Thus spake Margaret Tyzack as Antonia, Claudius' mother, in the 1976 BBC miniseries meticulously adapted from Robert Graves' novel, I, Claudius.

I think of that series all too often of late, given the resemblance of the current occupant of the White House to variously just about every character in Graves' loose Roman history at one point or another.

It's surprising how well the series has held up over thirty years; far better than The Forsyte Saga, which kicked off Masterpiece Theatre just eight years earlier and now seems awkwardly stagy. It's also surprising just how little Patrick Stewart has aged in thirty years.

But how do you remake a classic? A few years ago, a new Forsyte Saga ran on public television, and it was nearly impossible to take it on its own merits, with the memories of Nyree Dawn Porter and Kenneth More still vivid after thirty years. Now producer Scott Rudin has obtained the film rights to I, Claudius, and Leonardo DiCaprio is rumored to be interested.

One's first reaction is a kind of eye-rolling "Oh, Lord, no!". But if you look back at What's Eating Gilbert Grape, you can see that DiCaprio is not as awful a choice as you'd think. With his pretty boy years behind him, DiCaprio has finally managed to once again find the actor inside that got lost in the hype following That Boat Movie. You wouldn't think he could be Howard Hughes either, but even Mr. Brilliant, who was one of the scores of American males who detested DiCaprio for years had to admit that he pulled it off. Claudius is extremely difficult to play, and Derek Jacobi is one hell of a tough act to follow. And it's hard to imagine someone like Johnny Depp being subtle enough to do it. So if the rumors are true, it's a promising start.

Many years ago, I used to sit in a coffee shop with a friend and cast Stephen King's The Stand as we envisioned the characters. So let's, on this weekend where I'm having trouble getting motivated to do much of anything, cast I, Claudius.

To begin:

For Livia, the role originated by Sian Phillips and the inspiration for Tony Soprano's mother of the same name:



a) Helen Mirren:


b) Judi Dench


c) La Streep


Or who else?

And who would you cast as:

Augustus?


Caligula?


Sejanus and Tiberius?


How do you recast perfection? Do your best in the comments. And for everything you ever (or never) wanted to know about the historical accuracy of I, Claudius, see the Coolest Student Project Ever.

Labels: I Claudius, Leonardo DiCaprio

When Luciano Pavarotti, the greatest operatic tenor since Caruso, passed away on the 6th, he did so exactly a decade after attending Princess Di’s own funeral. Unlike most performers, he actually enriched the planet’s culture with his amazing voice and his grand sendoff in Modena, Italy is not the mourning of the mortal theft of a great cultural phenomenon but a celebration of extraordinary achievement.

Pavarotti’s funeral also underscores something to which we ought to pay heed here in the states: A reverence for culture at its very highest level, a reverence that transcends the merely respectful. It is a great European nation’s salute to its own culture.

Whatever your thoughts about the sheer scope and scale of Pavarotti’s funeral and whether or not all of it was necessary and appropriate is not with standing. The point that ought to be brought home is that the Italian government and luminaries from the worlds of entertainment and politics bothered to make a spectacle of Pavarotti’s funeral.

There were acrobatic jets emitting colored trails of smoke from the Italian air force. A brief list of some of the luminaries in attendance: U2’s Bono; Romano Prodi, the premier of Italy; former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Franco Zeffirelli.

Consider Caruso’s achievement in a much shorter life. By the time of his death in 1921, radio and recording technology were still emerging and developing and were hardly available. Yet Caruso’s talent that had to be heard almost exclusively in a live setting secured his place as one of the greatest singers of all time. Devotion and a fine appreciation of the arts alone can account for that. And Caruso’s own funeral in Naples was one normally reserved for royalty or heads of state.

If one goes to Reuters, one will see a strange juxtaposition, news of Pavarotti’s death with other entertainment items. As if Pavarotti’s funeral is on an equal footing, this Reuters blurb also mentions the return of Britney, Madonna’s adopted kids and Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe. And the upshot of this skewed relativism is the fact that Britney or Madonna are never in the news anymore except for their own maternity skills or lack thereof.


