Different Jodi, same bullshit. In 2004, the blog Wilgoren Watch was set up to deconstruct the New York Times' coverage of the Howard Dean campaign. During that race, reporter Jodi Wilgoren could always be relied on to write some kind of crap full of innuendo and allusions to insanity, loose cannonism, or some other Crime Against the Punditocracy that in her mind disqualified Dean from the highest office in the land.

Now the Times has a new Jodi sharpening her knives -- but once again, only for Democrats. In recent weeks, this particular hack has done hatchet jobs on Chelsea Clinton, Michelle Obama, and Barack Obama's pastor. Now, in tomorrow's paper, she all but accuses John Edwards of child abuse:

Emma Claire and Jack Edwards, 9 and 7, were on their umpteenth campaign trip earlier this month, this time through small towns where their father was decrying rural poverty and the power of lobbyists.

The two children barely listened. They scampered away from speeches as fast as their parents would allow, to vending machines and arcade games and swimming expeditions, a campaign bus stocked with Oreos and DVDs, and for a glorious half hour, a trampoline next door to a speaking event.

And they treated an interviewer the way politicians surely wish they could at times, refusing at first to remove their iPod earphones for a discussion of life on the trail.

“I don’t want to do this,” Jack protested to his father, John Edwards, the Democratic presidential candidate and former North Carolina senator.

“I don’t care whether you want to do this,” Mr. Edwards replied.

A moment later, Jack hid his face in his hands.

“Mr. Jack, do we need to go in the back and have a conversation?” asked Mr. Edwards, lifting his son’s head.

Horrors! A presidential candidate is demanding that his child behave instead of doing whatever the hell he wants! Someone call Youth and Family Services!!

Now, if you read the rest of this article, in which Kantor goes on to talk about the logistical problems of running a presidential campaign when you have pre-adolescent children, you might be tempted to think she's just doing this as an illustration of the special challenges faced by today's candidates. But you'd be wrong:

Mr. Edwards, who lost his oldest son in a car accident 11 years ago, is determined to avoid regrets like the one Mr. Brownback described, even if it means dragging Emma Claire and Jack through thousands of miles and stump speeches.

Back in North Carolina, the Edwards family lives in a 28,000-square-foot pleasure palace, with a basketball court and a room dedicated to arts-and-crafts projects. This fall, the children will not be there much; instead of their routine of school, sports and friends, they will travel with their parents, spending days on buses and nights at Comfort Inns. Their mother and a tutor will school them on the road, a plan hatched, Elizabeth Edwards said, even before she learned that her breast cancer had recurred and would not be cured.

Inflammatory language much, Jodi? And just for emphasis, at least online, those two paragraphs are repeated on page 2.

What's so dangerous about the so-called "lifestyle" articles about the candidates penned by Ms. Kantor is that she finds a way to skewer all of the Democrats. She'll attack Michelle Obama in one article, then compare the Obamas' leaving of their daughters at home favorably to the Edwards' decision to bring their chidren with them on the campaign trail. And yet only the child-handling practices of the Democrats are open to question, despite the fact that Sam Brownback and Fred Thompson also have young children.

There is a very unpleasant and pervasive tone in the press that John and Elizabeth Edwards are supposted to just go home to their mansion, get out of sight, and sit and cry until Elizabeth's cancer gets the best of her. That this couple is going on and living their lives and doing what they had planned to do before Elizabeth's cancer returned ought to be an inspiration to the many, many Americans with cancer. But refusing to hide cancer makes people like Jodi Kantor uncomfortable. Or perhaps it's the threat that John Edwards poses to the corporate interests that pay Jodi Kantor's salary.

I have no doubt that as low-key and friendly as this couple is, they are tough enough to deal with what is certain to be escalating second-guessing and innuendo from the press, particularly if Edwards ends up winning one of the early primaries. You don't get to where John Edwards is by crumpling like a cheap car. The question is whether the American people are smart enough to hear his message around the din of second guessing of the Edwards' decisions about their family life.

Accompanying the article is a video about the Edwards children's experience on the campaign trail. In the video, John Edwards reminds his son Jack about how in 2004, he caught the reporters on the campaign bus teaching him how to play poker, and when he pulled Jack away, the boy said "I want to go back with my friends." Edwards' response? "They're not your friends."

He was right then, and he's right today.

Labels: Elizabeth Edwards, hack journalism, John Edwards

*sigh*

You want to know why I'm not on Team Obama?

This is why:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama often says he will be a candidate that will bring both parties together and Saturday he named a few of the Republicans he would reach out to if elected.

"There are some very capable Republicans who I have a great deal of respect for," Obama said in an interview with The Associated Press. "The opportunities are there to create a more effective relationship between parties."

Among the Republicans he would seek help from are Sens. Richard Lugar of Indiana, John Warner of Virginia and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, Obama said.

"On foreign policy I've worked very closely with Dick Lugar," Obama said. "I consider him one of my best friends in the Senate. He's someone I would actively seek counsel and advice from when it came to foreign policy."

"Senator Warner is another example of somebody with great wisdom, although I don't always agree with him on every issue," Obama said. "I would also seek out people like Tom Coburn, who is probably the most conservative member of the U.S. Senate. He has become a friend of mine."

Here's what John Edwards has to say about the politics of compromise:



"My view is that if you give them a seat at the table, they eat all the food."

For the last six years, we have seen Republicans, including John Warner and Dick Lugar and Tom Coburn, vote in lockstep with their party's president no matter how much they may have protested beforehand. The Republican way is "Do it our way. Period." You simply cannot compromise with these people, because the Republican Party does not believe in compromise. The Republican Party does not believe in "reaching across the aisle." The Republican Party has been about destroying its opposition by any means possible -- and then spitting on and stomping on the corpse.

And Barack Obama wants to do business with these people? Barack Obama thinks that by being a "nice guy" he'll be ABLE to do business with these people? How's he going to do that? We need to know just how much he plans to "compromise" with a guy like Tom Coburn.

Tom Coburn, on the network television airing of Schindler's List, 1997:

``the fact that it aired on public television on a Sunday evening during a family time should outrage parents and decent-minded individuals everywhere...I cringe when I realize that there were children all across this nation watching this program. They were exposed to the violence of multiple gunshot head wounds, vile language, full frontal nudity and irresponsible sexual activity. It simply should not have been allowed on public television.''

Tom Coburn, July 2003:

"I favor the death penalty for abortionists and other people who take life,"

Tom Coburn, Spring 2004:

"The gay community has infiltrated the very centers of power in every area across this country, and they wield extreme power ... That agenda is the greatest threat to our freedom that we face today. Why do you think we see the rationalization for abortion and multiple sexual partners? That's a gay agenda."

Tom Coburn, Medicaid Fraudster.

And this is one of Barack Obama's "good friends"?

Sorry, Barack, but the days of Orrin Hatch and Ted Kennedy going at each other on the floor of the Senate and then going out for dinner are over. Republicans decided what their rules are going to be, and they do not include reaching across the aisle to you. And do you know what you call candidates who continue to believe that they can work with these people?

Losers.

Ask John Kerry.

UPDATE: Saje Williams at the John Edwards blog has it exactly right:

We'll make peace with the Republicans. On OUR terms. As soon as they surrender their racist, sexist, homophobic, holier than thou certainty that THEY are right and WE are wrong. As soon as they apologize for calling us traitors, or allowing others who claim to represent them to do it. As soon as they apologize for branding people like Natalie Maines, Dick Durbin, Tom Dashle, and others as "traitors" or "terrorist sympathizers" for disagreeing with President George W. Bush on the way to handle the so-called "War On Terror."

We'll bury the hatchet as soon as they repudiate the self-centered, self-aggrandizing, and inflexible "conservative" notion of "voodoo economics." As soon as they recognize that not everyone in America gets an even shot at success, and as soon as they join us in fighting to change that. As soon as they step up to defend the middle class, and the helping hand the middle class extends downward to those in need. As soon as they realize that the ultra-rich shouldn't be able to decide for the rest of us what our priorities should be.

We'll shake hands with the Republicans as soon as they admit that their religion, and their religious book, should NOT be the answer to all arguments about the nature of the cosmos, the history of the human race, and whether gays have the right to live in peace. We wouldn't put up with the Taliban here in the United States, and we will NOT put up with similar inflexibility from them either.

