anacoluthic shock

SP-B: Great Success!

2008-04-11T19:18:00.001-07:00

...Latest hurdle overcome. Previous concerns about my passport entering a black hole were unfounded, and I received my approved Russian Visa this afternoon.

Fun Fact: Russia and Kazakhstan were both part of the former Soviet Union!

Remaining steps that must be completed, lest I am ordered to pay steep fines or be classified as "deported" upon entering and/or exiting the Russian Federation:

Purchase return ticket to/from St. Petersburg (travelers must present proof of onward and/or return travel)
Complete "Migration Card" at passport control (submit half to border officials, retain other half for duration of stay)
Register my visa (upon arriving at my destination)
Return "Migration Card" upon exiting the country

And remember:

"...cops stop people on the streets sometimes to check if they have a registration or not (even ordinary Russians are stopped sometimes too, so everybody carries his passport - that's the only legal id we have in Russia, driving licences or id cards don't count).

There's nothing horrible or frightening in being stopped, it's normal. Some cops will care if you don't have a registration, some won't. If a cop stops you to check your documents and you don't have a registration, he has a right (according to the Russian law) to take you to police station and to fine you."

I very excite!

Nothing Compares 2 U...As Worst Ever

2008-04-08T19:56:00.000-07:00

Taking a brief pause from the SP-B travel blog series, here are results from an unscientific survey of presidential historians, from the History News Network:

“No individual president can compare to the second Bush,” wrote one [surveyed historian]. “Glib, contemptuous, ignorant, incurious, a dupe of anyone who humors his deluded belief in his heroic self, he has bankrupted the country with his disastrous war and his tax breaks for the rich, trampled on the Bill of Rights, appointed foxes in every henhouse, compounded the terrorist threat, turned a blind eye to torture and corruption and a looming ecological disaster, and squandered the rest of the world’s goodwill. In short, no other president’s faults have had so deleterious an effect on not only the country but the world at large.”

“With his unprovoked and disastrous war of aggression in Iraq and his monstrous deficits, Bush has set this country on a course that will take decades to correct,” said another historian. “When future historians look back to identify the moment at which the United States began to lose its position of world leadership, they will point—rightly—to the Bush presidency. Thanks to his policies, it is now easy to see America losing out to its competitors in any number of area: China is rapidly becoming the manufacturing powerhouse of the next century, India the high tech and services leader, and Europe the region with the best quality of life.”

One historian indicated that his reason for rating Bush as worst is that the current president combines traits of some of his failed predecessors: “the paranoia of Nixon, the ethics of Harding and the good sense of Herbert Hoover. . . . . God willing, this will go down as the nadir of American politics.” Another classified Bush as “an ideologue who got the nation into a totally unnecessary war, and has broken the Constitution more often than even Nixon. He is not a conservative, nor a Christian, just an immoral man . . . .”

Still another remarked that Bush’s “denial of any personal responsibility can only be described as silly.”

Ouch, ouch, ouch...and ouch!

It may be unscientific, but a 98% response rate that Bush is indeed the worst is still pretty impressive.

Congratulations, Mr. President.

SP-B: On Soul Searching and Ability Scores

2008-04-06T10:30:00.000-07:00

From AP:

Bush...conferred with Putin's hand-picked successor, Dmitry Medvedev, but did not claim gaining any insight into his soul, as he had with Putin upon their first encounter. He pronounced Putin's protege "a straightforward fellow" and said he was eager to work with him.

Peering insightfully into a person's soul clearly takes more Wisdom points than Mr. Bush's currently rolled ability score. I suspect his initial assessment of Mr. Putin's soul was due to an incredibly lucky d20 roll, which he simply couldn't match this round.

Mr. Bush's Armor Class - much like his personal Charisma points - is off the charts, however. He was clearly able to deflect the following reporter's attack with great Dexterity:

Bush bristled at a journalist's question that suggested the two leaders were merely "kicking the can down the road" on the vexing issue [of missile defense].

"You can cynically say that it is kicking the can down the road. I don't appreciate that, because this is an important part of my belief that it is necessary to protect ourselves," Bush said.

A clear example of a high Intelligence roll.

...Or maybe just the result of a once-in-a-lifetime Saving Throw.

To further understand the rules of the foreign policy game, click on the image below:

SP-B: "Let's be friends, guys"

2008-04-05T10:31:00.000-07:00

I couldn't agree more.

At a time of high tensions that continue between Washington, D.C., and Moscow, I'm happy to see that our "two leaders' personal chemistry" is invoked to help repair damaged ties:

Bush had said he was looking forward to a last "heart-to-heart" with the Russian leader before he leaves the Kremlin next month, and the two men hugged as they greeted each other outside Putin's holiday villa in the resort of Sochi.

The U.S. leader will hope to capitalize on a less strident tone struck by Putin at a NATO summit in Bucharest earlier this week, where Putin attacked Western military expansion near Russia's borders but also implored: "Let's be friends, guys."

Awww.

As a sign of my own good faith, I'll also try to do my part to further Russo-American goodwill during my stay.

...Assuming they let me in.

SP-B*: Receipt? -Nyet

2008-04-04T18:56:00.000-07:00

*Note: "SP-B" prefix denotes blog post related to "St. Petersburg Bound" series

End of week 1 of preparation, 3 to go. No major snags.

Flight/hotel/transportation reservations were confirmed, and mental reservations continue to be minimized.

A moment of pause, however, after I handed over my application, documentation, photos, passport and payment to a Russian embassy official, who seemed genuinely confused by my request for a receipt. I explained that this is standard, per instructions posted on the Embassy Web site (step 6), for "tracking purposes":

Russian Official: This is not FedEx. We don't track documents like this.
Me: I was specifically told to get a "pick-up slip" as part of this process.
RO: Not here.
Me: Not here...?

END.

I love it. Step 6 specifically states:

If you apply personally, you should get a pick-up slip from the visa officer. You should present this slip to pick up your visa, when it is ready, or refer to its number to check out the status of the application.

I can feel my only official document allowing passage abroad slipping away...never to be retrieved.

But, why not trust Russian bureaucracy and record keeping? I have no reason to doubt its official processes.

Yet.

But how could they possibly be any worse than our government's own, with its history of losing millions of official emails and destroying government hard-drives?

Somehow I'm not making myself feel any better. For now, I'll simply hope that the similarities between the Russian and U.S. Presidential Administrations end with mere encroachment of civil liberties and anti-democratic tendencies...

Anyway, he said it would be ready next Friday.

St. Petersburg Bound

2008-04-03T21:59:00.000-07:00

Church of the Saviour on the Spilled Blood...or Bust

After much hemming and hawing, plans half-heartedly pursued and abandoned, I'm casting my next moves into stone: With a full, consecutive 6 weeks off for the first time since 1997, I resolved to do something different, something I hadn't tried before...something I felt would be unique.

When my freighter-to-Korea idea ran aground due to high cost, bad timing, and inflexible meal-offerings, I initially (somewhat begrudgingly) set my sights once again on the Fatherland: I intended to check-in on some long lost friends in Berlin...but I refused to conduct the trip by simply bouncing around Germany on ICE trains as I've always done in the past when lazily planning a vacation. I needed to get somewhere beyond same-old (yet still, admittedly, awesome) Berlin, after the initial friend reunion.

I also needed a challenge. I needed something foreign. Frankly, I needed something I could blog about...I needed a hook: and thanks to a still-functioning memory of presidential-naïveté, I recalled George W Bush's first impression of Russian President Vladimir Putin:

"I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy," Bush said after that first meeting, in Slovenia. "I was able to get a sense of his soul: a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country."

Therefore, I'm going to Russia.

St. Petersburg, to be exact, via Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. But because this blog remains primarily politically focused, this 2-month project will be to document and highlight some travel preparation and, eventually, road-diaries, all with a political bent (pending Internet access in the former Eastern Bloc). I hope to capture and record first-hand some of the results of Putin's "best interests" for his country...perhaps I'll even feel right at home with ever-threatened civil liberties.

Assuming I can get in, that is.

At home as I prepare, I already have encountered the first foreign-policy squabble between two presidential soul-mates:

A requirement for entering Russia is completing a single-entry tourist visa application - a mind-bogglingly dysfunctional, bureaucratic mess of forms and approvals straight out of Brazil. As I contacted hotel sponsors, obtained passport photos, and downloaded forms, I found this amusing tit-for-tat on the Russian Embassy Web site:

As of January 1, 2008 the U.S. State Department raises the fee for American visa from 100 USD to 131 USD.

On the basis of reciprocity the fee for Russian visa (standard processing time 6-10 business days) is also raised to 131 USD, effective from January 14, 2008.

Reciprocity, kindergarten-style. A diplomatic fuck you, too.

Second runner-up would have to be question number 32 of the tourist visa application itself:

Do you have any specialized skills, training or experience related to fire-arms and explosives or to nuclear, biological or chemical activities? If «Yes», please explain

No, I do not.

I'll keep you posted on progress...

UPDATE: Part 1 of a series. All future entries related to this series will be tagged with an "SP-B" label and Title prefix.

"We like the C-SPAN model..."

2007-11-05T12:27:00.001-08:00

...As do I, which I why I recommend this new site, loaded with unedited political, cultural, and socially-related videos, transcripts and forums (ahem): FORA.tv

A quick look at their about page clues the reader in to their philosophy of engaged democracy, using the promise of Web 2.0 to deliver information and fully interactive environment to facilitate discussion and sharing of ideas:

Travel to New York and pick up the Village Voice. Or look in TimeOut London. Or check out the San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times, the Sydney Morning Herald. Every day, poets, authors, policy experts, activists, madmen, government leaders, visionary thinkers speak in public, hosted by institutions such as nonprofit councils, bookstores, universities, or public spaces. If you're lucky, their remarks will be covered by the press, edited and compressed, and hard to find when you want it.

But you can't be there. You can't express your opinions. You can't chat with other likeminded or different-minded listeners. You can't easily search for similar content, study background material, read the transcript.

FORA.tv enables a new, global media opportunity by aggregating a daily range of events, produced and electronically shipped by institutions or freelance producers, from around the world.

Scan further through the Bios of its staff, and you'll see an interesting mix of executives, investors and advisors: a former News Corp(!) Marketing Director for Australia's FOXTEL (Brian Gruber, Founder, President and Chief Executive Officer); Hearst family heir and director of the Hearst Corporation and Hearst-Argyle Television, William Randolph Hearst, III; a former record label exec (Bob Appel, Senior Vice President, Operations); and current CUNY Professor of English and Journalism, and columnist for Media Matters For America and the Nation, Eric Alterman.

They've also got former Discovery Channel exec and chief speechwriter for President Bill Clinton, Don Baer, on the board.

Fairly diverse group, I'd say.

And it's heartening to see such a diverse and monied media group buck the trend and work together to encourage dialog, unfiltered:

Why don't you edit programs?

We like the C-SPAN model. No intermediation, no one deciding what you should or should not see. Have access to the entire event, with search and browsing tools that allow you to watch a chapter, or "snack" on short segments, either to get a sense of what the program offers or to get what you want, easily and enjoyably.

Put that in your snack-hole, FOX.

You've been totally C-SPAN'd!

P.S. - Also check out the FORA.tv Blog!

Paul and Me

2007-11-02T12:48:00.001-07:00

Paul Krugman is on the right. That's me on the left. --Well, my blurry left arm on the left, as I'm moving out of the frame.

But - really - it's really me. With The Krug. Well, next to the Paulster, anyway, just after he signed my freshly purchased copy of The Conscience of a Liberal.

Karrie valiantly tried to capture the moment with my super-crappy Treo 650 built-in camera. -With people waiting and calendar-reminders flashing/interrupting, you see the results above...

May God Bless You, Karrie, for the effort.

Pauly spoke at Seattle's Town Hall last night to a packed crowd, wasting no time illuminating our slow descent into 'movement conservative' hell during the last 50-odd years -- a modern U.S. phenomenon (not shared by any other advanced westernized country in the 20th century), wherein this country's disparity of wealth has effectively returned us to the Gilded Age of the 1890s. This extreme wealth polarization paved the way to the Great Depression, from which only the likes of FDR could rescue us, save western-style democracy (and U.S-style capitalism from its own excesses), and point us on a path to a true majority middle class society that carried us through the 1960s.

Mr. K's book investigates how this subsequent backward slide into rising poverty rates, massive federal debt, and rapidly ballooning incomes of the top fraction of 1% of the population could have happened -- and how we can put ourselves back on the right (uh, left...progressive!) track: Certified Robber-Baron Free®.

I very much look forward to reading it.

Krugmaster P claims to be in good spirits after researching and writing this book. He said himself he hasn't been this optimistic in years about the political future of this country, and how close we are to being truly able to correct many of the ills brought on us all in the last 7 years.

...And with Paul by my side -- even if only figuratively -- I hope to reclaim my optimism, too.

P.S. - Check out Paul Krugman's new blog! I guess if he can start blogging, then there's no better time for me to (re-)start...

Global Warming, ca. 1958

2007-07-13T18:55:00.000-07:00

Climate crisis skeptics raised in the 50s certainly can't claim ignorance of scientific evidence of global warming caused by man-made pollution, given that they probably saw this clip in Homeroom or science class back in the day:

...I'd be surprised if an episode of I Love Lucy didn't tackle global climate change in the 50s, much like Diff'rent Strokes tackled teen drug usage and pedophilia in the 80s.

Whatchoo talkin' bout, [prominent climate change skeptic] David Bellamy?

Why We (Until Recently Didn't) Actually Suck

2007-07-06T19:07:00.000-07:00

I might suck, because I've taken such a long break from posting to my blog, but Glenn Greenwald does not...and he explains with great passion and poignancy why the United States hasn't sucked, in relative historical terms, until now with the Bush II years:

Much of the world's geopolitics for the last half of the 20th Century was driven by the conflict between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, and people around the world were affected by that conflict in countless ways. They were well aware of what the U.S. was doing in the world. The news about the America's conduct may not have been transmitted as immediately as it is now, but it was well known.