Then, as an embarrassing counterpoint, consider Bush’s seemingly endless parade of gaffes at the Sydney Opera House, the venue of some of the most memorable operatic performance of the last two generations and at which the great tenor had sung three times.

George Bush, badly-timed as a debater and public speaker but invariably in perfect tempo with the cruelty of coincidence, displayed not only his personal failings in a bumbling, slurred public address but also our nation's ability to produce someone who claims to have read 87 books this year yet cannot distinguish between Australia and Austria, APEC from OPEC or pronounce Canberra and Kuala Lumpur even with a prepared text before him.

In a way, it would've been sheer, tragic poetry if Australia's Prime Minister John Howard didn't stop Bush from dropping out of site had he continued his exit. The steep drop that Bush would've suffered would've been perfectly emblematic of a nation that prizes corporate profit above all else and allows culture to drop off the edge and into an abyss.

Corporate culture, obviously, is a contradiction in terms. The bottom line is the bottom line and, as I’ve been saying for two or three decades, “the business of business is business.” It’s a vicious, profit-driven culture, for want of a better word, that emphasizes and maximizes profitability and exposure. But we cannot completely blame corporations, conglomerates or George W. Bush’s Republican party for this descent into an artless Hell. Because corporations only feed a demand that is merely shaped rather than created by a political party that would love to completely obliterate Head Start and National Endowment of the Arts grants faithfully funded by Congress. In other words, those of us who do not care to advance the cause of culture have no right to complain about corporations feeding a demand that is provided and driven by us. We are part of the reason for this self-fulfilling prophecy.

No, we cannot blame George W. Bush for the paucity of cultural education, a trend that had begun decades ago and valiantly battled by the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Yet George W. Bush and his No Child Left Behind program can certainly be blamed for not only not reversing this trend but exacerbating it. In its incidental, ancillary function (the primary being providing contact information to the DoD’s recruiters in exchange for federal funding), NCLB does indeed stress the three R’s but not the arts upon which two of these rudimentary skills are built.

As a result of decades of such unimaginative bureaucracy, we’ve produced a generation or two of adolescents whose sole cultural contribution to America is in wearing its clothes backwards and having committed to enduring memory the lyrics of thousands of heavy metal and hip hop songs while not being able to perfectly recite a single line by Shakespeare or Keats. Mention Andrew Wyeth’s “Christina’s World” and most people under 40 will automatically think of the other, more popular but no less tragic Christina.


Pavarotti’s funeral. Anna Nicole Smith’s funeral. Let’s be honest, folks: Which one got the most feverish press?

....right outta Manhattan, and right outta the United States:

Beginning next September, virtually every car, truck and human moving through Manhattan's Financial District will be eyed by a network of closed-circuit cameras programmed to search for suspicious activity.

If you circle a "sensitive" location several times in your car, a camera inside a police command center will signal cops or security officers to check you out.

If you leave a package for more than a prescribed time, say, 90 seconds, another camera will sound an alarm.

Six years after terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center towers, New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly is phasing in one of the most ambitious security initiatives in the world, modeled on London's "Ring of Steel."

The Lower Manhattan Security Initiative, as the plan is called, will eventually include 3,000 private and public cameras trained on the area south of Canal Street and relaying images in real time to a new command center; more than 100 license plate readers at bridges and tunnels and throughout the Financial District; street barriers that can be moved into place automatically; and an undisclosed number of radiation detectors. The plan's projected price tag, excluding radiation detectors, is $90 million.

Kelly's goal is not just to protect the 1.7-square-mile stretch that is home to the New York Stock Exchange, the Federal Reserve and the headquarters of dozens of the world's key financial institutions, but to guard the viability of New York City as a global financial center.