We'll kiss and make up when they recognize that we have a duty to this planet, to all the other forms of life that live here, and that we are both responsible for the damage we've caused and for striving to fix as much of it as we can. When they roll up their sleeves and stand beside us, working to make this world a better place again. When they too decide that the long-term fate of their children and grandchildren are more important than short-term profits.

We'll play nice as soon as they stop insulting us, insulting our intelligence, treating us like second-class citizens, and tell people like Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, and their ilk that they DO NOT speak for them. As soon as they make it clear they DON'T want us jailed, or killed, for the crime of disagreeing with them or the Bush administration. As soon as they stand up and say to their representatives that they respect the Constitution and don't respect anyone who refuses to abide by it.

Labels: Barack Obama, delusion, spinelessness

Mr. Giuliani, you may want to check that flame on your trousers.

First it was Rudy the Saint of 9/11 claiming that he was as much at risk as the workers who spent weeks cleaning up "the pile" at Ground Zero when in reality he spent more time at Yankee Stadium than he did at Ground Zero, and if his health is at risk it's from those stadium hotdogs rather than the toxic stew which Bush Administration flack Christine Todd Whitman claimed was completely harmless.

Now he's boasting of leaving New York City with a budget surplus -- another lie:

Rudolph W. Giuliani has been broadcasting radio advertisements in Iowa and other states far from the city he once led stating that as mayor of New York, he “turned a $2.3 billion deficit into a multibillion dollar surplus.”

The assertion, which Mr. Giuliani has repeated on the trail as he has promoted his fiscal conservatism, is somewhat misleading, independent fiscal monitors said. In fact, Mr. Giuliani left his successor, Michael R. Bloomberg, with a bigger deficit than the one Mr. Giuliani had to deal with when he arrived in 1994. And that deficit would have been large even if the city had not been attacked on Sept. 11, 2001.

“He inherited a gap, and he left a gap for his successor,” Ronnie Lowenstein, the director of the city’s Independent Budget Office, a nonpartisan agency that monitors the city budget, said of Mr. Giuliani. “The city was budgeting as though the good times were not going to end, but sooner or later they always do.”

The Giuliani campaign defended the advertisement, noting that it merely states that Mr. Giuliani created a multibillion-dollar surplus, not that he passed one on to his successor.

Are we supposed to believe that this is the intent of Giuliani's ad -- to remind voters that he built a surplus and then squandered it? I hardly think so.

It's ironic that Rudy Giuliani wants to run on the Clinton-era surplus, which through the financial markets pumped boatloads of money into the city's coffers, but at the same time wants to run against the Clinton record.

What a craven bunch of liars and weasels these Republican candidates are. From Mitt Romney, former governor of MASSACHUSETTS, now ready to brand the most popular methods of birth control as "abortions" and the ridiculous lies of Rudy Giuliani, it's hard to imagine why anyone in this country puts any stock in these guys anymore.

This is the party that Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove built. I hope they're proud of it.

Labels: lies, Rudy Giuliani, utter horseshit

The last ever issue of the Weekly World News goes on sale this week:



It's easy to laugh at the Weekly World News, which was The Onion before The Onion was The Onion -- except it didn't know it. But while the WWN will live on via the internet, it just isn't the same as standing in line at the Shop-Rite looking at a cover screaming about killer babies on the loose, honeymoon couples attacked by goldfish, and how an astronomer has discovered that the core of Mars is composed entirely of milk chocolate.

Laugh if you must. But is it any different from MSNBC reporting for weeks on a bunch of guys who like to dress up as Ninjas and talk about taking down the Sears Tower and how this is a real terrorist threat; or the entire print and broadcast media buying the bullshit about Saddam Hussein's huge weapons stockpiles? Or for that matter, is it any different from the live, 24-hour coverage of Paris Hilton's release from prison, or Hillary Clinton's cleavage, or John Edwards' haircut? Or the rash of "news" stories that have appeared in the last few years to fill up the 24/7 news cycle over whether the Rapture is real?

Perhaps by suspending publication, WWN is doing us a favor. Without such obvious ridiculousness at the supermarket checkout line, more people might be able to look closely at the supermarket tabloidization of the news media they think they can trust.

Labels: comedy, hack journalism, real journalism

Allow the president to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose—and you allow him to make war at pleasure. ~Abraham Lincoln

(Major tips o’ the tinfoil hat to Digby and Jill at Brilliant at Breakfast.)

There are some wingnuts who ought to be simply ignored. Then there are those who ought to be placed outside the protection of the first amendment. Philip Atkinson is just such a case. By an act of Congress, this man ought to be barred from touching any writing implement, whether it be a pen, pencil, typewriter, keyboard, a brush, a lump of coal, a spray can or even a Bic lighter. Violation of this congressional edict should be punishable by no less than twenty consecutive life imprisonments at Abu Ghraib, fines totaling Bush’s national deficit, being endlessly bombarded by unsold copies of Treason and Culture Warrior and falling pianos.

Philip Atkinson simply isn’t qualified to write an eye chart or even spray paint coordinates on the street for city workers much less write apologist pieces proposing that we make George W. Bush dictator for life. Or rather, that we ought to passively stand by while George W. Bush does the Napoleon thing and crowns himself dictator for life since the democracy thing, after over 230 years, really isn’t working out.

Yes, he actually wrote that (click on the .jpeg for a larger image) for Family Security Matters. The original article is… Ooops. Seems that they’ve been doing some late spring cleaning.

Well, luckily, whatever’s put on the Internet never truly disappears thanks to a marvelous new invention still unbeknownst to wingnuts called “copy and paste” from “cached pages.”

Think of Charles Krauthammer with a brain tumor. Alright, most of us all already do. But think of Mister Empire on the Potomac and take him to two or three more extreme levels. Got that? Well, now you have an idea of what Philip Atkinson’s all about.

Because on August 3rd, Atkinson penned an understandably exclusive yet mighty screed for FSM entitled, “Conquering the Drawbacks of Democracy.”

No, folks, I’m afraid this isn’t yet another benevolent hoax sprung on us by the geniuses over at the Onion. I’m afraid people like this actually exist. And, predictably, it just gets scarier and scarier all the way to its harrowing conclusion when Atkinson reaches a fascist crescendo with the words,

He could then follow Caesar’s example and use his newfound popularity with the military to wield military power to become the first permanent president of America, and end the civil chaos caused by the continually squabbling Congress and the out-of-control Supreme Court.

President Bush can fail in his duty to himself, his country, and his God, by becoming “ex-president” Bush or he can become “President-for-Life” Bush: the conqueror of Iraq, who brings sense to the Congress and sanity to the Supreme Court. Then who would be able to stop Bush from emulating Augustus Caesar and becoming ruler of the world? For only an America united under one ruler has the power to save humanity from the threat of a new Dark Age wrought by terrorists armed with nuclear weapons.

There. It’s out. He said it. George W. Bush should make himself Emperor For Life regardless of the rules of succession, term limits, the 22nd amendment, checks and balances, our three branch and two party system of government, and each and every rule of democracy that has governed our great Republic until there is nothing left of it but bloated Republicans gnawing on its bones and fighting each other over the gristle and cartilage.

We ought to let George W. Bush, a man who isn’t even fit to manage a McDonald’s third shift let alone the free world, to continue running roughshod over the rest of the world until he finally gets it right, even if he’s older than Reagan’s grandfather and taking potshots at Barney’s and Miss Beazley’s progeny’s progeny with Saddam Hussein’s pearl-handled revolvers because Laura still won’t tell him where she hid the soft pretzels.

“But… but Atkinson doesn’t represent the administration or the right wing establishment, so how can you make such a claim, you liberal windbag?”

Well, ordinarily you’d be right except for this one disturbing little fact: Sourcewatch offers a brief but enlightening rundown on the FSM. Seems these people are more than just an organization dedicated to creating kick-ass soccer moms. In fact, it seems they’re merely a front organization for another outfit called the Center for Security Policy, a twenty year-old right wing organization dedicated to unilaterally kicking ass the good ole fashioned American way. Among its esteemed current and former alumnus: Dick Cheney. Douglas Feith. Elliot Abrams. Richard Perle. And Frank Gaffney.

In other words, some of the most shithouse rat on fire insane psychopaths that this nascent Second Roman Republic’s ever produced.