Yet despite all of that, much of the world -- majorities in nations around the world -- respected and admired this country and the values it symbolized. That isn't because they were duped into thinking that America was inerrantly Pure Good or because our bad conduct was concealed. Outside of right-wing followers who stupidly equate criticism of the U.S. with hatred for it (even though the opposite is usually true), nobody thought that the U.S. was angelic. No nation or any other group of human beings is.

They maintained favorable views of the U.S. not because they were unaware of its failings, but rather, because the good that the U.S. did in the world outweighed its bad. It is misleadingly one-sided to point to Vietnam or Central American covert wars without simultaneously acknowledging America's role in the defeat of the Nazis, or its opposition to the truly oppressive Communist empire (which suffocated the lives of hundreds of millions of people), and -- I think most importantly -- the political principles and individual liberties embodied by our Constitution and the stable democracy it has secured. World opinion prior to the Bush presidency was so favorable not because people were unaware of America's flaws, but because they were so well-aware of its virtues.

[snip]

So much of the intensity and anger driving the criticisms of the Bush presidency -- certainly my own, and much of what I read (as exemplified above) -- is grounded in a fervent belief in American political values, its political principles and its constitutional framework. The anger comes not from a belief that the U.S. is an evil and corrupt entity, but from the opposite view. It comes from witnessing the all-out assault on these vaunted political principles and values and the complete corruption, close to the destruction, of our country's national character that has made the U.S. such an important and admired presence in the world for so long.

Complete, total agreement. None of this excuses past abhorrent behavior on behalf of American administrations, but I'm not convinced that any other country, in a similar global geo-political position, would do any better. Perhaps for a time...but power corrupts, and it is notable that, until now, America's net contribution to the world had been considered a positive.

We're a bad trip...and that truly sucks.

Compound Empowerment

2007-04-17T20:40:00.000-07:00

Feel it:

An important point often lost in [the progressive taxation] debate is an appreciation that the common wealth, which our taxes create and sustain, empowers the wealthy in myriad ways to create their wealth. We call this compound empowerment — the compounded use of the common wealth by corporations, their investors, and other wealthy individuals.

[snip]

The wealthy have made greater use of the common good—they have been empowered by it in creating their wealth—and thus they have a greater moral obligation to sustain it. They are merely paying their debt to society in arrears and investing in future empowerment.

This is the fundamental truth that motivates progressive taxation.

It is a truth that undercuts conservative arguments about taxation. Taxes provide and maintain the protecting and empowering infrastructure that makes our income possible.

Apologies for being so silent these last few weeks. It's tax time...give me a break.

Preferably a (progressive) tax break.

Baby Steps

2007-03-23T20:23:00.000-07:00

It pays to be a liberal Democrat:

This morning, when Dems met behind closed doors to get ready for the vote, members gave a standing ovation to the three key liberals who helped make this bill possible: Barbara Lee, Lynn Woolsey and Maxine Waters.

The kicker: All three were preparing to vote against the bill, and everyone there suspected as much -- but the three were applauded anyway.

The scene -- which was recounted in Congress Daily (sub. only) and confirmed to me by a Hill source -- was a reminder of the strange route House Dems took to passage of this milestone bill. As reported here yesterday, the three key liberal members decided at the last minute to back the bill. But because they wanted to oppose the bill themselves as a matter of conscience because it lacked the tough language enforcing withdrawal that they wanted, they went to other liberal members of the Out of Iraq caucus and let them know that they'd have no problem if they voted for it.

"These three went and got enough other votes to provide a margin of victory beyond their own three No votes," the source says. Thus the standing ovation for them.

I love it when liberals show that they have the political will and deft, legislative shrewdness to score a win for the cause.

In the end, this is exactly how we will prevail...

Manufacturing Dissent

2007-03-12T15:22:00.000-07:00

Updated below

One of the main reasons why I like liberalism is that we are free to criticize our own...even if we do it all too frequently. It's our honesty that's key: brutal as it may be, it's rarely malevolent. It's simultaneously our greatest strength and our biggest weakness.

At the risk of ruffling some feathers I have to say, though, that I've long had a problem with Michael Moore's style and his tactics...and I think a documentary like this, made by left-wing liberals, is perhaps exactly what he deserves (and needs) most:

I just can't really see Moore's films as true documentaries. For real documentaries, I'll continue to watch Errol Morris or Ken Burns.

But I still love Moore's movies nonetheless. They're candy; like liberal political porn. My only fear is that this documentary will soon be touted and exploited by the right wing...certainly an unintended consequence by the filmmakers.

The irony, however, is that a documentary like Manufacturing Dissent can only strengthen the liberal cause in the end, as our introspection only serves to inform us and thus lead to more well-crafted positions, less vulnerable to superficial attacks.

Or so I hope.

UPDATE: As predicted, the right-wing has picked up on Manufacturing Dissent. Here's a snippet from a FOX interview with the documentarians:

"At its core here, Martha, what we're talking about is truth-telling via the media," [co-director Rick Caine] said. "So for us to sit here and act like Michael is the only person buffalo-ing the American public I think is a little disingenuous."

MacCallum failed to flinch at that, telling the two that they had obviously set out to show that Moore "wasn't what he was pretending to be, right?"

No, they said, they set out to tell the truth, whatever it happened to be.

"If someone is willing to lie for the cause, like a major news organization, for instance, it causes all kinds of problems for democracy. ... The media has to tell the truth. I don't care which side of the divide you're on. We've got to knock off the lies and tell the truth so the American public can do the right thing," Caine said.

Good on them for sticking to the point, and subtly sticking it to the right-wing's biggest mouthpiece. Check out the link above for the video, care of News Hounds.

(Crooks and Liars also has the video.)

Reservoir of Anti-Muslim Hate

2007-03-12T12:41:00.000-07:00

On the heels of my last post about conservative posturing comes this gem:

A House Republican leadership group said Monday that Democrats should retract an offer to let the nation's largest Islamic civil liberties organization use a Capitol conference room for a seminar.

The House Republican Conference referred to the Council on American-Islamic Relations as "terrorist apologists" and called on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (news, bio, voting record) to cancel the forum scheduled for Tuesday.

Never mind that the group "had launched public service ads on TV against terrorism and had worked closely with the FBI and other government agencies." It's simple: Just dismiss what doesn't fit the narrative.

"It's really disappointing," said CAIR national communications director Ibrahim Hooper, that whenever there's an attack from elective officials "we don't even ask any more which party it is. It should be a concern to ordinary Republicans that the party is being viewed as a reservoir of anti-Muslim hate."

I don't think Party leadership is concerned, because that's the point: Rather than understand your "enemies" (or bother to understand the distinction between Sunni/Shi'ite or mainstream vs extremist Islam), they prefer to hate and smear foes for political expediency.

Making knee-jerk, ill-informed policy decisions has proven effective so far, hasn't it? Things are going pretty well, right?

Know Thine Enemy

2007-03-06T19:49:00.000-08:00

Now, know that I truly do understand who this nation's enemies are.

It's clear that any person or group that truly threatens - not merely offends - the values that makes (made?) this nation a world leader in the concepts of "freedom, justice and liberty" as enshrined in our Constitution would be considered an enemy.

To be clear: We're not talking about laissez-faire "economic freedom" at the expense of a functioning government, vigilante justice at the expense of the rule of law, nor any personal "liberty" that ignores basic civil and/or human rights.

And let's be consistent. These concepts of "freedom, justice and liberty" can be just as imperiled from within as they are from external forces. --You might say that the lack of any proven threat from Iraq to the U.S. is merely one of the reasons I opposed the Iraq War from the outset...well, that, and the fact that it was obvious to anyone paying attention that the threat lay elsewhere.

And while that threat regroups in the mountainous regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan, another threat to our collective values has slowly gained prominence from within: The threat of contrived masculinity.

Glenn Greenwald has concisely articulated this thought, which has percolated in my mind for far too long without finding its voice to be effectively communicated:

[The current, extremist conservative movement] is a cult of contrived masculinity whereby people dress up as male archtypes like cowboys, ranchers, and tough guys even though they are nothing of the kind -- or prance around as Churchillian warriors because they write from a safe and protected distance about how great war is -- and in the process become triumphant heroes and masculine powerful icons and strong leaders. They and their followers triumph over the weak, effete, humiliated Enemy, and thereby become powerful and exceptional and safe.

[snip]

John Dean and Bob Altemeyer have both documented this dynamic as clearly and convincingly as can be. People who feel weak and vulnerable crave strong leaders to protect them and to enable them to feel powerful. And those same people crave being part of a political movement that gives them those sensations of power, strength, triumph and bravery -- and they need a strong, powerful, masculine Leader to enable those feelings. And they will devote absolute loyalty to any political movement which can provide them with that.

That is just the basic dynamic of garden-variety authoritarianism, and it is what the right-wing, pro-Bush political movement is at its core -- far, far more than it is a set of political beliefs or geopolitical objectives or moral agendas. All of it -- the obsessions with glorious "Victory" in an endless string of wars, vesting more and more power in an all-dominant centralized Leader, the forced submission of any country or leader which does not submit to the Leader's Will, the unquestioning Manichean certainties, and especially the endless stigmatization of the whole array of Enemies as decadent, depraved and weak -- it's just base cultural tribalism geared towards making the followers feel powerful and strong and safe.

The saddest irony is that if these folks truly had their way, we would indeed be living in a country not unlike the USSR or North Korea. Their leading pundits like to crow loudly about "liberal treason," but fail to understand (or, rather, choose to misunderstand) that liberals want nothing more than to restore the very things that have made and may continue to make this country great (see: "values" remarks above). No more is this sick irony revealed than in their own rhetoric:

On the March 5 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, which aired at 6 p.m. ET...[Michael] Savage lashed out at "[t]hose scum-sucking vermin. Those left-wing rats" who he claimed "won't be happy until we're all on prayer rugs waiting to have our heads cut off." He continued: "You ought to be happy, you liberal SOBs, that I am only a talk-show host. You ought to thank God that I have no avariciousness [sic] in my soul. You ought to thank God that I'm not power mad like you liberals, because if I ever ran for office, I can guarantee you, you wouldn't be in business too long. I can guarantee you you'd be arrested for sedition within six months of my taking power. I'd have you people licking lead paint, what you did to this country."

So much for American diversity and freedom of thought, should Savage ever be "taking power." This is one of their top-3(!) commentators! No leading liberal commentator or pundit is spewing such accusations or threats.

I find it remarkable that some right-wing commentators like to maintain that the "adults are back in charge" after the scandals of the Clinton era. Again, the irony is sadly lost on today's extremist conservative movement that the actions of its Administration and its leading pundits are more akin to an adolescent with an exaggerated inferiority complex. Their actions certainly do not demonstrate any semblance of true strength.

And *that*, as anyone who has gone through puberty knows, is the true enemy within.

"All we do is sell books..."

2007-03-06T12:35:00.000-08:00

Your Liberal Media, once again not telling the "good news" coming out of Iraq, such as the following:

"At 11:40 a.m., a car bomb exploded on this storied street, killing as many as 26 people and injuring dozens, according to police officers at the scene. It shattered an area once known for liberal ideas, an intellectual haven that in the heady days after the U.S.-led invasion pulsed with the promise of freedom."

"For many victims, the attack brought questions about the effectiveness of a new security crackdown that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has already declared a success. Nearly three weeks after its launch, the number of violent attacks has dipped, but bombings continue to plague Baghdad.

On Monday, U.S. and Iraqi troops continued their carefully orchestrated security sweeps into the Shiite militia stronghold of Sadr City, with Iraqi forces taking a more visible role than the Americans. Meanwhile, gunmen opened fire on Shiite pilgrims, killing seven in several areas of Baghdad, police said."

[snip]

"When Saddam Hussein was in power, Mutanabi Street exuded a defiant spirit that reverberated through its bookstores and the famed Shabandar Cafe. Here, intellectuals, over cups of sweet tea, engaged in lively debates.

But in recent months, the street had become a casualty of Iraq's incessant violence. As thousands of educated Iraqis left, many of the original booksellers closed shop. Others were kidnapped or killed. Many fled the country. Checkpoints, street closings and a Friday curfew kept customers away.

Still, the street was a hive of activity in the mornings, mostly because of a brisk trade in stationery products. Abbas said he believes that's why the street was attacked."

[snip]

"All we do is sell books," said Amer Kasim, 38, struggling for an explanation.

Then again, depending on your point of view, maybe the "good news" is that "liberalism" is being attacked everywhere, not just in the United States.

You suppose there are any extreme conservatives who believe this? Perhaps the same extremists who claim liberals want soldiers to die and wish America would "lose" in Iraq and elsewhere?

Pathetic and sick...and again, incidentally, patently wrong.

Someone Please Put Seymour Hersh In Charge

2007-03-04T17:56:00.000-08:00

As Glenn Greenwald and others have chronicled, an amazing recent trend in politics today is rewarding those who are and have been disastrously wrong on anything to do with Iraq since 2003, and marginalizing those who have been presciently right.

One of those who have been so right on Iraq is Sy Hersh. Bill Maher interviews him here on the mind of Cheney and his Administration, and it's a frightening portrait of misguided priorities and errant vision.

(Thanks to C&L for posting this.)

Congrats, Al!

2007-02-25T22:08:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to Director Davis Guggenheim, and to Al Gore, for their Oscar win tonight for An Inconvenient Truth.

The score (as of tonight):

The Truth: 1
Skeptics: 0

...with a long way to go.

Dover Bitch-Slapped

2007-02-23T17:39:00.000-08:00

It's rare-to-never that I'll blog-roll somebody after one read...but I really enjoyed this compare/contrast of JFK's enlightened handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis vs. the current Executive Branch's mind-numbing obsession with playground pea-cocking. Dover Bitch concludes in The Neocon Mind:

So here we are today, on the brink of a war with Iran. Our nation (and Israel) considering using tactical nukes. An administration convinced the enemy only understands force and we must escalate and expand a war we are losing because any sign of weakness will "embolden" them.