"New York is a tough city and it's been very, very resilient," said Brian Jenkins, a terrorism expert with the Rand Corp. "But the 9/11 attacks caused between $50 billion and $80 billion in insured damage and disruption, and hundreds of billions in lost business. ... The consequences of another large-scale attack clearly are enormous in terms of the impact on the U.S. economy and on the viability of the city as a global financial center."

While the business community supports the plan - indeed, private companies are contributing two-thirds of the cameras - civil liberties advocates question its impact on privacy and its worth as a terrorism prevention tool. Even some security experts believe its value as a deterrent is oversold.

A former London official credits that city's system for stopping attacks by the Provisional Irish Republican Army.

"But if you're talking about suicide terrorists, I don't think it provides a deterrent at all," said Stephen Swain, former head of the International Counter-Terrorist Unit in the Metropolitan Police Service, citing the July 2005 transit attack.

Interesting how the Fourth Amendments falls so quietly in the face of some perceived need to protect New York's financial center. If you live or work in lower Manhattan, you'll be able to kiss your freedom goodbye. Have trouble finding a parking space? Expect to be pulled over by police and asked for your papers. Carrying a heavy shopping bag and want to put it down? Better not do so for more than 90 seconds or you'll be questioned by police. Nervous about that job interview? Better not show it, or you'll be questioned by police.

The terrorists don't give a shit about our freedom, and they sure as hell don't hate it -- unless by terrorists you mean the United States Government.

Labels: fascism

...because there is so much good stuff around Blogtopia (™ Skippy) that if you blink you might miss something.

In the wake of the death of Dr. James Kennedy, Shockwave at My Left Wing has an eye-opener that you must read about how the Dominionist Christianity of the Coral Ridge Ministries has become the de facto officially sanctioned religion of the United States military via the Armed Forces Network.

Sean-Paul Kelley has had quite enough of Hillary Clinton's triangulating, thank you very much.

Mike Rogers has had enough of closeted, anti-gay politicians, thank you very much -- whether Sean Hannity likes it or not.

If you weren't sick about it already, Maha has a roundup of George Bush's embarrassing gaffes, stupidity, and just plain bad taste at the OPEC -- I mean APEC -- conference in Australia. Those bumper stickers reading "Somewhere in Texas, a village is missing its idiot" were never more true.

Dave Johnson of Seeing the Forest blogged this week from the Carter Center Conference on Faith and Freedom.

Cernig deconstructs in advance the inevitable crap from the Not-Petraeus Not-Report.

John Dean (yes, THAT John Dean) discussions conservative authoritarianism at The Smirking Chimp.

Brad Friedman on the wrangling over HR 811.

Rachel Maddow's Campaign Asylum mulls over the so-called sex appeal of Frederick of Hollywood. ("I'm with Fred"? THAT's his campaign slogan? Does that remind anyone else of those old "I'm with Stupid" T-shirts?)

Jeff Fecke visits National Review Online...so you don't have to.

Skippy rounds up the news from George W. Bush's Robust Economy™.

Arthur Silber on the arrests in Germany this week of three Islamic militants accused of planning Large-Scale Terrorist Attacks™.

Archcrone on whitewashing the "R" word.

And last, but my absolutely no means least, comes the most devastating post you will read all year: LowerManhattanite at the Group News Blog shares a personal anecdote about racism in the context of the Jena Six. After all these years, life in these United States for those dark of skin is still all too often like this:

Labels: bloggers

I'm not sure most people ever really connected the cute fuzzball at the Berlin Zoo with the real plight of polar bears in the wild. But now that Knut is a big bear:



...one has to wonder if the plight of polar bears in the wild is even a blip on the public's radar.

I'm not sure what makes polar bears so compelling, but you would think that their plight would make the difference in hammering home the very real effect that global warming is having on our planet. There's something delightfully doggy about polar bears. They're like Great Pyrenees on steroids, with their black button noses, their big feet, small ears, and white fur. If there ever was a creature that looks as if it were crafted by Steiff, it's this one. Polar bears, as long as the footage you're looking at doesn't involve them killing and eating a baby seal, which constitutes a fatal Collision of Cute that negates their cuteness, always bring a smile to our faces. This is why the combination of a tiny snow-white cub being bottle fed by a dour-looking middle-aged guy with the worst mullet in history caused millions of women around the world to ovulate simultaneously.