“He could then follow Caesar’s example…” Has he ever considered the possibility that our latter day Senate could then follow the example set by their ancient predecessors? I guess that dictator for life plan of his still has some bugs in it.

But let’s take a look at the earlier part of the article to see how and why Atkinson seems to think that our Great 231 year-old Experiment in democracy may not be such a good idea, after all:

President George W. Bush is the 43rd President of the United States. He was sworn in for a second term on January 20, 2005 after being chosen by the majority of citizens in America to be president.

Uuuuuh. Okaaaaay…

Yet in 2007 he is generally despised, with many citizens of Western civilization expressing contempt for his person and his policies, sentiments which now abound on the Internet. This rage at President Bush is an inevitable result of the system of government demanded by the people, which is Democracy.

OK, you see where he’s going with this, don’t you?

The inadequacy of Democracy, rule by the majority, is undeniable – for it demands adopting ideas because they are popular, rather than because they are wise.

Yes, you read that right. Atkinson actually is saying here that if we don’t like George W. Bush then he has to choose between either his “president” or democracy. And, to him, it’s a no brainer:

This means that any man chosen to act as an agent of the people is placed in an invidious position: if he commits folly because it is popular, then he will be held responsible for the inevitable result. If he refuses to commit folly, then he will be detested by most citizens because he is frustrating their demands.

To play Devil’s advocate here, Bush did commit a folly when the idea was very popular: When he decided to invade Afghanistan ostensibly to take on the Taliban, his approval ratings were at an alltime high. They were obviously almost as high when he’d decided to invade Iraq almost a year and a half later, even though no one of any consequence or with any balls had the good sense to ask why we were detouring from the war on terror especially at a time when al Qaida’s top leadership was still largely at large or even unaccounted for.

Here’s the difference: Bush and Cheney knew that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. He knew that Cheney strongarmed CIA analysts into giving him cherry-picked intelligence that at last told him what the administration wanted to hear, that they lied to the American people and our military, our press and, finally, the families whose sons and daughters, wives and husbands, brothers and sisters came home in steel coffins to no fanfare or acknowledgement.

That’s not mere folly: That’s outright deceit. That’s treachery.

So Atkinson has a cure for that, an ultimate punishment for those of us who dare ask for accountability from a man who so casually condemned what will surely be 4000 Americans to death by this year’s end so we can get our hands on the third largest oil deposits on God’s scorched earth, even if it costs us another half a trillion dollars and several thousands of more lives: Dissolve the democracy, because we can’t have our cake and eat it, too.

But, wait, friends, Romans and fellow countrymen, lend me your ears, for his ideas get even grander:

When faced with the possible threat that the Iraqis might be amassing terrible weapons that could be used to slay millions of citizens of Western Civilization, President Bush took the only action prudence demanded and the electorate allowed: he conquered Iraq with an army.

This dangerous and expensive act did destroy the Iraqi regime, but left an American army without any clear purpose in a hostile country and subject to attack. If the Army merely returns to its home, then the threat it ended would simply return.

In other words, the zombie Saddam would’ve come back by walking on the floor of the Atlantic, this time bringing with him the WMD’s that he temporarily misplaced in Syria in his last months on earth.

Believe it or not, it gets even better:

If President Bush copied Julius Caesar by ordering his army to empty Iraq of Arabs and repopulate the country with Americans, he would achieve immediate results: popularity with his military; enrichment of America by converting an Arabian Iraq into an American Iraq (therefore turning it from a liability to an asset); and boost American prestiege (sic) while terrifying American enemies.

Got that, class? We “allowed” him to cross the Rubicon because the man who doesn’t rule the nation according to the poll numbers was actually following the dictates his we, his bosses, We the People of the United States of America. And now that we don’t like the outcome of the most massive act of deception since Vietnam and the Gulf of Tonkin… Well, to paraphrase a famous quote about war and generals, democracy is much too serious an affair to be left in the hands of an electorate.

Now, that kind of takes the edge off his brilliant foreign policy idea that George W. Bush should nuke Iraq, doesn't it? Doesn't seem like such a shocking idea anymore, does it? Kind of like, well, shooting someone in the foot while pulling off a bandaid.

This man Atkinson has a percolating pustule for a brain and if anyone ever sees him getting within arm’s reach again of anything that could be used as a tool for writing, we ought to be allowed to use any and all means at our disposal to prevent his use of them before people more dangerous and only slightly more sane than he begin to listen.

Only in Republican America can a company called "The John Galt Corporation" obtain the contract to demolish the Deutsche Bank building damaged six years ago in the 9/11 attacks.

John friggin' Galt. Yeesh.

Sometimes the jokes just write themselves.

This so-called company was hired by Bovis Lend Lease, which in turn was hired by -- wait for it -- Rudy Giuliani, the self-appointed Saint of 9/11. Bovis had received hundreds of millions in contract work from the City of New York during the Giuliani years. Giuliani had tried to push Bovis aside in favor of -- wait for it again -- Bechtel -- but finally backed off.

The John Galt Company is as big an enigma as the character for whom it's named:

The John Galt Corporation of the Bronx, hired last year for the dangerous and complex job of demolishing the former Deutsche Bank building at 130 Liberty Street, where two firefighters died last Saturday, has apparently never done any work like it. Indeed, Galt does not seem to have done much of anything since it was incorporated in 1983.

Public and private records give no indication of how many employees it has, what its volume of business is or who its clients are. There are almost no accounts of any projects it has undertaken on any scale, apart from 130 Liberty Street. Court records are largely silent. Some leading construction executives in the city say they have never even heard of it.

That may not be as surprising as it seems. John Galt, it appears, is not much more than a corporate entity meant to accommodate the people and companies actually doing the demolition job at the emotionally charged and environmentally hazardous site at the edge of ground zero.

[snip]

The arrangement involving Galt — achieved after multiple companies that had bid on the Deutsche Bank contract were eliminated for one reason or another — is nonetheless odd for such a momentous job, one that is expected ultimately to cost roughly $150 million.

The arrangement, never fully publicly disclosed, was proposed by the general contractor charged with overseeing the demolition, Bovis Lend Lease, and approved by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which owns 130 Liberty Street.

Yesterday, Bovis announced that it had declared Galt in default on the bank building contract, saying the outfit Bovis had selected had failed “to live up to terms of its contract with respect to site supervision, maintenance and project safety.” One person who has spoken to Bovis executives, but who was not authorized to speak for the company, said it was likely that Galt would be formally fired within the week.

When officials at the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation approved Galt’s participation, they even allowed two former senior Safeway executives to join the operation at the Deutsche Bank building on several conditions, including that they cooperate with an investigation being conducted by the city’s Department of Investigation.

In the 17 months since Galt took shape — and as problems mounted at the demolition site, including repeated safety violations — city and state officials have made announcements about the work and problems at 130 Liberty referring to John Galt as if it were a fully established corporation, and never mentioning by name the more controversial and less than perfectly qualified people and companies doing the work.

(John Galt, by the way, is a central character, an engineer, in Ayn Rand’s novel “Atlas Shrugged.” The book begins with this line: “Who is John Galt?”)

John Galt’s stationery puts its headquarters at 3900 Webster Avenue in the Bronx, near Woodlawn Cemetery, the same address as Regional Scaffolding’s. The two companies also share many of the same officers.

Greg Blinn, who is shown in city records as the president of the John Galt Corporation, said in a telephone interview: “I’m not really sure how I can help. My contract precludes me from talking to the media. I have to refer all questions or inquiries to the L.M.D.C.”

Daniel L. Doctoroff, the city’s deputy mayor for economic development, who was a member of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation at the time it approved the Galt contract, said through a spokesman this week that safeguards had been put in place to make sure that the former Safeway executives did nothing inappropriate — like funnel money back to Safeway.

The Deutsche Bank building has provided fodder for conspiracy theorists for six years, and a sudden fire right before the 9/11 anniversary that finally prompts faster demolition is certainly an occasion to don le chapeau tinfoil. Some people are wondering why the building burned for four hours and didn't collapse.

And when you throw in "The John Galt Company", which SOUNDS like a shell company and takes its name from an Ayn Rand novel, well, things are very strange indeed

Labels: 9/11, conspiracies, Deutsche Bank

So why do we keep going? Why, when some days it's all we can do to go to work, come home, have dinner, wash the dishes, and collapse into a heap, do we still feel we have to do something to save this country?