A regional conflict which some in Washington have described as having the potential to become a "miniature Armageddon" or "potential World War III" and an administration comprised entirely of neocons.

There's nobody even as level-headed as Robert Freaking McNamara, nor is George W. Bush remotely as smart as John F. Kennedy.

God help us all.

Indeed.

--And, seriously: God, prove your existence, and smite these lunatics!

In the meantime, DB, you've been blog-rolled...

Fuck Dick Cheney

2007-02-21T20:12:00.000-08:00

--Apologies for that awful image. No apologies for the bluntness, however.

In fact, fuck Dick Cheney and all his admirers, too.

Dick sez, in response to Democratic attempts to repudiate Bush's escalation strategy in Iraq:

I think if we were to do what Speaker Pelosi and Congressman Murtha are suggesting, all we will do is validate the al-Qaida strategy," the vice president told ABC News. "The al-Qaida strategy is to break the will of the American people ... try to persuade us to throw in the towel and come home, and then they win because we quit.

Dick Cheney is full of shit. Why?

The strategy advocated by Cheney to confront terrorists in Iraq has already failed. After four years, national security estimates concede that terrorism is on the rise and that jihadist recruitment is increasing. Al Qaeda is resurgent in Pakistan...despite early Administration claims that the "Taliban is gone."

Cheney and the Administration have no credibility on Iraq war claims. I'm not going to waste time re-hashing the ever-morphing reasons cited for going to war, or the glowing predictions of what would happen after we got there, because it's clear that they all turned out to be false (as predicted by real, qualified experts shunned and ignored by this Administration prior to the invasion). Suffice it to say that Cheney's latest claim that the British withdrawal from Iraq is "good news" is once again 100% manufactured bullshit, as Juan Cole points out:
This is a rout, there should be no mistake. The fractious Shiite militias and tribes of Iraq's South have made it impossible for the British to stay. They already left Sadr-controlled Maysan province, as well as sleepy Muthanna. They moved the British consulate to the airport because they couldn't protect it in Basra. They are taking mortar and rocket fire at their bases every night. Raiding militia HQs has not resulted in any permanent change in the situation. Basra is dominated by 4 paramilitaries, who are fighting turf wars with one another and with the Iraqi government over oil smuggling rights.

Blair is not leaving Basra because the British mission has been accomplished. He is leaving because he has concluded that it cannot be, and that if he tries any further it will completely sink the Labor Party, perhaps for decades to come.
Who do you trust? The guy who has been consistently wrong about Iraq? Or the guy who has been consistently right?

To add further insult to Cheney's already injured intellectual dishonesty (as asked by an astute TPM reader): If "the British withdrawal is good news because it reflects improvement in the situation in the south...then why aren't British troops being moved to where they are needed, instead of being withdrawn?"

Finally, Dick Cheney's strategy has already validated Al Qaeda's strategy. How so? Author Robert Parry explains:
Over the past six years, the wily and ruthless leaders of al-Qaeda also came to understand that Bush was their perfect foil. The more he was viewed as the "big crusader," the more they could present themselves as the "defenders of Islam." The al-Qaeda murderers moved from the fringes of Muslim society closer to the mainstream.

After the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, al-Qaeda's leaders transformed the conflict into both a rallying cry and a training ground. Bin Laden and Zawahiri believed the longer the Iraq War lasted the better it was for al-Qaeda.
[snip]
"Bin Laden certainly did a nice favor today for the President," said deputy CIA director John McLaughlin in opening a meeting to review secret "strategic analysis" after the videotape had dominated the day's news, according to Ron Suskind's The One Percent Doctrine, which draws heavily from CIA insiders.

Suskind wrote that CIA analysts had spent years "parsing each expressed word of the al-Qaeda leader and his deputy, Zawahiri. What they'd learned over nearly a decade is that bin Laden speaks only for strategic reasons. ... Today's conclusion: bin Laden's message was clearly designed to assist the President's reelection."

What Dick Cheney describes as "breaking the will" of the American people and "throwing in the towel" can be better described as abandoning a failed policy in favor of saving lives, policy damage control, and reducing the positive impact to Al Qaeda's cause.

In fact, it seems fucking Dick Cheney and his admirers is in effect fucking Al Qaeda, too.

Cleanse thoroughly afterwards.

UPDATE: The LA Times adds some additional weight to Juan Cole's assertions, and further blows a hole in Dick Cheney's weak claims about the British withdrawal in Iraq:

Britain's decision to pull 1,600 troops out of Iraq by spring, touted by U.S. and British leaders as a turning point in Iraqi sovereignty, was widely seen Wednesday as a telling admission that the British military could no longer sustain simultaneous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The British military is approaching "operational failure," former defense staff chief Charles Guthrie warned this week.
[snip]
[T]he Pentagon, in its most recent quarterly report to Congress, listed Basra as one of five cities outside Baghdad where violence remained "significant," and said the region was one of only two "not ready for transition" to Iraqi authorities.

Once a promising beacon, Basra suffers from sectarian violence as well as Shiite militia clashes over oil smuggling. Ferocious street battles have broken out between rival Shiite Muslim groups in provincial capitals such as Samawah, Kut and Diwaniya in the last year.

Dick Cheney lies about policy decisions like most men lie about sex...

UPDATE II: For a much more eloquent "fuck you" to Dick Cheney than I am capable of writing, check out Hunter's latest post over at DailyKos, in reaction to the same Cheney quote that raised my ire:

It is the height -- the height -- of military fiasco to withdraw from a fight at the gates of the enemy's core base and turn your attention to fighting them in a proxied war of attrition far away from their infrastructure and vital networks of support.
[snip]
You could not have done al Qaeda a better favor if you had actively tried. The neoconservatives have walked, entirely on their own accord, into handing terrorism two separate victories: the victory of making an attack on American soil a survivable achievement, for a terrorist movement, and the victory of subsequently engaging the terrorists in the very action they had been attempting to provoke.

Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) Brings It

2007-02-16T19:08:00.000-08:00

When a policy has failed, continuing that policy is not viewed by an adversary as a sign of strength. It's viewed as a mistake.

--And unlike constitutionally-mandated parliamentary debate, mistakes typically embolden the enemy...

Period, dot.

'Emboldening the Enemy'

2007-02-01T18:27:00.000-08:00

Lots of talk in recent years from the Administration about "emboldening the enemy" and other treasonous acts: Criticizing the president's disastrous handling of Iraq, the overreaching of the Patriot Act, or the failure of U.S. foreign policy in general with respect to its counter terrorism efforts would guarantee you such a label.

You know what I think emboldens the enemy? Paranoid, fear-driven over-reactions to stupid marketing pranks like this:

A furious Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino vowed yesterday to throw the book at the masterminds behind a guerrilla marketing campaign gone amok that plunged the city into bomb-scare pandemonium and blew nearly $1 million in police overtime and other costs.

As city and state attorneys laid groundwork for restitution requests, cops seized 27-year-old Arlington multimedia artist Peter Berdovsky, who posted film on his Web site boasting that he and and Sean Stevens, 28, of Charlestown, planted the battery-wired devices.

Don't get me wrong - I get it. You "can't be too careful" these days. It's a "post 9/11-world," and all that.

But over-reacting doesn't help. Many other communities reacted calmly to the same stunt. In fact, many didn't react at all. Why? Probably because:

Michael Rich, lawyer for both of the men, said the description of a bomb-like device could be used for any electronic device.

"If somebody had left a VCR on the ground it would have been a device with wires, electronic components and a power source," he said.

This kind of over-reaction is exactly why terrorism is so effective. The more we remain scared, the more our own fear can be exploited by terror groups (or governments).

Those who defend the actions of Boston's Mayor Menino and his paranoid minions sound strikingly like one of the most successful figures to base policy on paranoia and use fear as a political tool:

The title of Ron Suskind's riveting new book, "The One Percent Doctrine," refers to an operating principle that he says Vice President Dick Cheney articulated shortly after 9/11: in Mr. Suskind's words, "if there was even a 1 percent chance of terrorists getting a weapon of mass destruction — and there has been a small probability of such an occurrence for some time — the United States must now act as if it were a certainty." He quotes Mr. Cheney saying that it's not about "our analysis," it's about "our response," and argues that this conviction effectively sidelines the traditional policymaking process of analysis and debate, making suspicion, not evidence, the new threshold for action.

Again: "suspicion, not evidence, [is] the new threshold for action." (Emphasis mine)

"In this day and age, whenever anything remotely suspicious shows up, people get concerned — and that's good," King County sheriff's Sgt. John Urquhart said. "However, people don't need to be concerned about this. These are cartoon characters giving the finger."

A big, well-deserved middle finger to foreign policy based on paranoid delusion, in fact, for truly helping to embolden the enemy.

A Fair and Balanced Judgment

2007-01-30T16:17:00.000-08:00

The Nation reports the following question was asked of potential jurors in the trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby:

"Would any of you have any difficulty fairly judging the believability of former or present members of the Bush Administration?"

While I know that I would have been immediately ejected from the jury selection, I believe that I am a fair, balanced, and -- more importantly -- accurate judge of this Administration's believability. Though I do realize that some still haven't acquainted themselves with the White House Spin Machine.

But, fortunately for all of us who prize a functioning democracy, fueled by an informed electorate, we got a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the Bush/Cheney disinformation operation from a first-hand insider testifying at Libby's trial:

A smorgasbord of Washington insider details has emerged during the perjury trial of the vice president's former chief of staff.

For example, when Dick Cheney really needed friends in the news media, his staff was short of phone numbers.

No one served up spicier morsels than Cheney's former top press assistant. Cathie Martin described the craft of media manipulation - under oath and in blunter terms than politicians like to hear in public.

The uses of leaks and exclusives. When to let one's name be used and when to hide in anonymity. Which news medium was seen as more susceptible to control and what timing was most propitious. All candidly described. Even the rating of certain journalists as friends to favor and critics to shun - a faint echo of the enemies list drawn up in Richard Nixon's White House more than 30 years ago.

[Thanks to AMERICABlog for the tip]

The level of intrigue and obsession with Joe Wilson on the part of Cheney's office is neither unexpected from Cheney nor necessarily surprising for politics in general - but that political gamesmanship and 'dirty tricks' exists in Washington isn't the point. Rather (once again!), it's the level to which this Administration obsesses over its enemies and suppresses and attacks any source of information that disagrees with its own. Take, for merely one example among many (e.g. 'stove-piped' Iraq intelligence), this report on the Administration's efforts to control what government scientists are saying about global climate change:

Federal scientists have been pressured to play down global warming, advocacy groups testified Tuesday at the Democrats' first investigative hearing since taking control of Congress.

The hearing focused on allegations that the White House for years has micromanaged the government's climate programs and has closely controlled what scientists have been allowed to tell the public.

"It appears there may have been an orchestrated campaign to mislead the public about climate change," said Rep. Henry Waxman (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif.

You can read the press release and full report from the Union of Concerned Scientists here.

Such actions are anti-democratic and (despite personal hyperbolic risk) are profoundly un-American.

--Actions which, in themselves, are rather believable about former or present members of the Bush Administration, even if the members themselves lack any semblance of personal credibility.

Case closed.

Batallion of Intergalactic Smoking Missiles

2007-01-22T18:46:00.000-08:00

I hate the phrase "smoking gun." It's an over-used, over-hyped, leading phrase that is usually closely followed by some kind of hyperbole or demagoguery - usually in the form of a mushroom cloud or some such nonsense.

Which is precisely why I'm hopeful this new report will actually cause some of the remaining climate-change doubters to break ranks with the likes of Über-Skeptic, Sen. James Inhofe:

"The smoking gun is definitely lying on the table as we speak," said top U.S. climate scientist Jerry Mahlman, who reviewed all 1,600 pages of the first segment of a giant four-part report. "The evidence ... is compelling."

Andrew Weaver, a Canadian climate scientist and study co-author, went even further: "This isn't a smoking gun; climate is a batallion of intergalactic smoking missiles."

The first phase of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is being released in Paris next week. This segment, written by more than 600 scientists and reviewed by another 600 experts and edited by bureaucrats from 154 countries, includes "a significantly expanded discussion of observation on the climate," said co-chair Susan Solomon, a senior scientist for the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

I figure that my distaste for 'smoking guns,' dramatic press releases, and demagogic language is a signal that the American public-at-large might start paying attention. Though it seems as though many may be finally coming around, particularly if 10 major American corporations are asking the Administration to change its policy of ignoring/distorting/censoring true, sound science of climate change.

It's worth mentioning though that I'm not "excited" by the release of this report - much like I'm not excited by news of more carnage in Iraq or by the prospect of the U.S. losing that war, in order to make a point to the extreme right-wing (as many war-supporters would have you believe). Like the reality on the ground in Iraq, this report makes me very sad:

As confident as scientists are about the global warming effects that they've already documented, they are as gloomy about the future and even hotter weather and higher sea level rises...[the] future is bleak, scientists said.

Sad indeed.

But unlike those whose hope for Iraq is inextricably tied to doomed, fantasy troop-escalation plans, the hope this report provides is rooted in the Truth.

I am hopeful that the continued scientific consensus this report provides -- with its 'batallion of intergalactic smoking missiles' -- will allow us to finally, collectively, use our evolutionary advantage of Reason and start to resolve this climate crisis once and for all.

Dignity Missing

2007-01-17T12:29:00.000-08:00

Sadly, I have yet to find any of these missing traits in our daily political discourse (...except perhaps an overabundance of pride), but just in case:

The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Comments: 202-456-1111
Switchboard: 202-456-1414
FAX: 202-456-2461
Email: comments@whitehouse.gov

In a pinch:
Vice President Richard Cheney: vice_president@whitehouse.gov

Don't be discouraged if they ignore you...