I can't even watch footage of polar bears in the wild anymore, because it breaks my heart. How can you look at a photograph of a polar bear on an ice floe, looking at the huge body of water where other ice floes used to be, as if trying to figure out how the hell he's going to get to where there's food?

The polar bears are so endangered by our addiction to fossil fuels that in fifty years, two-thirds of them will be gone:

Two-thirds of the world’s polar bears will disappear by 2050, even under moderate projections for shrinking summer sea ice caused by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, government scientists reported on Friday.

The finding is part of a yearlong review of the effects of climate and ice changes on polar bears to help determine whether they should be protected under the Endangered Species Act. Scientists estimate the current polar bear population at 22,000.

The report, which the United States Geological Survey released here, offers stark prospects for polar bears as the world grows warmer.

The scientists concluded that, while the bears were not likely to be driven to extinction, they would be largely relegated to the Arctic archipelago of Canada and spots off the northern Greenland coast, where summer sea ice tends to persist even in warm summers like this one, a shrinking that could be enough to reduce the bear population by two-thirds.

The bears would disappear entirely from Alaska, the study said.

“As the sea ice goes, so goes the polar bear,” said Steven Amstrup, lead biologist for the survey team.

And while this ecosystem melts, world leaders fiddle:

Leaders of some of the world's fastest-growing economies are on track toward a "sensible" international agreement to curb climate change, Australian Prime Minister John Howard announced Saturday.

But the hard-won consensus at the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum includes no targets for emissions reductions and oceans of wiggle room even within the non-binding APEC communique.

[snip]

"We agree to work to achieve a common understanding on a long-term aspirational global emissions reduction goal," says the text, "to pave the way for an effective post-2012 international arrangement."

APEC members also agreed to reduce "energy intensity" - the amount of energy needed to produce a unit of economic growth - 25 per cent by 2030.

That non-binding, one-per-cent annual reduction doesn't translate into real cuts in emissions, but could slow the rate of increase.

In other words, we're going to give lip service to trying, but actually do nothing.

It all makes you wonder if there is some sort of disease politicians get when they enter so-called public service. Because when you look at Washington, and the Democrats' inevitable caving to George Bush on Iraq by giving him withdrawal requirements to which he must only adhere if he feels like it, "aspirational goals" could be the new Democratic Party slogan.

Labels: global warming, polar bears

It was a lost night in a nameless bar years ago, where my best friend and I finished a third pitcher of Budweiser we didn't need and happily ordered another. Alcoholism being a lobotomy you drink, the both of us became loud, but well-behaved philosophers. Confidently, we solved the world's problems with ridiculous ease, not realizing that the cunning enigma of "two plus two equals four" would have been way beyond our liquefied brains at the time.

But amazingly, in spite of our drunken foolishness, we managed to stumble upon a moment of genuine insight.

"Hey!" my friend shouted at me, "Hey! Y'know what really gets people in serious trouble, huh?"

"Uh--I dunno," I said, wishing my barstool had a seat belt. "What?"

"It's when the stupid bastards don't know the goddamned difference between a good idea and a bad idea, O.K.? F'instance," he said, swallowing a burp (a disgusting sound you don't even want to imagine), "us getting that last pitcher is gonna be a bad idea."

Of course, he was right. My painful, dear-God-I'm-gonna-die headache the next morning was validation of my friend's theory. But then, my friend was right most of the time. I felt lucky to know him. To the outside world, we seemed an odd couple. I was an African-American guy from the South Bronx, he was an Irish ex-Navy officer from New Jersey. Throughout the years we'd helped each other struggling with disasters in our lives like divorce, unemployment, last-minute evictions, and funerals. He took me to my first Grateful Dead concert, I gave him a copy of John Varley's "The Persistent of Vision".