I don't even have kids!! Why the fuck should I care what happens in 40 years?

I'll tell you why. It's so this kid can keep laughing like this:



(h/t: Melissa)

Via Hoffmania comes this CNN report by Michael Ware and Thomas Evans, that the military is realizing that three warring factions that were killing each other for thousands of years are not the best candidates for Jeffersonian democracy:

Nightmarish political realities in Baghdad are prompting American officials to curb their vision for democracy in Iraq. Instead, the officials now say they are willing to settle for a government that functions and can bring security.

You mean, like a dictator, or a "strongman"?

"Democratic institutions are not necessarily the way ahead in the long-term future," said Brig. Gen. John "Mick" Bednarek, part of Task Force Lightning in Diyala province, one of the war's major battlegrounds.

The comments reflect a practicality common among Western diplomats and officials trying to win hearts and minds in the Middle East and other non-Western countries where democracy isn't a tradition.

[snip]

Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon, commander of Task Force Lightning, also reflected a less lofty American goal for Iraq's future.

"I would describe it as leaving an effective government behind that can provide services to its people, and security. It needs to be an effective and functioning government that is really a partner with the United States and the rest of the world in this fight against the terrorists," said Mixon, who will not be perturbed if such goals are reached without democracy.

In other words, a government run by someone that can make the trains run on time AND with whom we can do business. Someone sort of like......this guy:



Oh yeah. I forgot. We had that one killed.

Next?

Labels: clusterfuck, Iraq, the more things change the more they stay the same

What other conclusion can one come to when you read something like this, except that the Washington infernal circle of Democratic consultants and entrenched insiders wants to nominate Hillary Clinton specifically so that the party can once again lose the White House?

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton yesterday raised the prospect of a terror attack before next year's election, warning that it could boost the GOP's efforts to hold on to the White House.

Discussing the possibility of a new nightmare assault while campaigning in New Hampshire, Clinton also insisted she is the Democratic candidate best equipped to deal with it.

"It's a horrible prospect to ask yourself, 'What if? What if?' But if certain things happen between now and the election, particularly with respect to terrorism, that will automatically give the Republicans an advantage again, no matter how badly they have mishandled it, no matter how much more dangerous they have made the world," Clinton told supporters in Concord.

When you have a candidate like John Edwards, who consistently polls most strongly against ALL of the Republican contenders, you have to wonder why the Democratic Party seems bound and determined to nominate a candidate for whom half of America refuses to vote right out of the gate. Here we have the so-called Democratic frontrunner ready to throw in the towel already if there is another terrorist attack before the election (and given the current Administration's history of ignoring warnings and allowing one to play out, it's a reasonable assumption that there will be one).

At least John Kerry waited till he was the nominee to run a weak-assed campaign.

Labels: Hillary Clinton, idiocy

If you vote Republican, you're voting for banning contraception.

Think I'm being overly dramatic? Read on:

At National Right to Life's conference this year, Mitt Romney set out to convince anti-abortion leaders he was their candidate. At the podium, he rattled off his qualifications. To a layman's ears, it sounded pretty standard for abortion politics. He wants to overturn Roe v. Wade. He supports teaching only abstinence to teens.

But for those trained to hear the subtleties, Mr. Romney was acknowledging something more. He implied an opposition to the birth control pill and a willingness to join in their efforts to scale back access to contraception. There are code phrases to listen for - and for those keeping score, Mr. Romney nailed each one.

One code phrase is: "I fought to define life as beginning at conception rather than at the time of implantation." The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists defines pregnancy as starting at implantation, the first moment a pregnancy can be known. Anti-abortion advocates want pregnancy to start at the unknown moment sperm and egg meet: fertilization. They'd also like you to believe, despite evidence to the contrary, that the birth control pill prevents that fertilized egg from implanting in the womb.

I've said this before, and I'll say it again: Up to half of fertilized eggs never implant in the uterus, for various reasons. If you're going to classify every fertilized egg as a human being and every unimplanted fertilized egg as an abortion, it's a logical extension for every woman's menstrual period to be investigated to make sure that no fertilized eggs are passed in her menstrual fluid. And it also means that a woman with an ectopic pregnancy is going to have to let it go until her fallopian tube bursts -- and if she dies, she dies. And it further means that every miscarriage will have to be investigated as a potential homicide.

Ask your Republican friends if this is really where they want to go.

Mitt Romney is resembling the old SNL Pete Tagliani sketch more and more every day. From "We'll DOUBLE the size of Guantanamo Bay!" to expressing a willingness to define life as beginning when sperm meets egg, Romney is not above talking completely out of his ass if it means "the base" will lap it up like a thirsty dog. And this is the Republican front-runner?

You think they're going to stop at Roe? Roe is doo-doo. The decision they really want to go after is Griswold v. Connecticut.

UPDATE: Pam has more on how the Republicans plan to tell the nine out of ten Americans who have used contraception that they don't give a shit what the voters want; they, the male politicians, know best. So does Jessica.

Labels: Christofascist Zombie Brigade, insanity, misogyny, wingnuttia

"A person will worship something, have no doubt about that. We may think our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts, but it will out. That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and our character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming."

--Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Labels: America, fascism, Ralph Waldo Emerson

It hardly seems likely that when David Petraeus the White House delivers the September report on the progress of the so-called "surge" this report from the reality-based community will make one bit of difference:

A stark assessment released Thursday by the nation’s intelligence agencies depicts a paralyzed Iraqi government unable to take advantage of the security gains achieved by the thousands of extra American troops dispatched to the country this year.

The assessment, known as a National Intelligence Estimate, casts strong doubts on the viability of the Bush administration strategy in Iraq. It gives a dim prognosis on the likelihood that Iraqi politicians can heal deep sectarian rifts before next spring, when American military commanders have said that a crunch on available troops will require reducing the United States’ presence in Iraq.

But the report also implicitly criticizes proposals offered by Democrats, including several presidential candidates, who have called for a withdrawal of American combat troops from Iraq by next year and for a major shift in the American approach, from manpower-intensive counterinsurgency operations to lower-profile efforts aimed at supporting Iraqi troops and carrying out quick-strike counterterrorism raids.

Such a shift, the report says, would “erode security gains achieved thus far” and could return Iraq to a downward spiral of sectarian violence.

After a summer of rancorous debate over the future of America’s mission in Iraq, the intelligence report is the most prominent and authoritative assessment to date of what the administration calls a surge strategy.

The report, which represents the consensus view of America’s 16 intelligence agencies, suggests that policy makers face a dilemma. While the current strategy in Iraq has produced “measurable but uneven improvements” in security, it says, the approach has done little to bridge sectarian divides in Iraq. The report also says that pulling American troops out of Iraq would most likely make things far worse.

[snip]

The report says that the influx of American troops in Iraq has achieved some successes in lowering sectarian violence, but concludes that Iraqi leaders “remain unable to govern effectively” and that the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki “will become more precarious over the next 6 to 12 months” as rival factions led by Mr. Maliki’s fellow Shiites vie for power.

The assessment concludes that there is little reason to expect that Iraqi politicians will achieve significant gains before spring, when American commanders say they will have to begin to cut troop levels in Iraq, now at more than 160,000, to ease the burden on military personnel.

The report is optimistic about a number of what it calls “bottom up” security initiatives that have helped reduce violence in some parts of the country. Most prominent of these are efforts by Sunni tribal sheiks to band together against Islamic militants from Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the homegrown Sunni Arab insurgent group that American intelligence agencies have concluded is foreign-led.

But such local initiatives are also described in the report as a Catch-22. On one hand, they provide the “best prospect” for improving Iraqi security over the next year. But the assessment says that strong local initiatives could undermine Iraq’s central government, which American officials say is essential to lasting peace.

The intelligence assessment also cites a growing perception inside Iraq that an American troop withdrawal would inevitably be another factor that could destabilize the Maliki government, encouraging factions anticipating a power vacuum “to seek local security solutions that could intensify sectarian violence.”

So where does that leave us, now that George W. Bush has wrecked a country that did absolutely nothing to us, and is bankrupting this nation's future in trying to save face? It seems to me that these are our unpalatable choices:

1) Begin withdrawing from Iraq by Christmas, as Republican Senator John Warner now advocates, in the hope that it will spur the so-called Iraqi government into taking action on its own to quell the violence. The problem with this approach is that in order to do this, Nouri al-Maliki is going to have to become a leader very much like, well, Saddam Hussein; which puts us right back where we started. The other problem with this approach is that it puts the Americans remaining there later than others in ever-greater danger.