~~Just accept it.~~ Just keep sending.

Crisis, Pessimism + a little grain of salt...

2007-01-15T17:35:00.000-08:00

(Click image to open in new window & enlarge)

Those crazy indecisive voters have sure traveled a long way since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, from the rabid euphoria of war to landing unceremoniously in the same place those of us who initially opposed the war (and the prophetic experts to whom we listened) began:

President Bush's address to the nation last week outlining a "new way forward" in Iraq failed to move public opinion in support of his plan to increase U.S. troop levels and left Americans more pessimistic about the likely outcome of the war.

In a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken Friday through Sunday, more than 6 of 10 back the idea of a non-binding congressional resolution expressing opposition to Bush's plan to commit an additional 21,500 U.S. troops to Iraq.

...note, of course, that any 'movement' in this poll this week is within the margin of error, so we can't definitively say whether Bush's latest Iraq speech caused more harm than good to his effort to mislead us again, but that's not really the point.

Rather, the point is that this president has truly (mis)guided us into such a state of pessimism -- and for such an prolonged period of time -- that a majority among us now believe that this country is actually in a state of crisis:

There is widespread agreement among Americans surveyed that the nation is in a state of crisis. Democrats were much more likely than Republicans to say the nation is currently facing a crisis – 86% of Democrats feel this way, and though less so, a majority of Republicans (56%) agreed. While 82% of progressives and 80% of moderates said a crisis now looms in America, 57% of conservatives said the nation faces a crisis.

More than half (59%) of respondents said they believe the nation is off on the wrong track – that figure jumps to 83% for liberal respondents. Conservatives were more likely to say the nation is headed in the right direction – 44% have a positive view of where the nation is headed, compared to just 30% of overall respondents.

As with any poll, take it all with a grain of salt...but you really don't have to be crazy to believe that this country is in a state of accelerated decline under George W Bush.

--In fact, you'd be crazy to deny it.

Radioactivity

2007-01-09T22:10:00.000-08:00

(Suggestion: Click "play" & read the following article while soothed by Kraftwerk)

The New York Times recently reported:

The Bush administration is expected to announce next week a major step forward in the building of the country’s first new nuclear warhead in nearly two decades. It will propose combining elements of competing designs from two weapons laboratories in an approach that some experts argue is untested and risky.
[snip]
If Mr. Bush decides to deploy the new design, he could touch off a debate in a Democrat-controlled Congress and among allies and adversaries abroad, who have opposed efforts to modernize the arsenal in the past. While proponents of the new weapon said that it would replace older weapons that could deteriorate over time, and reduce the chances of a detonation if weapons fell into the wrong hands, critics have long argued that this is the wrong moment for Washington to produce a new nuclear warhead of any kind.

At a time when the administration is trying to convince the world to put sanctions on North Korea and Iran to halt their nuclear programs, those critics argue, any move to improve the American arsenal will be seen as hypocritical, an effort by the United States to extend its nuclear lead over other countries. Should the United States decide to conduct a test, officials said, China and Russia — which have their own nuclear modernization programs under way — would feel free to do the same. North Korea was sanctioned by the United Nations Security Council for conducting its first test on Oct. 9, and it may be preparing for more, experts said.

My favorite part? Nope! Not that we may be seen as hypocritical in the face of our stated goal (and urgent need) to minimize nuclear proliferation; rather, the reassurance provided by the weapon's name: "Reliable Replacement Warhead"

Now that's effective marketing!

UPDATE: The Union of Concerned Scientists has a petition you should sign in response to this proposal. The petition also suggests a different way to move forward:

The current Complex 2030 Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) is too limited. The EIS should include assessment of an alternative that would abandon plans to build new nuclear weapons, make deep reductions in the U.S. nuclear stockpile, and consolidate existing nuclear weapons facilities to the greatest extent possible.

Under this option, managing the U.S. nuclear stockpile will be more efficient, less costly, and more consistent with the goal of reducing U.S. reliance on nuclear weapons.

Also, as part of the review, the Department of Energy should prepare a nonproliferation impact assessment of Complex 2030 to determine how the plan would affect the U.S. goal of stopping the spread of nuclear weapons, and whether the project is consistent with U.S. treaty obligations to eliminate nuclear weapons.

Again, your John Hancock goes here.

RE: Rationale for the War [A Retrospective]

2007-01-08T12:26:00.000-08:00

The following are snippets from an exchange with a Republican-leaning co-worker of mine, shortly after the start of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, on the rationale for that war. Consistent with my personal policy of benevolence and mercy (...rather Christian, no?), I won't reveal his name in order to spare him any humiliation, despite that this act of kindness may be wholly undeserved: by all accounts, this guy is still running with the devil, likely supportive of Wildly Popular Media Favorite and Maverick™, John McCain, and his McCain Doctrine...

At 10:27 AM 4/1/2003 -0800, [Horribly Misguided] wrote:

Allow me to spray some Cliché Repelant [sic] on this "No blood for oil" claim:
Oil prices, and oil company profits, are determined by market economics. If lots of oil floods the worldwide market, the price of oil goes down; if oil becomes scarce, the price goes up. Either way, oil companies adjust. Oil companies benefit most from stable relationships with stable governments; what they don't like is instability - which is precisely what war creates.

Unless the Iraqis drill and sell their oil, it is completely worthless to them. They must sell it somewhere on the world market to get any gain from it. Once they sell it, it becomes part of the world oil supply. So at that point, what difference does it make whether the oil came from Iraq, Venezuela, or Nigeria? The oil companies ALREADY HAVE the oil. Why would they need George Bush to spend billions of dollars to get them what they already have?

There are good arguments to be made in opposition to the war, but "No blood for oil" is not one of them.

At 11:01 AM 4/1/2003 -0800, non_seq wrote:

...Bush, Cheney, and other energy insiders stand to gain a lot by having a regime in Iraq who agrees (or at least complies) with the current vision for US economic hegemony. With this, energy traders and investors will have another middle east ally to help keep speculation to a minimum (especially given Iraq's control of the second largest oil reserves in the world), which will only serve to benefit multinational oil companies, to whom the Bush Administration has made no secret about its loyalty. This war is an investment in world oil dependence, which means these folks stand to gain a lot.

At 11:58 AM 4/1/2003 -0800, [Horribly Misguided] wrote:

And I would counter that the U.S. could've benefited a lot more from doing business with Saddam without all the time and trouble of going to war. I'm not buying into this vast right-wing conspiracy-theory of the Bush-Cheney plan for US economic "hegemony". Benefiting economically from US policy is a bi-partisan enterprise, and I'd be willing to bet a tank of gas that there are more than
a few senators with a D- behind their name whose pockets are also getting lined. Supposedly Gulf War I was all about oil too -- obviously that failed pretty miserably in 1991 if we have to go back and snatch those oil fields today.

At 01:25 PM 4/1/2003 -0800, non_seq wrote:

...I don't buy into conspiracy theories, either, and I agree that Democrats and Republicans have both benefited (and, hey, so have I with all the advantages of a dominant economy). I certainly don't vote exclusively Democratic.

But I'll say it again: Bush/Cheney make no secret of where their loyalties lie...it's merely that those loyalties don't align with my own, overall.

I still disagree that war will:

Improve the lives of Iraqis (long term? maybe. but was war necessary to do that? we'll never know...)
Improve our national security

But it will:

Potentially get rid of an asshole (Saddam if we win; Bush if we lose (with a protracted, costly (both lives and $$))
Be a boon to military-industrialists (Halliburton!)
As mentioned [earlier], it will benefit Bush's energy strategy, which I strongly disagree with: everything from his rejected plans to drill in ANWR (yay!), to his half-assed "promise" to develop alternative-fuel cells by 2030.

I ain't saying I like Saddam, but I think our attempt to get rid of him should have been better negotiated with the world community. France/Russia were on board before the Bush Administration began dropping hints that we don't need the UN, nor them. Colin Powell remains the primary reason why the Bush Administration continued to even work with the UN, but it was clear that there was no intention for the US to be cooperative...and I repeat: France/Russia were in agreement that Saddam was in violation of UN mandates, they simply don't favor rushing to war. And, yes, Bush, in the context of world opinion and preference, rushed to war.

But I suppose that the US can afford to isolate itself (rather than Saddam). Especially now that we need a strong international coalition to fight international terrorism.

Drinks? [/END]

Nearly 4 years on, let's revisit some of the statements made in this exchange to see where we stand:

Possible two-fer? We did indeed get rid of an asshole (Saddam), and we appear to working on ridding ourselves of the other asshole (latest approval/disapproval ratings) and his shitty policies
A benefit to military industrialists? My God. Let's just say that Eisenhower is rolling in his grave...
Iraqi standard-of-living/quality of life: Sadly, in the toilet
Improve U.S. national (or global) security? Ah...no.
...And how does my favorite claim -- that "there are good arguments to be made in opposition to the war, but 'No blood for oil' is not one of them" -- fare 4 years later?

Well, apart from it being obvious from the start, there's now a new oil law up for a vote before the Iraqi parliament "within days":

Iraq's massive oil reserves, the third-largest in the world, are about to be thrown open for large-scale exploitation by Western oil companies under a controversial law which is expected to come before the Iraqi parliament within days.

The US government has been involved in drawing up the law, a draft of which has been seen by The Independent on Sunday. It would give big oil companies such as BP, Shell and Exxon 30-year contracts to extract Iraqi crude and allow the first large-scale operation of foreign oil interests in the country since the industry was nationalised in 1972.

The huge potential prizes for Western firms will give ammunition to critics who say the Iraq war was fought for oil. They point to statements such as one from Vice-President Dick Cheney, who said in 1999, while he was still chief executive of the oil services company Halliburton, that the world would need an additional 50 million barrels of oil a day by 2010. "So where is the oil going to come from?... The Middle East, with two-thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies," he said.

Sorry, Horribly Misguided: You and everyone else who rationalizes their complicity in this mess have oil- and blood-stained hands.

Please start cleansing.

"...a very, very, very, very bad bet"

2007-01-05T10:11:00.000-08:00

Per today's WaPo:

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said yesterday that he believes top officials in the Bush administration have privately concluded they have lost Iraq and are simply trying to postpone disaster so the next president will "be the guy landing helicopters inside the Green Zone, taking people off the roof," in a chaotic withdrawal reminiscent of Vietnam.

"I have reached the tentative conclusion that a significant portion of this administration, maybe even including the vice president, believes Iraq is lost," Biden said. "They have no answer to deal with how badly they have screwed it up. I am not being facetious now. Therefore, the best thing to do is keep it from totally collapsing on your watch and hand it off to the next guy -- literally, not figuratively."
[snip]
Biden said that Vice President Cheney and former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld "are really smart guys who made a very, very, very, very bad bet, and it blew up in their faces. Now, what do they do with it? I think they have concluded they can't fix it, so how do you keep it stitched together without it completely unraveling?"

Agreed, Joe.

I look forward to Congress finally -- finally! -- delivering on their constitutionally mandated role of Executive oversight. Perhaps once we shed light on the manipulations, distortions, and political scheming that lead us into this mess, we can help to avoid future foreign policy disasters...at least once this president leaves office and his advisors leave positions of influence.

[Fingers crossed!]

The 'Sacrifice' of War

2007-01-03T14:48:00.000-08:00

--Speaks for itself and for me.

On the Execution of Saddam Hussein

2006-12-29T11:16:00.000-08:00

I'll let Josh Marshall speak for me:

This whole endeavor, from the very start, has been about taking tawdry, cheap acts and dressing them up in a papier-mache grandeur -- phony victory celebrations, ersatz democratization, reconstruction headed up by toadies, con artists and grifters. And this is no different. Hanging Saddam is easy. It's a job, for once, that these folks can actually see through to completion. So this execution, ironically and pathetically, becomes a stand-in for the failures, incompetence and general betrayal of country on every other front that President Bush has brought us.
[snip]
This is what we're reduced to, what the president has reduced us to. This is the best we can do. Hang Saddam Hussein because there's nothing else this president can get right.

What do you figure this farce will look like 10, 30 or 50 years down the road? A signal of American power or weakness?

[A: Weakness]

Oh, right - before I forget: SUPER HAPPY NEW YEAR!

UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald has had some more time to sift through additional details since this execution was first clearly imminent. After examining some additional details supplied in the New York Times, Glenn has an updated take on Josh's quip that this execution is the one thing this Administration "can get right"; in fact, Glenn's take is quite the opposite:

We can't even get a hanging right. With all of the world watching, we yet again were the primary authors of a violent, uncivilized, and primitive act which -- no matter how justified in some ultimate moral sense -- was carried out in the most thuggish, wretched, inept, and (we now learn) patently illegal manner.

It really is striking, and a potent sign of just how absurd is our ongoing occupation, that the "Iraqi Government" which we are fighting to empower could not even conduct this execution with a pretense of legality or concern for civilized norms -- the executioners were not wearing uniforms but leather jackets and murderers' masks, conducting themselves not as disciplined law enforcement officers but as what they are (death squad members and sectarian street thugs).

And the most revealing, and most disturbing, detail is that Saddam's executioners -- in between playground insults spat at a tied-up Saddam -- chanted their religious-like allegiance to Moktada Al Sadr, the Shiite militia leader whom we are told is the Great Enemy of the U.S., the One We Now Must Kill. This noble and just event for which we are responsible was carried out by a brutal, murderous, lawless militia. Freedom is on the march.

Look for 2007 to be just as fun as 2000-2006! Who knows? We may be "celebrating" this event and its aftermath through most of this century!

Not Dead Yet

2006-12-18T14:38:00.000-08:00

According to American Conservative Magazine, it appears I spoke a little too soon in my tentative praise for George W Bush for helping to usher in the death of the neo-conservative movement.

