their symbolism and, in particular, how committed they are to the belief that this is all about individuals. Throughout the Iraq war, we've seen this over and over and over. Icons in the form of Saddam's sons, Saddam himself and now in Zarqawi. The consistent pattern is the belief that having pressed a particular icon - killed a key individual - would solve the entire problem and everything would be hunky dory.

We saw this in the beginning of the Iraq war - remember the whole "decapitation" issue? Belief in an icon-based war led to the complete lack of planning for the post war occupation. The entire belief structure was set up around the idea that once the "head" was removed, they could simply replace it with Challabi and everything would proceed as God intended.

Call it the Frankenstein hypothesis.

I guess we should really consider ourselves lucky that this wacky plan never really had a chance in hell of actually working. Maybe I'm wrong about this, and Iraq would be a fantastically better place with a ruthless strong man such as Challabi in charge, but given what we've learned about the man in the interim, it's pretty clear that whatever corruption and idiocy we've seen in Iraq since the fall of Baghdad, it would far, far worse under the tender guidance of Challabi - Halliburton has nothing on the man.

But perhaps what is most intriguing to me is how perfectly this latest incident with Zarqawi frames the worldview of the RWAP. In this world of theirs, everything is really just a mouse click away. Hard years of military service under grueling conditions while your life is in constant danger are equivalent to staying up late, typing furiously naked, as the Cheetos crumbs drip from the side of your mouth as you rage against those traitorous democrats and MSM types who are polluting our purity of essence here on the "home front".

And it's not just balding and generally homely bloggers with freakishly huge heads, either. It's people like our secretary of defense, Donald "I didn't say that" Rumsfeld. His 5 year mission has been to beat the shit out of the military and prove to them that they're all just a bunch of sissies who don't know the first thing about fighting and that if they would just do what he tells them to do, they can quickly implement their master plan, conquer the entire world, and still make their Tee time at Pebble Beach.

It's weird.

But this is really an attitude - nay, it's a world view - that completely permeates these modern "conservatives" and neo libertarians. Everything is easy - or would be if it weren't for those meddling kids liberals. It's this bizarre mixture of "can do" American attitude pumped up on PCP dust combined with a the intrinsic laziness of a 25 year Marijuana addict. One would have thought their heads would have blown up from the cognitive dissonance that this world view requires. Then again, maybe that's why their heads are so freakishly huge.

And maybe it explains their whole fascination with "decapitation" and the whole icon based warfare thing.

I dunno.

But it's pretty clear that these jokers don't understand that things in the real world take hard work and that nothing - absolutely nothing - turns around a single event. And it's also clear that whatever the cause of this insane belief, it's pretty much at the basis of everything they seem to believe - whether it's tax cuts, gay marriage bans or chastity pledges as proof against STDs.

And it's pretty clear that, for those of us who call the real world our home, how much work we have cut out for us in fighting this crap. As today's events have shown, there's simply no reaching these people. They're constantly holding out for the next icon to fall. After the dust settles and they nurse the headache from their wild drunken parties celebrating the death of Zarqawi, it'll be time to build up a new icon that's responsible for all the evil. Never mind all the hard work that we still have to do just to keep everything from falling apart. Nope. All the focus and all the blame will be channeled into the lazy pursuit of the next elusive silver bullet. Damn the real world. Bring me the head of that other guy.

Oh, and make sure you get a good head shot for TV.

Read this and weep.

Amazing. Not that the concept is amazing, only that I hadn't heard of anyone using this before. So simple. So easy. So effective.