2) Kick the football down the field a bit further, setting another Friedman Unit timeline, during which another few hundred American servicepeople will die and a few billion more dollars of America's future will go down the drain.

3) Plan to occupy Iraq indefinitely. The problem with this approach is that the military is already broken. Military leaders say that by spring of 2008, a pullout must begin anyway simply because the military does not have the manpower. This makes a military draft not just a talking point, but a necessity. Are the American people ready to see their children drafted into service for a permanent occupation of Iraq? I hardly think so.

What do you do with a president who has wrecked not just the country he's supposed to lead but an entire region? It's one thing for him to leave a mess for someone else to clean up, as he's done his entire life, but what do we do when the mess is something that not even the most competent leader can clean up? It's hard to believe that this is anything but deliberate. The only question is why.

Labels: Iraq

Mark Twain said the problem with the world was that "the lightning wasn't distributed right". He was wrong.

When Lightning Strikes

At the third GOP presidential debate in New Hampshire on Tuesday night, it was mostly same-old, same-old, in spite of the all the preshow hype over a possible John McCain/Mitt Romney smackdown on immigration. But then Mother Nature stepped in.

Asked to comment on a Roman Catholic bishop who compared his abortion stance to Pontius Pilate’s position on crucifying Jesus Christ, Rudy Giuliani opened his mouth to answer when lightning struck, quite literally, causing CNN’s sound system at the debate site to crackle and give out.

Giuliani jokingly looked at the ceiling, as if he feared the wrath of a vengeful God—a fantastic bit of comic timing made even funnier when the boom of thunder and lightning interrupted his second attempt to answer the question. Amid more static from the sound system, McCain and Romney, positioned on either side of Giuliani, began slowly backing away from Rudy, as if he might get struck down by the heavens at any minute.

Maybe you should take the hint, Rudy.

Labels: Lightning, Republican Presidential Debates, Rudy Giuliani

Remember when in 2004 Karl Rove said about Howard Dean, "That's the guy we want" because he knew that by doing so, he would make Democrats rally around a weaker candidate in John Kerry?

Well, Joe Trippi for once thinks he's doing it again, albeit in a slightly different form, and I'm inclined to agree. CNN covered Trippi's e-mail to supporters yesterday, the relevant parts of which are below:

To: Interested Parties
From: Joe Trippi
Re: Karl Rove's Worst Nightmare

You may have seen Karl Rove's recent attacks on Hillary Clinton in the news.

This is a page straight out of his tired old playbook—Rove is attacking Hillary Clinton because he doesn't want John Edwards to win the Democratic nomination.

Rove knows that Democrats will rally around whomever he attacks—so he attacks the candidate he thinks Republicans can most easily defeat.

It may seem backwards, but Rove and his cronies did the same thing last time around. In 2004, they were scared of John Edwards, so they attacked John Kerry.

Don't take it from me—take it from Rove's own lieutenant on the Bush-Cheney 2004 reelection campaign, Matthew Dowd:

"Whomever we attacked was going to be emboldened in Democratic primary voters' minds. So we started attacking John Kerry a lot in the end of January because we were very worried about John Edwards." [Los Angeles Times, 8/19/07]
Rove and the Republicans want our opponents to win—because they know John will be the strongest candidate in the general election.

We may not be the richest campaign—but John is the strongest candidate. This time around, the candidate with the boldest ideas for changing America—the candidate who can take on the special interests in Washington, D.C. and win—is also the most electable. We know it—and the Republicans know it, too.

[snip]

It is no secret that John is the only Democratic candidate who can beat any of the Republican candidates hands down. Just look at the polls conducted by Rasmussen Reports—a major national polling firm—over the past few months. They show that John is the Democratic candidate who consistently beats all of the Republicans' candidates in head-to-head match-ups in battleground states—and by the widest margins.

Rove and the Republicans are seeing the same numbers we are—and drawing the same conclusions. So Rove is using his sneaky, underhanded tactics to try and trick Democrats into rallying around a candidate who won't be as strong as John in the general election.

The latest Rasmussen poll shows John Edwards beating Rudy Giuliani 46% to 44% and Fred Thompson 47% to 41%, while Hillary loses 47% to 40%. A July Rasmussen poll showed that disgusted Republicans would be more likely to cross over for Edwards than for either Clinton or Obama. Some of this is no doubt due to the "white guy" factor, but it's there. In that same July poll, Edwards had a positive rating of 54% among likely voters, while Clinton has consistently polled in the 46-47% positive range.

Frank Newport of Gallup News Service seems to feel that Clinton's less-than-fifty-percent positive rating, combined with high negatives, don't necessarily spell defeat, pointing to Bill Clinton and George W. Bush as examples of other candidates with high negatives who went on to win. Newport of course ignores the theft of the 2000 election and the equally likely theft of the 2004 election, and doesn't take into account the extraordinary charisma of Bill Clinton, something his wife lacks.

I think Trippi is right. Rove is doing a reverse of his 2004 tactic, in which he stated the candidate against whom he'd like his guy to run, knowing that Democrats would take his words at face value and run towards the other guy. That won't work anymore, so now he's pointing to Hillary and saying "She can't win," betting that attacking her will make Democrats flock in her direction.

It seems abundantly clear to me that Democratic party apparatchiks like Rahm Emannuel and Chuck Schumer have already decided that Hillary's their nominee, DESPITE her high negatives and DESPITE the fact that in a recent Mason-Dixon survey, fully 52% said they would NOT vote for her. That's a majority of Americans who have already decided they will not vote for Hillary Clinton. How do you win when a majority won't vote for you? I'm sure there are those out there who, after over six years of telling us that we're crazy to believe that the voting system itself is compromised, are getting ready to spin an impossible Hillary victory as "rigged" (and probably also re-opening the Lindbergh baby kidnapping case to see if she was involved).

And yet, the Democratic Party seems bound and determined to nominate a candidate for whom a majority have said will not support instead of the candidate who can actually win.

At this point, we need to ask why that is.

Labels: 2008 election, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards

So sayeth Time:

Reports that the Bush Administration will put Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on the terrorism list can be read in one of two ways: it's either more bluster or, ominously, a wind-up for a strike on Iran. Officials I talk to in Washington vote for a hit on the IRGC, maybe within the next six months. And they think that as long as we have bombers and missiles in the air, we will hit Iran's nuclear facilities. An awe and shock campaign, lite, if you will. But frankly they're guessing; after Iraq the White House trusts no one, especially the bureaucracy.

As with Saddam and his imagined WMD, the Administration's case against the IRGC is circumstantial. The U.S. military suspects but cannot prove that the IRGC is the main supplier of sophisticated improvised explosive devices to insurgents killing our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

[snip]

Strengthening the Administration's case for a strike on Iran, there's a belief among neo-cons that the IRGC is the one obstacle to a democratic and friendly Iran. They believe that if we were to get rid of the IRGC, the clerics would fall, and our thirty-years war with Iran over. It's another neo-con delusion, but still it informs White House thinking.

And what do we do if just the opposite happens — a strike on Iran unifies Iranians behind the regime? An Administration official told me it's not even a consideration. "IRGC IED's are a casus belli for this Administration. There will be an attack on Iran."

Robert Greenwald has created a short film showing how Faux Noise is beating the exact same drum for attacking Iran that they did to drum up support for the Iraq invasion:



Will no one stop this madness?

Labels: insanity, Iran

Earlier in the week I alluded to a Very Exciting Event for which I was preparing.

Last Friday night we got home from Jamaica, scarfed some burgers, and then I made the mistake of checking my e-mail. Amidst the sale offers from FootSmart and Overstock.com was an e-mail from an old friend from our days in Howard Dean's campaign. He is now working with the Edwards campaign and wanted to know if I knew anyone who would be willing to host a house party/fundraiser on very short notice, because Elizabeth Edwards was doing a book signing nearby. I don't live in one of the preferred towns, but I said that in a pinch I'd be willing to host it here. Next thing I know I'm getting a message from the Edwards campaign thanking me profusely for offering to host the party.

Would YOU turn down the opportunity to have the possible next First Lady of the United States visit YOUR home?