Sadly, I have to agree with Scott McConnell of AmConMag:

This election season ends with neoconservatism widely mocked and openly contemptuous of the president who took its counsels. The key policy it has lobbied for since the mid-1990s—the invasion of Iraq—is an almost universally acknowledged disaster. So one can see why the movement’s obituaries are being written. But the group was powerful and influential well before its alliance with George W. Bush. In its wake it leaves behind crises—Iraq first among them—that will not be easy to resolve, and neocons will not be shy about criticizing whatever imperfect solutions are found to the mess they have created. Perhaps most importantly, neoconservatism still commands more salaries—able people who can pursue ideological politics as fulltime work in think tanks and periodicals—than any of its rivals. The millionaires who fund AEI and the New York Sun will not abandon neoconservatism because Iraq didn’t work out. The reports of the movement’s demise are thus very much exaggerated.

McConnell is correct in positing that neo-conservatives have many more lives to burn through, before their (ironically) near-sighted ideology has run its course. They are masters at denying culpability -- too eager to align themselves with any next power base that can (or will) further their cause. McConnell rightfully points out their history in latching onto either Party -- Democratic or Republican -- in order too further the implementation of their worldview. Indeed, their history proves it, despite that it may not always have been a cakewalk:

Sen. Henry "Scoop" Jackson was the archetype, a "labor" Cold War Democrat and the man who originally brought Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz to Capitol Hill. A force in the Senate, Jackson could delay or even thwart policies he opposed, and he (and aide Richard Perle) did a brilliant job of tying Henry Kissinger’s détente policy in knots in the mid-1970s. But that was the power to negate, not create. Jackson induced sleep on the stump, as his two presidential bids revealed. Replacing him as the great hope for the neocons was Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the New York-born Harvard professor who was, in the 1960s and ‘70s, a flamboyant and often brilliant intellectual. But once elected to the Senate in 1976, Moynihan proved a disappointment, turning out to be not remotely as hawkish as neoconservatives expected.

For the older neocons, with backgrounds as Democrats and even socialists, embracing the Republican Party always seemed a date on the wild side. But not so for those now under 60, who came of political age under Reagan. Republican ties were natural. And as the experience with the Clinton transition demonstrated, crossing the floor to the Democrats will not be easy.

But if Bush has failed them, what options remain? Joe Lieberman has less national appeal than Henry Jackson did, and once you have been embedded in the Pentagon and the vice president’s office, forays from the Senate will seem a weak brew. John McCain is another matter, and if Americans can be persuaded that the solution to their Middle East, terrorism, and other diplomatic dilemmas lies in more troops and invasions, neoconservatism will have springtime all over again.

What's most ironic about this chameleon-like political agility and Party-hopping is that for all of their self-proclaimed moral clarity and 'noble' long-term vision of an American-style global peace, the practical application of their approach means more day-to-day emphasis on political self-preservation than on long-term planning to achieve their lofty goals. Hence the failed war in Iraq, back-stabbing, and relentless continuation of smearing political opponents.

This last point -- that neocons are adept masters at the all-too-effective political smear machine -- is also partly why their alliance with Bush/Rove made so much sense to their political opposition despite the historical, perceived political differences noted above:

What won’t be dropped is the neoconservatives' attachment to Israel and the tendency to conflate the Jewish state’s interests (as defined in right-wing Israeli terms) with America’s. So one can look forward to neoconservative agitation on two fronts: a powerful campaign to draw the United States into a war to eliminate Iran’s nuclear potential and an equally loud effort in support of maintaining Israeli dominance over the West Bank and denying the Palestinians meaningful statehood. Those who argue effectively for a more even-handed American policy towards Israel and Palestine will risk the full measure of smears linking them to historical anti-Semitism.

Example? Look no further than last week.

Could someone please find a way to permanently kill these things?

That GAO Enemy-Initiated Attack Trendline Is Seriously Harshing My Mellow

2006-12-15T19:02:00.000-08:00

From Justin Rood at TPMMuckraker:

[This chart] was produced in December, but it's missing data for the months of September, October and November of this year -- a period of increased violence, according to news reports. What gives?

[Rood] called Joseph A. Christoff, the GAO official who produced the document. "I have all [the Pentagon's] data" for those months, he told [Rood]. But the military stamped it classified, he said. And despite making weeks of phone calls, he can't convince anyone there to declassify the numbers.

"They give conflicting reasons," Christoff [said]. "For some reason, they haven't gotten through their bureaucracy."

Could that "some reason" be similar to this?

Middle East analyst Flynt Leverett, who served under President Bush on the National Security Council and is now a fellow at the New America Foundation, revealed today that the White House has been blocking the publication of an op-ed he wrote for the New York Times. The column is critical of the administration’s refusal to engage Iran.

[snip]

According to Leverett the op-ed was "all based on stuff that Secretary Powell, Secretary Rice, Deputy Secretary Armitage have talked about publicly. It’s been extensively reported in the media." Leverett says the incident shows "just how low people like Elliot Abrams at the NSC [National Security Council] will stoop to try and limit the dissemination of arguments critical of the administration’s policy."

That is, politics trump policy.

Dissension is such a buzzkill...

WaPo: He's the Worst Ever

2006-12-02T15:46:00.000-08:00

I have certainly mused this indisputable fact...but has a major traditional media source -- until now?

Historians are loath to predict the future. It is impossible to say with certainty how Bush will be ranked in, say, 2050. But somehow, in his first six years in office he has managed to combine the lapses of leadership, misguided policies and abuse of power of his failed predecessors. I think there is no alternative but to rank him as the worst president in U.S. history.

This question has certainly been posed before, but never has a traditional media source such as the Washington Post dared to commit this conclusion to print.

I know, I know...the Post has a "well-known liberal bias" (ha!) - but so does The Truth, as the saying goes...

I think we'll find history will agree, and with overwhelming consensus.

An Inconvenient Ideology

2006-11-24T15:10:00.000-08:00

When I began this blog, I recall making some kind of silent pact with myself that I would never blog about anything too overtly personal. This blog would remain a political blog; it would remain in the abstract.

The problem with this approach, of course, is that politics is inherently personal -- if done correctly, in my opinion. Perhaps it's different if you are running for office - one must retain a certain sense of dispassionate engagement to succeed, I believe - but with researching and commenting from afar as I do, I can't help but to Make It Personal. Despite my attempts (with a modicum of success), I doubt I have the capacity to disconnect myself entirely from my beliefs for the sake of debate. For this reason, I would make a terrible politician.

But does this also make me a terrible son/brother/uncle?

This is Thanksgiving weekend, and that means family-time. I'm thankful for my family and I love them dearly. They have been an enormous influence on who I am and what I believe...and I say that with no hint of irony, despite that we could not be further apart on the political spectrum.

But this weekend was a test of my loyalties, I must admit. Through the years, we have learned to minimize political discussion, since it usually devolves into politely ambiguous, poignancy-free (and therefore unsatisfying) discussion at best, or uncomfortable silence at worst.

This weekend was no exception, and I offer only one, simple anecdote as it's all I can muster to replay. All you need to know for this example are three factors: (a) Everyone knows I am a liberal; (b) We are all equally aware that politics is a lightning rod; (c) As a consequence of (a) and (b), we usually connect on neutral topics - e.g., work, travel, house remodeling, movies.

Me: I recently purchased a copy of "An Inconvenient Truth"...not sure if you've seen it. I meant to bring it up this weekend so we could watch it.

Mom's Husband: Ah. I haven't seen it. It's not something that would normally interest me.

Me: Really? I thought you might like it. It's a well-made documentary.
Mom's Husband: Uh...no.

[Cue topic change]

OK. Loaded topic. Loaded suggestion. Perhaps I should have avoided it. But I felt we may have had some common ground here, since I've heard comments from him in support of environmental stewardship, and we commonly rent/watch quality documentaries. In fact, when I purchased my copy of Fahrenheit 9/11 years ago, I specifically did not make a similar suggestion because I knew how Michael Moore is perceived by those on the right.

But what could be their problem with the former Vice President and Senator from Tennessee? My family is from Oklahoma; I figured there might be at least a sense of southern kinship or something.

Alas, no. Nothing.

What could be their problem with this documentary, then? This is not a propaganda film, as some on their side would have us believe; climatologists have universally praised it for its accuracy. In an effort to understand the resistance, I have compiled a list of possible explanations:

They believe climate change is not an issue; this is not a crisis.
Al Gore is a Democrat.
Al Gore is an educated progressive, and as such acts like a know-it-all.
Al Gore is using this issue as a wedge, to frighten voters into believing there is a crisis so they will vote Democrats back into power, who will then use this issue an an excuse to further regulate industry.

My operating assumption is that the science of climate change is not in question by members of my family, so explanation #1 is off the table. If my assumption is wrong, then I'm worse off than I thought. If the case, then I fear that there is no hope of familial reconciliation: We might as well resign ourselves to talking about the weather at all future family functions. No amount of discussion will bridge that political and intellectual chasm.

So, I assume that they do not agree with their fellow Oklahoman, Senator James Inhofe, and that they do agree that man-made pollution is causing a global crisis. If this is the case, perhaps they simply don't need to hear Al Gore, the Democrat, lecturing them about global warming. Maybe they feel they understand the issue well enough without his didacticism, since some of their own (such as John McCain) also believe this is a crisis that our federal government needs to address. If so, I understand. Items #2 and #3 are therefore explained. Let's move on.

If #4 is correct, this might also make sense, since a common conservative trait is to project, and employing wedge issues to achieve political gain is certainly a well-tested tactic used by their side (never mind that Republican wedge issues are typically red-herrings (see: gay marriage, abortion), and climate change is no red-herring). They would be right to reject this tactic.

But even if Al is using this issue for crass political gain (despite his credible insistence to the contrary), what does this imply about my family? Does this mean that if they understand that our climate is in crisis, that Republicans will take care of it (and Democrats should be ignored)? If so, on what evidence do they rely to believe that Republicans will indeed do something about it? John McCain's word? What about Congressional and Executive inaction on this issue since Republicans have been in power?

Or is it that they truly believe that support for Al Gore equates to support for further government regulation? While opposing this certainly aligns with their political ideology as I understand it, what do they then propose to do to address this crisis? If not further regulation, then what?

I understand that all of this may simply be conjecture. Maybe this simply means I need to force myself to have these discussions openly with family members, rather than debate my assumptions on a public blog. But in my defense, I believe I have tried, and I believe that it's a difficult conversation to have when one side simply wishes to compartmentalize and over-simplify complex issues, rather than wade through an informed debate that may bring up some inconvenient truths - truths that might rattle an otherwise untested belief system.

If I seem strident, it's mostly because I consider my family's thinking to be a microcosm of the thinking that gets us into situations like the one facing us today in Iraq. Best intentions do not necessarily lead to best policy practices; blind trust in authority and your ideology is not infallible. Careful consideration of policy and an understanding of consequences are required.

I realize the inconvenience, but, please, let's put blind ideology aside for all of our sakes. If faced with a similar situation, I believe I would.

In short, let's just watch the damn movie...you might just learn something.

Pass the Buck

2006-11-20T15:16:00.000-08:00

Whether it's cutting taxes for the rich and giving future generations the tab, or starting unnecessary wars that future presidents will need to decide how to end, today's Republicans are truly amazing:

Driving the decision to quit and go home rather than finish the remaining budget work is a determined effort by a group of conservative Republicans to prevent putting a GOP stamp on spending bills covering 13 Cabinet Departments — and loaded with thousands of homestate projects derided as "pork" by critics.

Some Republicans on Capitol Hill would rather complete this year's budget work and have the GOP's imprint rather than a Democratic one on how federal agencies will be spending their money through next September. However, conservatives such as Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., fear doing that would leave as the GOP's legacy a foot-tall bill containing thousands of parochial projects. Last week they seized the upper hand by employing delaying tactics to drag the budget process to a halt in the Senate.

"The last thing Republicans need is an end-of-Congress spending spree as our last parting shot as we walk out the door," said DeMint spokesman Wesley Denton.

Some Republicans also look forward to using unfinished budget work to gum up an early Democratic agenda that includes raising the minimum wage, negotiating lower drug prices for Medicare beneficiaries, cutting interest rates on college loans and repealing some tax breaks for oil companies.

"Other stuff may get pushed off the table," said GOP lobbyist Hazen Marshall, a former longtime Capitol Hill aide. "It kills (Democrats') message."

Let's get them Dems! Ha ha! Forget that a strong majority of U.S. citizens support the first 100 hours of the Democratic agenda!

Screw responsibility! Screw accountability!

Screw the people!

...Add to this the campaign tactics used in the last several elections, and the true character of the current G.O.P. has never been clearer.

Bush Hires Latest Sacha Baron Cohen Character

2006-11-17T08:41:00.000-08:00

...according to tristero at Hullabaloo:

Y'gotta hand it to Sacha Baron Cohen. He really is as brilliant and daring a comic as everyone says he is. Fresh off the spectacular success of "Borat," Cohen posed as an utterly deranged abstinence-only rightwinger and managed, apparently, to get himself hired by the Bush administration to oversee the only federal program that oversees family planning!

[snip]

It seems according to "Dr. Eric Keroack," that when women have sex with too many men, they deplete their oxytocin:

People who have misused their sexual faculty and become bonded to multiple persons will diminish the power of oxytocin to maintain a permanent bond with an individual.

[Insert favorite Borat exclamation/affirmation here]

Plot Summary for Highlander II: The Quickening

2006-11-16T21:01:00.000-08:00

...or is it? This is the latest strategy to cool the earth, if Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) gets his way on global warming:

If the sun warms the Earth too dangerously, the time may come to draw the shade. The "shade" would be a layer of pollution deliberately spewed into the atmosphere to help cool the planet.

Compare to a plot summary of Highlander II*:

The ozone has finally been destroyed by billions of deodorized armpits, and people are dying like flies, until a corporation headed by ["Connor MacLeod", aka Christopher] Lambert devises a shield to save the planet. This shield, known as the Shield, involves using all of the energy on the planet, concentrated into a laser beam which is shot up to a satellite, whereupon the Earth is saved from excess solar radiation...

--Only a slight, barely perceptible embellishment on the theme of the consequences of global warming. The parallels to this latest proposed 'solution' to global warming clearly outweigh the creative license employed by The Quickening's screenwriters.

The "shade" is the New Shield.

But don't worry, the climatologist who came up with this idea is "not enthusiastic about it" as it causes acid rain. Besides, we do have one other option if we continue to do nothing:

Climate change could devastate the global economy on a scale of the two world wars and the depression of the 1930s if left unchecked....

...Which is why I continue to be encouraged when I read things like this:

Three Democratic senators poised to head committees grappling with global warming pressed President Bush on Wednesday for mandatory U.S. limits on greenhouse gases.

In short, we now - at the very least - have hope.

= our new democratic Congress

(*Thanks, Roger!)

...the other big loser

2006-11-08T11:44:00.000-08:00

For all of his hyped genius, little-to-no return in this election cycle - once we called bullshit on using fear and 'dirty tricks' to sell policies that would otherwise never be bought. Karl Rove's tactic of placing highly partisan politics over ethical or sound policy appears to have finally lost its effectiveness. (For now.)

Let's review where George Bush's agenda now stands:

As noted previously, neoconservatism (and with it, unprovoked wars of 'pre-emption') is dead
Social Security will not be privatized under George W Bush
The worst provisions of the 'Patriot Act' now stand a chance of receiving close scrutiny
Tax cuts for the rich will likely not be extended
Energy Policy written directly by the industry is much less likely to pass
Assuming Webb wins in Virginia (and Tester's win stands in Montana), the Senate will not confirm another nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court in the mold of Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas or Samuel Alito
The religious right's 'wedge issues' (e.g., abortion, gay marriage) will likely fade in influence over future election narratives
...and, we can perhaps now begin a real debate about what to do with the greatest strategic disaster in America's history: Iraq

Of course, I do not believe these Democratic gains necessarily mean that all of these issues will now magically get resolved, or that we will never see campaign dirty tricks in future elections, again.

But at the very least, democracy in America now once again has a pulse after many electoral defibulator failures in 2000, 2002, and 2004 - largely due to Rove's anti-democratic tactics.

For that, I believe I will now be able to sleep a little easier...

UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald nails it, yet again:

Karl Rove isn't all-powerful; today, he is a rejected loser. Republicans don't possess the power to dictate the outcome of elections with secret Diebold software. They can't magically produce Osama bin Laden the day before the election. They don't have the power to snap their fingers and hypnotize zombified Americans by exploiting a New Jersey court ruling on civil unions, or a John Kerry comment, or moronic buzzphrases and slogans designed to hide the truth (Americans heard all about how Democrats would bring their "San Francisco values" and their love of The Terrorists to Washington, and that moved nobody).

All of the hurdles and problems that are unquestionably present and serious -- a dysfunctional and corrupt national media, apathy on the part of Americans, the potent use of propaganda by the Bush administration, voter suppression tactics, gerrymandering and fundraising games -- can all be overcome. They just were.

Bush opponents haven't been losing because the deck is hopelessly stacked against them. They were losing because they hadn't figured out a way to convey to their fellow citizens just how radical and dangerous this political movement has become. Now they did, and as a result, Americans see this movement for what it is and have begun the process of smashing it.

Thanks for articulating my thoughts exactly, Glenn, as you so often do. Both this excerpted comment as well as the rest of your post are right on....

YOU HAVE BEEN SERVED!

2006-11-08T11:34:00.000-08:00

Your asses have been officially repudiated:

...and add to the list:

OK. Gloating over. Let's now concentrate on securing the Senate with a Jim Webb win in Virginia and a Jon Tester win in Montana!

UPDATE: Check Ivo Daalder for his take on the impact this election will have on Bush's foreign policy.

It's all about you two dudes

2006-11-07T18:51:00.000-08:00

November 7 is indeed a referendum on your policies and your style of governance:

...And as results are starting to come in, voters ain't happy with either.

Let's keep going and close this out!

Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due

2006-11-04T16:23:00.000-08:00

I have been asked in the past if I give President George W Bush credit for something - anything - he has done that has had a positive impact on the country and/or humanity. Sure, you can argue that the U.S. government gives more money to fight AIDS and like causes than any other nation, for example, but this policy is not unique to the Bush Administration: Both Democratic and Republican Administrations prior to Bush II had these policies, and Bush II simply inherited them.

In all seriousness, I could think of only 2 policies or actions that were unique to Bush that were for the Common Good that I could actively cheer. They are (in no particular order):

Now, #1 almost did not make the list, since my first several attempts at signing up for the Do Not Call registry failed for some still unknown reason (absolutely not user error), and I continued to receive unwanted telemarketing calls. I still blame Bush personally for that to this day. Item #2 is, however, actually pretty impressive, as it's the "single-largest act of ocean conservation in history." Nice job, George.

I think I may be able to add a third item to this list, if Kenneth Adelman, lifelong neocon activist and Pentagon insider who served on the Defense Policy Board until 2005, is correct:

Adelman believes that neoconservatism itself - what he defines as "the idea of a tough foreign policy on behalf of morality, the idea of using our power for moral good in the world" - is dead, at least for a generation. After Iraq, he says, "it's not going to sell."

I have long been advocating that one of the most enduring wins for humanity after 8 years of Bush in office is the full discrediting of the neoconservative "tough foreign policy" vision; in particular, the policy of "pre-emptive war."

Don't get me wrong: I don't fault neoconservatives for thinking big. All explanations I've seen from neoconservatives about their foreign policy seem lofty and perhaps even noble. Think about it: "using power for moral good in the world." Shit, even I have made similar statements: my Blogger.com profile states upfront that "government can and should be a force for good in the world" for crying out loud. The problem is not with their lofty rhetoric.

Rather, I believe the problem with their "tough foreign policy" vision is that they weren't thinking big enough: They weren't thinking about the practical implications that waging unprovoked war(!) would have. They concerned themselves only with the utopian view of pax americana and how to achieve and/or regain an American-hegemonic peace. They seemed unconcerned with the inherent moral paradox of waging unprovoked wars as the means to achieve that end - or what that would do to America's perceived "moral authority" after the first wave of pax americana, post WWII. As I noted in a previous post, their approach has a major fatal flaw:

They all fail to take into account the possibility for unintended consequences that major undertakings (for example...let's see, ah: war) inevitably bring. They ignored the warnings from experts and the (likely) possibility that things could go wrong, and worse, they failed to plan for contingencies.

Indeed:

Adelman...wrote a famous op-ed article in The Washington Post in February 2002, arguing: "I believe demolishing Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk."

Now he says, "I just presumed that what I considered to be the most competent national-security team since Truman was indeed going to be competent. They turned out to be among the most incompetent teams in the post-war era. Not only did each of them, individually, have enormous flaws, but together they were deadly, dysfunctional."

In fact, as a result of the Bush Team's dysfunction, Adelman appears to be finally breaking out of his neocon-induced bubble, and waking up to reality. If allowed a "do-over" of that 2002 WaPo op-ed:

I would write an article that would be skeptical over whether there would be a performance that would be good enough to implement our policy. The policy can be absolutely right, and noble, beneficial, but if you can't execute it, it's useless, just useless. I guess that's what I would have said: that Bush's arguments are absolutely right, but you know what, you just have to put them in the drawer marked CAN'T DO.

Exactly. Lofty goals are not justified by exploiting manipulated intelligence and voter-fears in a rush to an ill-conceived and unnecessary war. Rhetoric does not equal reality. Ends do not justify means. DON'T DO IT.

Though, that is not to say that we can't accept the 'Ends' from unjustified means or unjust actions: That Bush may have inadvertently discredited neoconservatism with one gloriously incompetent disaster is a result I'll gladly take.

But I would have preferred avoiding this absurd experiment, continuing to track Al Qaeda followers in Afghanistan with determined focus, and keeping our policy of containment intact for a militarily castrated pre-war Iraq. [Which, incidentally, was not an imminent threat to our national security -- unlike the destabilized failed state Bush has put in its place.]

So, thanks, I guess, for adding a third item to my list; it's to your credit...

Vote 4 Change on Tuesday

2006-11-04T14:46:00.000-08:00

...because even this dude would be better than the current leadership we have in Congress:

Failed Foreign-Policy Feeding Frenzy

2006-11-04T11:11:00.000-08:00

The final wounds in the flesh of the 'debate' about whether Bush's foreign policy is an abject failure appear to be fatal.

Progressives have long argued that the invasion of Iraq was a risky and unnecessary diversion from real threats facing us globally, but even 'leaked' documents showing how the Iraq War has hurt us in the fight against ideological extremism did not seem to quiet Bush loyalists. Cries of treason and labels of "cut and run" filled the airwaves in response to even the most sensible calls for accountability, but now even the president's own have turned on him like sharks in blood-filled waters.

The original advocates of the doctrine of 'pre-emptive war' - the neoconservative cabal of Richard Perle, Kenneth Adelman, David Frum, Michael Rubin and others - have now in unison publicly decried the incompetence of the Bush Administration and the failures of its foreign policy:

[Vanity Fair Contributing Editor David Rose] spen[t] the better part of two weeks in conversations with some of the most respected voices among the neoconservative elite. What [he] discover[ed] is that none of them is optimistic. All of them have regrets, not only about what has happened but also, in many cases, about the roles they played. Their dismay extends beyond the tactical issues of whether America did right or wrong, to the underlying question of whether exporting democracy is something America knows how to do.

Perle himself now questions the wisdom of the Iraq invasion due to Bush's incompetence (however does not acknowledge that prior warnings of dire consequences from then-ignored Middle East experts came to pass with alarming accuracy):

Perle goes so far as to say that, if he had his time over, he would not have advocated an invasion of Iraq: "I think if I had been delphic, and had seen where we are today, and people had said, 'Should we go into Iraq?,' I think now I probably would have said, 'No, let's consider other strategies for dealing with the thing that concerns us most, which is Saddam supplying weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.'

Sigh.

Perle's close friend and Iraq War catalyst, Ahmad Chalabi has also turned on the Administration that championed him as a hero of the Iraq War cause:

Chalabi thinks the U.S. should have exited quickly and turned things over to Iraqis, such as himself and Moktada al-Sadr. "It was a puppet show!" he says referring to the occupation. "The worst of all worlds. We were in charge, and we had no power."

He adds: "America betrays its friends. It sets them up and betrays them. I'd rather be America's enemy."

The interesting side note to these betrayals is that all of their original recipes for success in Iraq - oddly similar to many of the assumptions made by the Bush Administration - have in common one major fatal flaw: They all fail to take into account the possibility for unintended consequences that major undertakings (for example...let's see, ah: war) inevitably bring. They ignored the warnings from experts and the (likely) possibility that things could go wrong, and worse, they failed to plan for contingencies. At least we know which flaw attracted them to each other in the first place; ironic that this same flaw would doom their relationship. Not unlike how blood in the water attracts sharks, only to result in ripping into each others' flesh as the chum is consumed and the frenzy escalates.

Finally - as if eating your mate wasn't bad enough - the rest of the school have joined the fray, and the frenzy has reached critical mass:

An editorial scheduled to appear on Monday in Army Times, Air Force Times, Navy Times and Marine Corps Times, calls for the resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

The papers are sold to American servicemen and women.

[snip]

Time for Rumsfeld to go

"So long as our government requires the backing of an aroused and informed public opinion...it is necessary to tell the hard bruising truth."

That statement was written by Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent Marguerite Higgins more than a half-century ago during the Korean War.

But until recently, the "hard bruising" truth about the Iraq war has been difficult to come by from leaders in Washington. One rosy reassurance after another has been handed down by President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: "mission accomplished," the insurgency is "in its last throes," and "back off," we know what we're doing, are a few choice examples.

Military leaders generally toed the line, although a few retired generals eventually spoke out from the safety of the sidelines, inciting criticism equally from anti-war types, who thought they should have spoken out while still in uniform, and pro-war foes, who thought the generals should have kept their critiques behind closed doors.

Now, however, a new chorus of criticism is beginning to resonate. Active-duty military leaders are starting to voice misgivings about the war's planning, execution and dimming prospects for success.

Was all of this avoidable? Sure. Evolving past a prehistoric, self-defeating attack-response helps.

Step 1 is this 'chorus of criticism' resonating all the way to the polls on Tuesday.

UPDATE: Add to the list of repudiations an op-ed from The American Conservative - founded by Pat Buchanan - titled, "The GOP Must Go." I kid you not. Pat Buchanan is from the isolationist wing of the conservative movement, and for those reasons has long criticized Bush for invading Iraq, so none of this is a real surprise. The larger point is that this clearly shows the widening fissures within the Republican Party, as isolationists battle neoconservatives battle the religious right battles the fiscal conservatives, and (what's left of) the moderates battles them all. The Party has clearly gotten to big for its britches:

...America’s image in the world, its capacity to persuade others that its interests are common interests, is lower than it has been in memory. All over the world people look at Bush and yearn for this country—which once symbolized hope and justice—to be humbled....

There may be little Americans can do to atone for this presidency, which will stain our country’s reputation for a long time. But the process of recovering our good name must begin somewhere, and the logical place is in the voting booth this Nov. 7. [emphasis mine]

Anyone other conservatives who would like to join in the frenzy? All are invited!

(Thanks to John in DC for originally posting this.)

Return to Zell

2006-11-01T12:47:00.000-08:00

...Ever wonder what happened to Zell Miller, after he stabbed Democrats in the back in 2004 by supporting Bush's return to the White House, and bizarrely attacking John Kerry with that ridiculous (and inaccurate) "spitball" metaphor?

He's now leading a 'coalition of Democrats' in support of Rick Santorum:

"I am not involved in any other race in the country," Miller said during a radio interview Monday, according to a news release from Santorum's campaign. "I am only doing this for Rick Santorum. I believe in Rick Santorum's leadership that much."