I thought not. Neither could I.

I am an indifferent housekeeper at best. Mr. Brilliant and I both tend towards packrattery, and though we have made great strides at decluttering since the Great April Flood Adventure, we still have a long way to go. So since arriving home last Friday evening, I have been spending every spare minute trying to get this house in at least halfway reasonable shape for hosting up to 50-75 people and buying food and refreshments for that many people.

Thanks to the intrepid youngsters representing the Edwards campaign, who took charge of where to set up the VIP reception vs. the main get-together and kept people from blocking our neighbors' driveways, and to our friends George and Ruriko for their indispensable help in setting up the food while I was freaking out about where to put what, and especially thanks to Mr. Brilliant for agreeing to this insanity, we hosted what I hope is a very successful event for the Edwards campaign.

Now, our house is a work in progress; emphasis on "work" and very little "progress." It takes either some guts or a great deal of insanity to bring 50 people you don't know into a house where you are still putting cabinet doors on your kitchen, where your bathroom door is peeling from a long-ago flood from before you even owned the house, and where your basement family room SCREAMS "1976!" Frankly, I was less intimidated by the thought of having ELIZABETH EDWARDS IN MY HOUSE !!!!! than I was at having a bunch of Bergen County Democrats.

But the thing went off without a hitch, hopefully the campaign made some good money out of it, we have tons of cookies and cheese left over, and I am exhausted.

But Mrs. Edwards is just as amazing as you'd think. Indistinguishable from any of dozens of Bergen County suburban matrons, this woman is undergoing chemotherapy, doing a book tour, and campaigning. She'd been doing appearances and talking nonstop since early this morning, and headed to her book signing after leaving here. Whatever reservations you may have about her husband, just think about who he married. Then decide if he has the judgment required to be president.

I think he does.

Photos coming soon.

Labels: Elizabeth Edwards

Callous as it sounds, I was dismissive and indifferent when I first heard about Amy Winehouse's problems. Y'know, the usual stuff you see in the tabloids: the ever-present glass of booze in her hand, incoherent at interviews, not showing up at concerts. Unfairly, I assumed she was going to be another casualty of the "sex 'n' drugs 'n' Rock & Roll" lifestyle". Oh well, it's her choice.

Fuck it, I thought to myself. The silly little bitch will either figure it out or she won't. Compounding my idiocy, I placed Winehouse in the Bad Girls Behaving Badly Club, sharing headlines and rehab stories with whiny losers like Nicole, Lindsay, and Paris. I was having one of my rare Republican moments and I'm ashamed because, of course, people and things are never that simple.

What changed my mind was the "Before" and "After" photographs I saw of Amy Winehouse's drastic weight loss, and I realized that other things were going on in her head. I realized that the troubled British singer was a victim of the cruel propaganda that Body Nazis torment women with in this culture, and Winehouse was just doing what she was told to do. Guys in Rock & Roll can get away with having a beer guy. Women can't. When Ann Wilson from the group Heart gained weight, she remembers being harassed by audiences, the record company, and her own band. Eventually, Ann got a surgeon to put a big rubber band around her stomach. Winehouse just used alcohol, cigarettes, and heroin.

Before, some idiots probably called Winehouse "chubby". Oooh, scary! Afterwards, some idiots gazed covetously at her emaciated frame and probably asked, "What diet is she on?"

Labels: Amy Winehouse, Diets, Self-esteem, Women's bodies

"This is American imperialism. It hasn't worked and will never work." - Mike Gravel, after the Iowa Democratic debate, 8/19/07

"George, I've been standing here for the last 45 minutes praying to God you were going to call on me." - Dennis Kucinich, Democratic debate, 8/19/07

This series concludes with a look at the two guys who almost occupy stage left and right during Democratic presidential debates and are close enough to shake hands with the janitor: Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich.

There are politicians who think within the box. A small fraction of that think outside the box. Then there’s one guy who comes along maybe once every generation who are so far outside the box that you can see them recalibrating the box folder so a more efficient box can be made to think outside of.

Such is Mike Gravel, former Alaskan senator. Gravel at 77 is far too old to be seriously considered for even one term (Reagan was about Gravel’s age after serving two terms). Yet Gravel, as with Kucinich, raises valid points, shows us where the system is failing and serves as an ancient mariner, a Greek chorus to the eight mainstream candidates who represent to thinking progressives “four more years.”

Gravel carries around his neck not only the albatross of old age but that of the air of irrelevance. Losing his Senate seat to Frank Murkowski in 1980, Gravel dropped out of politics at any level until 1989 and didn’t achieve anything remotely resembling national prominence again until this year when his cranky but spot-on “Howard Beale” moments during the Democratic presidential debates began to attract a small but slowly growing following on the Internet. But the young’uns on Facebook who place him third on their list of favorite Democratic candidates may forget Gravel’s history. The irrelevance is only an illusion happily fostered by the war hawks in their established pecking order (especially Clinton and Edwards).

I’ve heard it mentioned only once that Gravel was instrumental in releasing the Pentagon Papers. The 4100 pages that he’d had entered in the Congressional Record are still, to this day, considered the most complete version extant. Gravel is also a big reason why we don’t have a draft. He’d heroically filibustered against the renewal of the draft and, after stonewalling the Nixon administration (which must have hated him by now) for five months, the draft had become a thing of the past.

The self-effacing and perennially broke Gravel is the Rodney Dangerfield of the ten and the biggest candidates are probably silently praying that the nursing home orderlies will come to take him away. But what’s not to like about a guy who doesn’t take PAC money soft or otherwise, or lobbyist payola, castigates Clinton for his “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, thinks that homosexuality ought to be encouraged in the military, wants to do away with the IRS, encourages legislation to be written by citizens and took public transportation to his own candidacy announcement?

And Gravel raises the most relevant points- actual lobbyist and campaign finance reform that’s necessary and not just the tepid, lip service legislation that we see every election cycle. Getting us out of Iraq and immediately (Mike’s best Howard Beale moment is on the final fifth of this mp3 file).

And he’s perfectly right when he says that no one knows what will happen if we pull out now. And when he says that, he makes the rest of the field (excepting Kucinich. And, yes, I will get to him in a minute. But I’m really grooving this Gravel guy right now) look like a bunch of waffling, self-calibrating prognosticators. But if one wants to risk using Vietnam, fundamentally a different war than Iraq, as a template, then one can point to the fact that the Viet Cong or Pol Pot didn’t follow us back to Disney World to blow up Space Mountain.

Mike’s my type of politician: Blunt to the point of rudeness, ruthlessly honest and independent and one who never promises, only proposes.

You want to know what my ideal summer job would be? The official but unpaid blogger for the Mike Gravel for President campaign. Mike’s blunt, plainspoken style perfectly compliments my own style of polemics and hare-brained, out-of-the-box, immodest proposals. I predict Mike’s ideas both past and present, at once revolutionary, visionary and out of the mainstream yet as commonsensical and necessary as looking both ways before crossing a street, will be mainstream in just under a century and historical scholars may even be rhetorically asking, “Why in God’s name didn’t they elect George McGovern and Mike Gravel?”

Or maybe I’m just partial to him because he’s from Massachusetts. But don’t bet on it.

And while it would be nice if one Democratic candidate would have the balls to come out and say that US involvement is only inflaming Iraq, the likeliest person to make such an pronouncement would be Gravel or the next guy.

The most remarkable thing about Dennis Kucinich’s campaign is the fact that he’s not using the biggest gun in his campaign arsenal: HR 333.

Never once has anyone heard Kucinich mention his articles of impeachment against Cheney on the campaign trail (although a month before HR 333, back in March, Kucinich did do a horrible campaign ad asking for a dialogue to be established regarding impeachment and he did renew his call for impeachment in the abstract at YKos). He prefers to take the high road and keep his biggest gun holstered. Such a class act and restraint is admirable but perhaps Congressman Kucinich hasn’t fully delved the possibility that drawing that big .333 caliber gun would further distinguish him from a mostly homogenous field.

Because doing so would be to publicly admit that we were lied and even shamed into Iraq, an abundantly clear fact the other candidates (except, predictably, Gravel) are too timorous and squeamish to point out.

That’s not to say that Kucinich plays with over-padded boxing gloves. Kucinich has not been shy about saying that “oil revenue sharing” is theft of Iraq’s oil, plain and simple. He’s also the only one in the field who wants to bring back the Fairness Doctrine and says so on Faux News. His single-payer health care plan is also the one that seems the most workable.