Whatever. At least he's consistent(ly insane).

Let's all hope he simply fades further into obscurity and irrelevance after Santorum's defeat next week.

Happy Halloween!

2006-10-31T16:39:00.000-08:00

...from my good friend PG (and the Village Voice):

Truly scary shit...

3rd Quarter Bush Iraq Policy Report Card: D-/F

2006-10-26T19:02:00.000-07:00

Lawrence Korb and Brian Katulis of the Center for American Progress give their third report card on the results of the Bush Iraq War policy, since the Senate voted to make 2006 a "year of transition" in Iraq. Time to check progress...

C-SPAN has the press conference* announcing the release of their report card:

Security and Stability in Iraq: F
U.S. National Security/Military Readiness: F**
Progress of Democracy/Freedom in Iraq: D-
Economic Reconstruction in Iraq: D-

(**To be fair, Stephen E. Flynn of the non-partisan Council on Foreign Relations gave the Administration's Department of Homeland Security an overall C- (better than an F!) on the state of our national security; but we should consider that Flynn was grading our domestic preparedness [like port security (D+) and disaster response (C-)], not merely military readiness for foreign conflict, as Korb and Katulis.)

We know that the right wing will decry the Center for American Progress as a "liberal" organization (merely complaining, to be ignored, etc), but consider three things:

Lawrence Korb served as Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Reagan Administration, 1981-1985
Nothing Korb and Katulis say is in dispute by the Administration
Korb and Katulis have a plan to address the (unnecessary and strategically disastrous) mess Bush created in Iraq

$1000USD says the Korb/Katulis plan (v1.0 originally released September 30, 2005) will look remarkably similar to the Iraq Study Group plan* James Baker III put together for the Bush Administration -- conveniently to be released after the election on November 7, so as not to embarrass the Executive Branch prior to a national vote...

(*Note: This content may require the latest RealPlayer, which is not available on Windows 95, Mac OS9 or Linux systems.)

WaPo: In Syria, Iraq's Fate Silences Rights Activists

2006-10-26T12:35:00.000-07:00

Let me repeat: Iraq's fate is silencing rights activists in the Middle East:

The idea of the government as a bulwark of stability and security has long been the watchword of Syrian bureaucrats and village elders. But since Iraq's descent into sectarian and ethnic war -- and after Israel's war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, on the other side of Syria -- even Syrian activists concede that the country's feeble rights movement is moribund.

Advocates of democracy are equated now with supporters of America, even "traitors," said Maan Abdul Salam, 36, a Damascus publisher who has coordinated conferences on women's rights and similar topics.

"Now, talking about democracy and freedom has become very difficult and sensitive," Salam said. "The people are not believing these thoughts anymore. When the U.S. came to Iraq, it came in the name of democracy and freedom. But all we see are bodies, bodies, bodies."

[snip]

Internationally, as well, the erosion of U.S. stature over Iraq and Lebanon has put Syria in position to try to improve its regional and world standing without giving in to the reform demands of the United States, diplomats and analysts said.

Is it possible to have made a larger strategic error in our nation's history?

My God.

We Need Five (5!) Planets to Support Us

2006-10-25T12:46:00.000-07:00

World Wildlife Fund Director-General James Leape:

If everyone around the world lived as those in America, we would need five planets to support us

What could we do about it?

The United States, a key consumer nation, is at the forefront in what the report terms resource "overshoot" -- or using far more resources than the planet can sustain. However, the United States also has available some of the more effective opportunities to stem natural resource loss and reverse overconsumptive trends. For example, the nation's environmental footprint or impact can be substantially lightened by reducing carbon dioxide emissions which threaten global climate. The United States is also in a position to promote greater sustainability in fisheries, forestry, agriculture, and other sectors, and to stem biodiversity loss by protecting vital habitats.

What are we doing about it?

After a six-year delay, the Energy Department proposes standards so moderate that even some firms complain.

[snip]

[I]n the three standards it has proposed itself, the department has set a far lower bar than efficiency advocates had wanted. Two of the standards are so low that even some industry officials are complaining. Earlier this month, DOE surprised nearly everyone by nixing on technical grounds a proposal for home boilers backed by industry and consumer groups.

"It's never happened before that they've rejected a negotiated standard," says Charles Samuels, a Boston lawyer who often represents the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers.

Such moves are causing many observers - from efficiency advocates to members of Congress - to question how deeply DOE is committed to energy efficiency, despite Mr. Bush's rhetoric.

We had better find 4 more planet earths, and quick...

The Death of Habeas Corpus

2006-10-19T16:38:00.000-07:00

I've been wondering how to express my disappointment and sadness after Congress passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which was signed into law on Tuesday by George W Bush. Nothing that I could have written could have captured my thoughts as eloquently or as forcefully as Keith Olbermann's Special Comment last night:

For further reading on this travesty, check out Glenn Greenwald's commentary here and here. The latter is a good recap of how Right Wing America will view the signing of this Act, based on the intellectual laziness and/or mental contortions required by Their Media to justify such a blatant backward step for this country.

In short, it's all one giant middle finger to the Promise of Democracy -- and, incidentally, an unnecessary step in the fight against terrorist extremists.

Net Neutrality and Iran

2006-10-18T10:20:00.000-07:00

Bill Moyers weighs in on Net Neutrality and concludes that the Internet may be the tool to help revitalize our democracy.

I would argue it already is, given the rise of the netroots and its impact on some key (and symbolic) races. (Go Ned!)

As Bill notes:

The Internet is revolutionary because it is the most democratic of media. All you need to join the revolution is a computer and a connection. We don't just watch; we participate, collaborate and create. Unlike television, radio and cable, whose hirelings create content aimed at us for their own reasons, with the Internet every citizen is potentially a producer. The conversation of democracy belongs to us.

That wide-open access is the founding principle of the Internet, but it may be slipping through our fingers. How ironic if it should pass irretrievably into history here, at the very dawn of the Internet Age.

...Slip through our fingers? You mean like in Iran?

Are the FCC and Big Media trying to pull an Ahmadinejad?

Securing the Common Good

2006-10-18T08:19:00.000-07:00

This is what I'm talkin bout:

Under a progressive vision of the common good, government must pursue policies that benefit everyone equally. It must ensure that opportunities are abundant and that even those who have been left out and left behind can get the help they need to succeed. Common good progressivism does not mean that everybody will be the same, think the same, or get the same material benefits. Rather, it simply means that people should start from a level playing field and have a reasonable chance to improve their stations in life.

[snip]

To pursue the common good, though, we as Americans owe something to our country in return. People must assume responsibility for their actions, treat others with respect and decency, and serve their families and communities.

I think it's about time that truly religious people recognize that today's Republican Party doesn't stand for their values, and that the vision articulated here is certainly more aligned with their beliefs:

"Our religious traditions call us to that deeper vision of caring for all, being in it together, not a go-it-alone culture," said [Alexia] Kelly, who has worked for the U.S. bishops and served briefly as a religious adviser to 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry.

...and for those who disagree, or feel betrayed by politics, they can stay home instead on election day and pray.

Today's event details.

Update: Crooks and Liars has a snippet of video from Bill Clinton's speech at Georgetown University today.

Bob Lives! (...but the prognosis is bleak)

2006-10-16T17:39:00.000-07:00

As implied in a post last week, I was skeptical that an anonymous comment from a online MSNBC blog reader named "Bob" was real.

The MSNBC reporter in Baghdad, Jane Arraf, who originally wanted Bob to reveal himself, has posted an update. It turns out that Bob is an actual person, who "works for a U.S. contractor teaching English to Iraqis in the aviation industry and he lives on a military base." His work is commendable, and I'm happy that there are men and women like him who risk their lives to make a positive contribution to the situation in Iraq.

The trouble is that this situation is far larger than can be distilled down and summarized by Bob's Good Works; this situation cannot simply be rectified by merely reporting "both sides" of the story, as if each side weighted equally will then reflect the reality on the ground. Suggestions that traditional media need to report the "progress" are fine, but this cannot be reported in a vacuum: Even in Bob's own recounting of the progress he has witnessed in Iraq, there are undercurrents of the very problems that have propelled the country into civil war:

"...On my first day of class while I was calling the roll I had a first for me. Keep in mind I have taught in eight different countries as of right now but this is my first war zone. As I was calling out the names one student was absent but it was explained to me that he had been kidnapped. OK that was a negative but two days later he was freed and six days later he was in class and even though he has a broken foot and has to drive over 180 Km [110 miles] he was in class every day and can't get enough!"

Simply illuminating a few moments of a patient smiling may be inspiring on the surface, but it does not change the reality that the patient has an inoperable tumor and the prognosis is bleak.

To acknowledge this isn't pessimistic, it's realistic. In other words, Bob: Keep telling it like you see it. Reporters: Print Bob in context of reality.

America: Get off the couch, get some exercise, and start thinking critically.

Who do you trust?

2006-10-11T11:50:00.000-07:00

Top Economists? Or the current ultra-conservative Republican agenda?

Current ultra-conservative Republican agenda:

Republicans argued that an increase in the minimum wage would discourage employers from hiring workers and would hinder people in the early stages of their careers from gaining skills and advancing.

[snip]

The Senate has rejected 11 attempts to raise the minimum wage since 1998, according to a legislative history compiled by Democrats. House Republican leaders indicated this week that they would not allow a vote on the issue this year.

Top economists:

"We believe a modest increase in the minimum wage would improve the well-being of low-wage workers and would not have the adverse effects that critics have claimed," the group including renowned academics for top U.S. universities said in a statement disseminated by the Economic Policy Institute.

I think I'll go with the renowned academics and economists, thanks.

Let Slayer Speak!

2006-10-10T19:33:00.000-07:00

If ever there was a time for moral outrage, it is now.

Contact your Congressman or Congresswoman, your Senators, and your Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha Representatives.

Co-Dependent

2006-10-10T18:35:00.000-07:00

At the end of the day, regardless of what you may have thought about the need to invade Iraq back in 2003, we find ourselves at a point where we need to question why we're still there.

One (perpetually wrong) answer -- that we need to "fight them over there, so we don't fight them over here" -- is so ludicrous as to be laughable, if only so many lives and our own nation's security weren't at stake.

Another (more correct) answer is that the Bush Administration needs to keep fighting to maintain its viability and its raison d'être...oddly similar to another extremist entity: Al Qaeda.

In other words, these two need each other to get by; not unlike a pair of co-dependent lovers who constantly nag and fight, but ultimately don't have the balls to break it off.

I think these two need counseling.

My (imaginary) friend named Bob

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

This is exactly the kind of reporting we need more of in Iraq: More continuing to question conventional wisdom, whether aligned with a right or left talking point, to find the truth.

Seems we have a reporter who simply wants to know how an anonymous blog commenter ("Bob") can claim progress in Iraq, despite the violence that is a daily reality for Iraqis today:

Some readers and viewers think we journalists are exaggerating about the situation in Iraq. I can almost understand that because who would want to believe that things are this bad? Particularly when so many people here started out with such good intentions.

I'm more puzzled by comments that the violence isn't any worse than any American city. Really? In which American city do 60 bullet-riddled bodies turn up on a given day? In which city do the headless bodies of ordinary citizens turn up every single day? In which city would it not be news if neighborhood school children were blown up? In which neighborhood would you look the other way if gunmen came into restaurants and shot dead the customers?

Day-to-day life here for Iraqis is so far removed from the comfortable existence we live in the United States that it is almost literally unimaginable.

I'm curious to see if "Bob" responds and backs up his claims, or if his comments are as imagined as his onscreen persona.

(Thanks go to Kos for posting this.)

Does the Foley scandal prove the existence of a God?

2006-10-06T14:22:00.000-07:00

Glenn Greenwald was wondering...and I have to admit, this thought has crossed my mind more than a few times this week.

This scandal is no doubt a fine example of divine retribution. If nothing more, it serves as a reminder of how much the sting of hypocrisy really hurts; and the greater the hypocrisy, the greater the pain:

The perfection of this scandal lies in its substance, not its theatrics. The Foley scandal is not -- as even some Bush opponents have asserted -- an aberrational, isolated, inconsequential melodrama that is unrelated to the substantive and important critiques of the Bush movement and which just coincidentally emerged as a cynical weapon that can be used to defeat the Republicans. The opposite is true. This scandal has resonated so powerfully because it is shining such a powerful light on the towering hubris, utter lack of intellectual and ethical integrity, and deeply engrained corruption that accounts for virtually every other Bush disaster -- from Iraq to law-breaking scandals to torture to Abrahmoff-type corruption schemes and everything in between.

AMEN.

Political stunts trump policy needs...again

2006-10-06T12:28:00.000-07:00

Someone should try to maintain a list of the number of times this administration has chosen politics over policy -- or however you want to phrase it: style over substance, fear over security, insanity over rationality, lies over truth...

A delay to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's departure from Iraq means the six powers meeting in London would be unable to conclude its business, a State Department spokesman said Friday.

Sean McCormack, traveling with Rice, said the delay meant she would arrive late for a meeting with foreign ministers from the U.K., France, Germany, Russia and China. The group still planned to meet, but McCormack said they would be unable to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council as had been expected.

Plans Rice's departure from Irbil was delayed by about two hours because of mechanical problems discovered in the C-17 military transport that was supposed to ferry her to Turkey, where another jet was waiting to fly her to London.

Funny that this little side trip to -- yet again -- trumpet 'progress in Iraq' was overshadowed by violence, lack of security and a still-decaying infrastructure.

I'd be laughing at the irony if all of this weren't so tragic.

Let's Review, Shall We?

2006-10-02T20:20:00.000-07:00

Just a few details, summing up what we know:

Clinton Administration met weekly on counter-terrorism, left incoming Bush Administration a comprehensive counter-terrorism strategy, plus recommendations to make counter-terrorism a top-priority.
Bush Administration ignored counter-terrorism strategy left by Clinton Administration, focused on missile defense as the most "urgent threat"; Cabinet met only once where Al Qaeda was on the agenda prior to September 11, 2001.
Then-CIA Director George Tenet requested a meeting on July 10, 2001, to warn then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice of "a potentially catastrophic attack by Al Qaeda, possibly within American borders." No follow-up.
Bush Administration does not follow up on Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) of August 6, 2001, which had the title "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.," according to the 9/11 Commission Report, which "found no indication of any further discussion before September 11 among the President and his top advisers of the possibility of a threat of an al Qaeda attack in the United States" after receiving the PDB.
October 2, 2006: Rice "does not recall" meeting on July 10, 2001 with Tenet, but finds it "incomprehensible" that she would have ignored reports of an impending attack on the United States.
October 2: July 10 meeting is confirmed.

This may be an incomplete list of incompetence, but it's not incomprehensible.

(Thanks to ThinkProgress for their archives.)

Foley Shit

2006-10-02T19:38:00.000-07:00

I was avoiding blogging about this Mark Foley thing, because I really don't like it when politicians' personal issues cloud political policy debates. I'm wonky that way.

However, I was compelled to comment for three reasons:

I really wanted to title a blog entry "Foley Shit." (Though I can't even claim credit for this obvious display of brilliance.)
We really do need to know what the Republican leadership knew, and when they knew it. It's unacceptable to have these people in leadership positions if they truly were protecting a house seat over protecting children from sexual predators. And I'm really trying hard not to blow a gasket over the fact that many of these people claim moral superiority for their "family values"...
I am utterly sickened by the pathetic defense(s) the True Believers on the right have foisted on us -- particularly any comparisons to the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal (it's all just "inappropriate behavior towards subordinates" etc etc etc). Look: Lying about an affair between two consenting adults is infinitely more preferable to a 52-year old U.S. Congressman making unwelcome advances to 16 year old boys, and then Party leadership covering it up. The two scenarios don't even compare!

But this isn't about my preferences -- or even Mark Foley's, for that matter. This is about a sick man being aided and abetted by a truly sick and corrupt party leadership.

-And that's certainly not good for the health of our country.

(Stop) Taking the Bait

2006-09-29T14:37:00.000-07:00

President Bush, "can't you be honest at least once in your life, and admit that you are a deceitful liar who intentionally deceived your nation when you drove them to war in Iraq"?

Now, I don't need some extremist asshole thug in a cave to speak for me, but I'm not going to contest what's al-Zawahri is saying here. The truth is self-evident.

My only concern is, how will Bush and his sycophants respond? Will they use this as an another excuse to ignore legitimate criticism of Bush's policy failures, claiming that 'al-Zawahri sounds surprisingly like liberals' in this country? Probably.

Instead, will Bush take the bait and play into their game? --As he did when he invaded Iraq in response to 9/11, effectively helping to legitimize their message to Muslims everywhere, that we're engaging in a war against Islam and are out to steal their resources? Likely.

No wonder the Iraq War has helped create terrorists faster than Bush can kill them.

Stop giving the terrorists exactly what they want, Mr. Bush. They want End Times. Do you?

Really?

Heir Apparent to Edward R Murrow

2006-09-27T19:50:00.000-07:00

While I understand that political news shows have increasingly become more partisan since the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine, only those news shows that present a substantive argument are worthwhile in the public discourse.

I find it interesting that critics of the Fairness Doctrine complained that it was used to "intimidate or silence" political opposition, while since its repeal, we have seen the rise of only baseless and unproven charges -- i.e., the "politics of personal destruction"; or the rise of pundits claiming to be "fair and balanced," but at most giving equal air time to a skewed presentation of facts on one side, countered by "sexed-up", politicized talking points on the other.

The following is neither. This is not a hit piece in my opinion, as it attempts to trace the actions taken (or not taken) by this Administration for counter-terrorism planning. It merely reveals what we have long known: That the focus of this Administration in the first 8 months was not on the most pressing threats at the time, but rather on Cold War-era defense strategies (SDI).

These are facts that have not been successfully refuted by the Administration; these are not baseless charges such as those often leveled at Bush's predecessor. If the Administration could detail a fact-based rebuttal, I would hope that Keith Olbermann would allow them the air time to do so, just as one of Olbermann's tele-journalist predecessors, Edward R Murrow, had done when he took on tyrants with substance, spoke Truth to Power.

(Hat tip to Hunter at Daily Kos and Crooks and Liars for posting this.)

In case you missed it...

2006-09-26T22:02:00.000-07:00

...in all of the reporting about the NIE document:

"The Bush administration has blocked release of a report that suggests global warming is contributing to the frequency and strength of hurricanes, the journal Nature reported Tuesday."

Isn't it great to know that they care so much about us, that they want to shield us 100% from the inconvenient truths that affect our world on a daily basis?

I'm so comforted, I could vomit.

...and one more NIE-related thing

2006-09-26T20:11:00.000-07:00

Is anyone else wary of this final assertion in the NIE?

"Anti-US and anti-globalization sentiment is on the rise and fueling other radical ideologies. This could prompt some leftist, nationalist, or separatist groups to adopt terrorist methods to attack US interests. The radicalization process is occurring more quickly, more widely, and more anonymously in the Internet age, raising the likelihood of surprise attacks by unknown groups whose members and supporters may be difficult to pinpoint.
• We judge that groups of all stripes will increasingly use the Internet to communicate, propagandize, recruit, train, and obtain logistical and financial support."

I am not a paranoid person by nature, but given the extreme secrecy of and issue politicization by this Administration, I can't help but read a not-so-subtle jab at "groups of all stripes" -- such as the netroots, perhaps? -- who have, by using several of the Internet advantages mentioned above, spear-headed a rebirth of our democracy in this country.

Next stop: Using these politicized NIE conclusions to kill Net Neutrality, in the name of "national security."

NIE: The Bottom Line (so far)

2006-09-26T09:29:00.000-07:00

Think what you will about the revelations in the partially declassified April 2006 NIE, but I maintain that the central premise remains: That "the situation in Iraq has worsened the U.S. position (in the global counterterrorism struggle)" as a result of the invasion. It is clear that U.S. objectives have been compromised:

As stated in the NIE, and well covered today by the media and blogosphere: "The Iraq conflict has become the 'cause celebre' for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement."
Our moral leadership in the world is lost, making it much harder to win the Battle of Ideas -- which many experts agree is the central battlefront in reducing the terror threat
Afghanistan is witnessing the rebirth of the Taliban. Our chances of having permanently eliminated the Taliban and its al Qaeda sympathizers were much greater when our attention and resources were focused in Afghanistan.

Furthermore, the four reasons cited in the administration's NIE for the spread of this jihadist movement clearly point to the same conclusion:

Entrenched grievances, such as corruption, injustice, and fear of Western domination, leading to anger, humiliation, and a sense of powerlessness
the Iraq "jihad"
the slow pace of real and sustained economic, social, and political reforms in many Muslim majority nations
pervasive anti-US sentiment among most Muslims

Reasons #1, #2 and #4 are directly worsened by the invasion of Iraq. No way around it. (Reason#3, incidentally, while largely due to homegrown corruption by exploitative ideologues, certainly has not been helped by Western trade practices and many countries' Middle East policies.)

The NIE itself concludes this central point, albeit buried somewhat on page 2:

"We assess that the underlying factors fueling the spread of the movement outweigh its vulnerabilities and are likely to do so for the duration of the timeframe of this Estimate."

...And George W Bush would have us believe we are naïve and mistaken? Based on this document, which was intended to "end speculation"? Sounds more like wishful thinking -- unless there are further details awaiting declassification that contradict these findings...but somehow I doubt it.

Regardless, at the end of the day we're still in Iraq due to this Administration's disastrous Grand Experiment, so what do we do?

Must I repeat myself?

Confirming what we already knew, again

2006-09-24T13:06:00.000-07:00

Add this to the ever growing list of evidence, confirming the fallacy of George W Bush's miserable Iraq policy.

"A 30-page National Intelligence Estimate completed in April cites the "centrality" of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and the insurgency that has followed, as the leading inspiration for new Islamic extremist networks and cells that are united by little more than an anti-Western agenda. It concludes that, rather than contributing to eventual victory in the global counterterrorism struggle, the situation in Iraq has worsened the U.S. position, according to officials familiar with the classified document."

Of course, the question clearly remains on what to do to clean up this mess, and I think the answer is clear, but the bottom line remains: We must hold the Bush Administration accountable for this miserable failure, and ensure that extreme ideological movements like the neo-conservative movement are permanently discredited. The benefit of this is obvious: We help to minimize the terror threat at home and abroad by intelligently engaging in a strategy to reduce the threat, rather than engaging in straw-man politics that serve only the interests of those in power and do nothing to help reduce the threats we face globally.

KEEP YOUR THEOCRACY OFF MY DEMOCRACY

2006-09-21T12:02:00.000-07:00

...and other bumper stickers. (As compiled by "a former Methodist minister in Lakeside, Ohio, who writes: 'The following actual bumper stickers are now on cars. I didn't write any of them. I'm only the messenger. If they make you laugh, good. If they make you cry, good.'")

This was sent to me by my boss. I edited the original list down, so as not to (completely) overwhelm the post...some are familiar, some are new:

BLIND FAITH IN BAD LEADERSHIP IS NOT PATRIOTISM

IF YOU'RE NOT OUTRAGED, YOU'RE NOT PAYING ATTENTION

IF YOU SUPPORTED BUSH, A YELLOW RIBBON WON'T MAKE UP FOR IT

POVERTY, HEALTH CARE, & HOMELESSNESS ARE MORAL ISSUES

OF COURSE IT HURTS. YOU'RE GETTING SCREWED BY AN ELEPHANT

BUSH LIED, AND YOU KNOW IT

RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM: A THREAT ABROAD, A THREAT AT HOME

BUSH SPENT YOUR SOCIAL SECURITY ON HIS WAR

PRO AMERICA, ANTI BUSH

FEEL SAFER NOW?

I'D RATHER HAVE A PRESIDENT WHO SCREWED HIS INTERN THAN ONE WHO SCREWED HIS COUNTRY

JESUS WAS A SOCIAL ACTIVIST -- THAT IS A LIBERAL

IS IT 2008 YET?

DISSENT IS THE HIGHEST FORM OF PATRIOTISM -- Thomas Jefferson

DON'T BLAME ME. I VOTED AGAINST BUSH -- TWICE!

STOP MAD COWBOY DISEASE

GEORGE W. BUSH: MAKING TERRORISTS FASTER THAN HE CAN KILL THEM

KEEP YOUR THEOCRACY OFF MY DEMOCRACY

HONOR OUR TROOPS: DEMAND THE TRUTH

THE LAST TIME RELIGION CONTROLLED POLITICS, PEOPLE GOT BURNED AT THE STAKE

I still [heart] Bill

2006-09-20T14:43:00.000-07:00

...despite his foibles, and despite that I'm a heterosexual male.

Two of my favorite snippets published on Huffington Post (among several):

Clinton on watching the World Cup Final in Berlin: "I'm totally psyched for this."
Clinton on the vote to go into Iraq: "I'm sick and tired of being told that if you voted for authorization you voted for the war. It was a mistake, and I would have made it, too....The administration did not shoot straight on the nuclear issue or on Saddam's supposed ties to Al Qaeda prior to 9/11."

It takes a big man to admit a mistake. Otherwise all very true, Bill. Very true. Including what you said about Karl.

Tran v Cantwell

2006-09-20T09:27:00.000-07:00

...somehow I doubt my message was received:

Candidate	Votes	Percentage
Cantwell	357,860	91.11
Tran	18,843	4.80

(4259 of 6683 Precincts Reporting (63.73%) at 8:10pm. Source.)

...but I like to think that Cantwell heard us: Over 18,000 (and counting!) votes is much more than the margin she had to win her last election (a mere 2029 votes) over Slade ("Skeletor") Gorton.

Then again, we can all be thankful that McGavick is trailing significantly (today) in the polls. I hope Cantwell maintains her lead over McGavick, and returns to D.C. perhaps a little less eager to support the Bush Admin's next bad policy decisions...

Go Maria!

2006-09-19T11:00:00.000-07:00

...in the general election. However:

Today, I voted for Hong Tran in the Democratic primary as candidate for U.S. Senate from Washington state. Why? To "send a message" to Maria Cantwell, of course! Ouch!

While Cantwell recovers from trembling in her boots, and prepares to carry her campaign into the general election after handily defeating all other Democratic primary opponents, I'm hoping that there will have been enough votes for Hong Tran to put Cantwell on notice. I hope Cantwell notices that her support for the Iraq War isn't simply given a pass, when a significant percentage of Democratic primary votes are diverted to the top anti-Iraq War Democratic candidate, Hong Tran.

...and you'll note that I said "top anti-Iraq-War" Democratic candidate. Contrary to attempts by traditional media and Republican strategists, I'd like to reiterate that just because a candidate opposes Bush's Iraq War policy, it does not mean that s/he is "weak on terrorism," opposes the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2002, or does not want our nation to be better protected against potential future terrorist attacks -- be they from domestic or foreign extremists.

Rather, we simply want a foreign policy that helps reduce the threat of terrorism, not increase it, as Bush's Iraq War policy has clearly done. --Which, I'll add, we knew would likely occur, for those of us who chose to seek out unpoliticized evidence and listen to top national security experts ignored by the Bush Administration prior to the invasion in 2003.

...but best of luck to Maria Cantwell in November against Mike McGavick.

Inaugural Ball

2006-09-17T21:03:00.000-07:00

Why not christen this first blog attempt with a tribute to a great band, long since defunct, but reunited for a quick 3-city tour? Scratch Acid's Seattle performance on Saturday night was cathartic and therapeutic...long needed in today's national nightmare, 5 years in the running.

Lyrically appropriate, when you consider the impact of Bush's policies on this nation and our planet.