Listening to both Gravel and Kucinich, one is left with the uneasy feeling that all the other candidates are more interested in being the one to salvage Iraq (especially the ones who'd voted for it without reading the NIE) than in ending it for decency's sake. Only Kucinich and Gravel seem committed to ending the war, while the other candidates are nodding in agreement like bobbleheads when they say that we can’t exit quite now, that it would take a year or more (only Bill Richardson offered a timeline of as little as eight months). In other words, withdrawal with honor and grace.

Let’s look at Iraq in neighborhood terms: A drunken lout invades a family’s home on false pretenses because he hears that the husband threatened his family. He kills off a few family members, raids their fridge, holds a yard sale selling off their possessions and watches impotently as the other family members kill each other off as a result of the home invasion.

Would a graceful exit still be possible?

The candidates representing the establishment would have you think so just as George W. Bush is doing, while many of them, especially Hillary, are warning us that we’ll have to deal with Iran at some point. Like I said, “Hillary/Bush: Four More Years.”

I’m not too thrilled with the idea of a Gore draft and I’ll tell you again why: The last thing we need is a Democratic version of Fred Thompson, someone who claims to have no ambitions to run yet technically leaves the door open. I also cannot trust someone who trusts the GOP and warns the Senate Democratic leadership not to make waves about the Supreme Court’s astoundingly conflicted interest installment of George W. Bush. Likewise, I cannot understand why Gore would tell the Senate Democrats to not sponsor a petition to investigate the obvious voter fraud of 2000 that knocked innocent African Americans off the voter rolls.

Although my two choices, the men profiled in this segment, haven’t a prayer in Hell of getting anywhere close to the nomination, you want to know which guy who makes me swoon in the moonlight, the one who makes me want to wear sackcloth and ashes because he’s more interested in being a Senator than President?

Russ Feingold of Wisconsin.

His public record speaks for itself: The only Senator to publicly call for censuring Bush. The only guy who voted against the USA Patriot Act. Whatever the issue, Feingold always seems to find himself on the right side of it. In the absence of Paul Wellstone, Feingold is the best Senator we have, hands down, and he’d be one of our finest presidents in modern times.

From the one, the only, the often imitated but never, ever duplicated Driftglass:

Rove is not a genius; he is a sociopath with a good head for figures.

He is what you get when you surgically remove a CPA’s conscience, cross-pollinate him with back alley dogfight breeder, and tell the resulting mound of giggly meat to go forth and win elections at any cost.

In any normal community he’d be on every watch list; parents would warn their children to blow their Rove Whistle with all their might and run like hell whenever they caught sight of him.

But in Punditland he is an admired village elder, and if his reek of sulfur, rotting flesh and old blood is whiffable a full five minutes before he enters a room, a quick swab of the nostrils with triply-rectified Aqua Velva is enough to keep the press corps from vomiting.

Labels: bloggers, Karl Rove

Have you torn off your own head today?

If not, go look at what Digby found.

This is your conservative movement, folks.

Labels: conservatives, fascism, insanity

With Don Imus about to finish a five-month vacation paid for by CBS and be back on the air, allegedly at WABC, to peddle his swill once again, Pam has posted about her interview with documentarian Heather Barnes, in which she talks about her own "hair journey." If you think that "nappy-headed ho's" is just a joke, listen to Pam's account of hair products and hot combs and straightening irons, and the issues that black women deal with once they decide to stop trying to turn their hair into something it isn't.

But if you think that just because you're not black, hair isn't an issue, guess again. Do you know any woman who hasn't at one time or another permed or straightened her hair to make it conform to whatever is the style at the time?

I wear my hair short. I do this because I have inherited my father's scalp pattern. I used to joke that if I'd been a boy, I'd have been a 4'10" pudgy guy named Seth with a receding hairline in my twenties. Nothing to give one perspective like THAT realization. With my hair short, the top stays thicker, I can just wash, comb, and go, and I don't have to worry about frizz or that little bit of hair at the back of my neck that spiral curls when nothing else does, or waves that hang in clumps instead of being just long and luxurious.

It wasn't always thus. Because I grew up in the age of Pattie Boyd and Joni Mitchell, I always wanted long, straight hair. In the 1960's, some girls achieved this by ironing their hair:



That always seemed drastic to me, so what we did was wet our hair down, roll the top into two giant rollers at the top of our heads, then wrap the rest around our heads and secure it with giant clips -- then try to sleep. In the morning, we'd have mostly straight hair, but on a humid day, by the time I got to school, it'd be those wavy clumps again.

In the mid-1980's, I discovered the perm. I loved having permed hair, because all I had to do was pick it out and go. I had one of those ridiculous poodly cuts that's short on the side and curly on top. But when I started coloring it after I started going gray, the combination of color and perming was too harsh on my challenged hair, so I stopped perming, much to the relief of Mr. Brilliant, who hated the permed look.

My sister doesn't believe me about my hair, because worn short, it looks pretty thick. But if you tousle it around, you can see that at some point in the future, I'm going to be one of those old ladies with two hairs left on top, swirling it around to make it look fuller. Maybe I'll just shave my head then and take up wearing hats. Of course, she inherited our mother's luxuriant head of hair, although she too used to wrap it around her head in a vain attempt at achieving that Joni Mitchell look. Today she wears it medium length, it's thick and wavy and she can just pull it back into a ponytail and look great.

I like my hair short, and I don't care whether it makes me look boyish. Of course I'd rather have long, luxuriant hair, but I'm not about to spend hundreds of dollars on salon hair extensions to do it. Working with the hair that I've got is one of the few things about my physiognomy with which I've made my peace.

At any rate, if you've ever tried to fight your own hair, it's worth listening to what Pam has to say:

And this is the guy who was chosen to moderate the Democratic candidates' debate at Yearly Kos (emphases mine):

[Matt] Bai is more negative about the liberal blogosphere, and its role in the Democrats' current supposed quandary. He purports to admire the blogosphere. He seems to genuinely like Jerome Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of Daily Kos, who get a lot of ink in "The Argument." He charts the first YearlyKos convention, and maybe most important, the meeting's role in former Gov. Mark Warner's short and not so sweet flirtation with the idea of a presidential run. Warner, recall, was the Democratic Leadership Council guy paradoxically endorsed by Armstrong, to the consternation of some lefty bloggers. Armstrong's pal Kos didn't endorse Warner, though he did famously embrace him at Warner's lavish YearlyKos party in Las Vegas in 2006, proclaiming, perhaps regrettably, "As a first date, this is pretty damn cool!" (It's worth noting that Bai seemed to heart Warner as well. He wrote a flattering profile of Warner in the New York Times Magazine earlier that year anointing him as the man who could beat Hillary Clinton.)

Bai's problems with the blogosphere start to show more clearly as he writes about YearlyKos, though we are supposed to be seeing the trouble through Warner's eyes. At his Vegas party, Warner is jazzed. "This is the new public square! This is the new face of the Democratic Party!" he tells the bloggers. But he begins to sour on his new friends as they pepper him with tough questions about how he'll undo the damage of the Bush years. He -- or is it Bai? Or both? -- starts to view the lefty blogosphere as Bush-hating, Hugo Chavez-loving naifs, comparable to Jane Fonda in the 1960s, all hopped up about American wrongdoing in the world while oblivious to the al-Qaida threat. In a small session with about 20 elite bloggers, Warner is clearly flustered by their belligerence toward the administration's foreign policy, their worries about Bush's intentions toward Iran and their concern for rolling back domestic spy programs. "I fundamentally believe the terrorist threat is real," an exasperated Warner tells them, and Bai leaves the impression that most YearlyKos bloggers, by contrast, don't.

Just two months later, in October, the bold candidacy of Mark Warner, "the freshest, most electable alternative to Hillary Clinton," in Bai's words, evaporates. The former governor told the world he wanted to spend more time with his family, but Bai wasn't convinced. "I suspected that his various run-ins with the donors and bloggers of the new progressive movement had also convinced Warner that, in order to succeed, he was going to have to be more angry and divisive than the governor who had won over so many Republicans -- and more partisan than the president he hoped to become," Bai tells us. And the bloggers Warner had initially lionized as "the new face of the Democratic Party" turned out to be something more disturbing.

"They were, in fact, the voices of the new public square, but it was more like the Parisian public square in the days of the Bastille -- not a place where townspeople came to carefully consider what their leaders had to say, but where the mob gathered to make demands and mete out its own kind of justice." Yikes. If Warner really was scared away from running for president by the YearlyKos "mob," then the mob did the country a big favor, because Warner needs to grow a pair before he runs for church choir director, let alone president.

[snip]

Bai clearly thinks Lieberman got a raw deal. His overall Senate voting record, Bai points out, is comparable to Hillary Clinton's. His sin was supporting the Iraq war and being kissed (but Lieberman tells Bai there was "no actual lip contact") by President Bush. The lefty blogosphere's effort to defeat Lieberman, according to Bai, was marked by two features the writer can't abide: the bloggers' desire to exert power for its own sake, and even worse, a desire to exert power motivated mainly by hatred. He quotes his friend Markos as saying if the bloggers could take down Lieberman "then no one will want to be the Joe Lieberman of 2008." "The real goal here for the netroots," Bai concludes, "wasn't so much about change as it was about power."

This is the crux of what's wrong with "The Argument." Bai depicts the revolt against Lieberman as though it's the cool kids turning on a nerdy old friend they don't like anymore. Throughout the book, he minimizes what the Iraq war means to bloggers, to Democrats, to the vast majority of American voters, to the world, in order to depict Democratic insurgents as power-mad kingmakers or simply haters. But this wasn't some wonky clash over, say, the dimensions of welfare reform or the estate tax; or some venal battle to protect the power of teachers unions or the tax advantages of hedge fund executives. It wasn't Egomaniac Asshole Pol No. I vs. Egomaniac Asshole Pol No. 2. The dishonest marketing of the Iraq war and the treacherous lies behind it, the cavalier way it was executed, the disastrous way it unfolded, along with some Democrats' collusion in all or part of the debacle, have shaped and will shape American political culture for years to come. And it happened because the so-called vast right-wing conspiracy, the intellectual and media infrastructure Rob Stein charted, had succeeded in a decades-long campaign to smear Democrats as un-American in every imaginable way -- and very specifically, after 9/11, as terrorist sympathizers and appeasers. Most disturbing to angry party insurgents, Democrats like Joe Lieberman helped them along, not only by supporting the Iraq war through today, but by going on right-wing Fox News and the Wall Street Journal wingnut editorial page attacking Democrats in exactly the same terms Republicans used.

Making sure that "no one will want to be the Joe Lieberman of 2008" wasn't, then, about naked power. It was about undoing the awful Republican war and disastrous foreign policy with which Joe Lieberman colluded -- and ensuring that Democrats, in the future, would stand for something different, or not stand as Democrats. Bai misses all of that.

Because Matt Bai is ultimately, just another mainstream media hack -- and anyone who's read his work in the New York Times Magazine can see it, because he doesn't make secret his contempt for the very blogosphere that allowed him the opportunity to moderate a presidential debate.


I would very much like to hear from Gina Cooper whether she's planning to invite to next years Netroots Nation convention a guy whose only concession was to at least wait till after the party was over to lay a turd in the punchbowl.

Labels: hack journalism

This is how the Bush Administration "supports the troops" -- by giving them inadequate training and then sending them into a civil war:

The US Army, struggling to cope with stepped-up operations and extended deployments of its soldiers to Iraq, has shortened the duration of several of its bedrock training courses so that troops can return to fighting units on the front lines more quickly, according to senior training officials.

One training course that is considered the "first step" in educating newly minted sergeants -- the noncommissioned officers considered the backbone of Army units -- has been cut in half to 15 days. Meanwhile, an intensive program designed to prepare young officers for advanced leadership has been compressed from eight months to less than five months so that the Army can fill positions in constant demand from commanders in the Middle East.

In a series of interviews in recent weeks, Army training officials expressed confidence that soldiers are able to master the skills they need to perform their jobs, and stressed that their units are gaining invaluable, real-time experience in both wars. But they also acknowledged that it is becoming increasingly difficult to prepare them for all the missions they are assigned, such as tank crews and artillery battalions that are participating in patrols and counterinsurgency operations.

And isn't counterinsurgency the primary function of troops in Iraq now?

How on earth can anyone take this administration seriously when it talks about giving the troops what they need? They won't give them body armor, they won't give them adequate vehicles, they've given them tainted water, and they're cutting their medical care in the event they actually make it home.

Are they TRYING to summarily destroy an entire generation of young people other than the scions of the wealthiest families?

Labels: greed, Iraq

It's easy to think that everyone blogs on politics when you're steeped in raging at the machine all the time. But sometimes it's good to stop and smell the roses -- or the Lockhorns, or the Pattersons, or the Keanes, or the Crankshafts. Joshua Fruhlinger deconstructs them all for you at The Comics Curmudgeon.

Honorable mention: Stuck Funky.

Labels: comics

Then go to Hotline on Call and scroll down to Sunday Snapshot and read what Karl Rove has to say. Its hilarious.

Asked if he owes Plame an apology: "No."

Smug asshole.

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Labels: Karl Rove

Something to make you think. Go on. It won't hurt...much.

When something that supposedly doesn't exist affects how people in the real world behave, does this signify its actual existence, or merely the paranoia of those who hate?

I ask this tangled question after reading a recent New York Times story in which the concept of an "Israeli lobby" was dismissed by Anti-Defamation League director Abraham Foxman, whose latest book, "The Deadliest Lies: The Israel Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control" apparently lays the issue to rest. And yet, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, whose co-authored book, "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" is about to be released, have had appearances in New York, Washington, and Chicago turned down or canceled, due to the touchiness of their topic.

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Labels: Israel lobby

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.

A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.

Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.

It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.

A church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to heaven brag about it to persons who will never get there.

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.

Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats.

If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.

The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.

Labels: H.L.Mencken

"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."
--H.L. Mencken.

Labels: David Letterman, President Bush, White House Correspondent's Dinner

AfricanAmerican.org:

Lovin' it: McBranding hooks preschoolers, study finds

Preschoolers preferred the taste of burgers and fries when they came in McDonald's wrappers over the same food in plain wrapping, U.S. researchers said, suggesting fast-food marketing reaches the very young.

"Overwhelmingly, kids chose the one that they perceived was from McDonald's," said obesity prevention expert Dr. Thomas Robinson of the Stanford University School of Medicine, whose work appears in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

While prior studies have looked at the impact of individual ads on kids, Robinson and colleagues set out to study the overall influence of a company's brand -- based on everything from advertising to toy premiums and word of mouth.

It comes as many food and restaurant companies face pressure to cut back on marketing to children as rates of obesity among that age group continue to climb.

Robinson and colleagues conducted a taste test with a total of 63 kids aged 3 to 5 who were enrolled in a Head Start preschool for low-income families.

They were offered five pairs of foods and asked if they tasted the same or to point to the one that tasted better.

The food -- taken from the same order -- was wrapped in either McDonald's packaging or unbranded packages in the same color and style.

In about 60 percent of the tastings, the kids preferred food in the McDonald's wrapper.

"They actually thought the food tasted better," Robinson said in a telephone interview.

No surprises here, huh? There's a reason why corporations toss millions of dollars at the NFL so they can broadcast a 30-second ad during the Super Bowl.

If you're skeptical, just take a look at Dubya's improbable career. As writer Terry Pratchett observed in another context, Not-So-Curious George is an empty man "who applied for the position of Village Idiot but failed because he was overqualified". However, thanks to money, a diabolical Karl Rove and a big wardrobe department, this cretin stole the Presidency by hustling gullible voters who should have known better. Yes, Bush was a lousy student/businessman/Governor, but he's a great male model.

Look, give him a megaphone and a fireman to use as props and he's a compassionate humanitarian who cares about his community. Look, give him a cowboy hat and boots and he's a hard-working, blue-collar guy you want to have a beer with. Look, give him Tom Cruise's used costume from Top Gun and he's a brave fighter pilot fighting to keep America free. People loved this bullshit so much they ordered seconds.

And who's to say this gold-plated propanganda won't work again? Look at how well Ghouliani is doing with an oxygen mask, a steely gaze, and the ruins of Ground Zero. He's getting more dicks to stand at attention than a Jenna Jameson marathon.

Labels: George Bush, McDonald's, Propaganda