Which meant, being best friends, we trusted each other enough to get drunk together, and that isn't as easy as it sounds. Both of us knew that getting drunk with the wrong people is a bad idea. At the end of an ugly night, you can wind up with more than a hangover. A busted lip, maybe? How about a DWI, vomit on your girlfriend's leather jacket, a tow truck pulling your car out of a ditch, or a night in jail? Not fun.

Because my friend and I weren't rich and famous, when we foolishly staggered into chaos, we were able to stay happily anonymous. But, if you're unlucky and you are rich and famous, that's not a realistic option anymore because there are hordes of hungry paparazzi who look at you, greedily lick their lips, and think "lunch". And the next morning, while the little guys with sledgehammers are loudly pounding inside your head, your agent is yelling at you on the phone because your drunken idiocy has become front page news or a spot on "YouTube".

And there's always a new episode of Boozy, Drugged-Up Celebrities Behaving Badly to watch, isn't there? Hey, there's without any panties looking like hell at 3 o'clock in the morning! Oh, did you hear about Lindsay Lohan showing up late at rehearsal on her latest movie again because she was partying the night before? Wow, Nicole Ritchie got busted for driving on the wrong side of the road while stoned on Vicodin and pot!

O.K., usually I don't cry any tears for phony, empty-headed "superstars" who'll make more money in a day than I'll make for the rest of my life. Mel Gibson, for example, is a grown man who should have known better. Screw him. However, I can't stop wondering if these rich, sad young women have any real friends. Although there were nights in bars when my friend and I enthusiastically played "Dumb and Dumber", I knew that we looked out for each other.

But nobody really seems to give a damn about Britney, Lindsay, and Nicole except as a free ticket to booze, drugs, sex, and parties: "Naw, don't worry 'bout her, she's fine. Hey, gimme another drink--it's on her!"

And "hitting the bottom" as a rehabilitation tool is a bad idea, especially when the bottom is a hole in the ground where the pallbearers are lowering your coffin.

I found out the hard way.

Yeah, I'm still drinking, but I don't drink like it's my job anymore. But my best friend is dead. His bad habits quit him before he quit them. I won't say his drinking killed him, but it didn't help. I miss him.

But at least he got to keep his privacy.

In breaking news, what's next for Britney, Lindsay, and Nicole?

A new song, movie, or television pilot?

Maybe a mug shot?

Or an obituary?

Labels: Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Nicole Ritchie, Rehab

Another Republican campaign bigwig turns out to be a nasty, naughty boy. This time it's child abuse.

Howie Klein:

Norman Hsu donated to Democratic candidates and, believe me, he will be front and center in the media forever. I bet you never heard of Robert Lichfield though, right? He wasn't just a random donor to Republicans. He was a member of the Mitt Romney campaign, charged with bringing in money to the biggest spending campaign. But, besides sucking up cash for Full of Mitt, Lichfield was also involved with child abuse. He quietly slinked away from the campaign but... not much has been heard about this in all the yelling and screaming over Hsu even though he's been bringing in far more money for Flip Flop than Hsu has brought in for Democrats.

Lichfield is named in a federal lawsuit charging that students of the "behavior modification" schools with ties to WWASPS [Worldwide Association of Specialty Schools, founded by Lichfield] were subjected to "physical abuse, emotional abuse and sexual abuse."

...The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Utah, alleges brazen acts of child abuse, including that students of the various programs had been forced to eat their own vomit, clean toilets with a toothbrush and brush their teeth afterward, were chained or locked in dog cages, kicked, beaten, thrown and slammed to the ground and forced into sexual acts.

But of course, it's OK if you're a Republian, right?

Labels: Republic Party

Fred Thompson, helping George Bush move the goalposts of apprehending Osama Bin Laden:

"Bin Laden being in the mountains of Pakistan or Afghanistan is not as important as there are probably al-Qaida operatives inside the United States of America," Thompson said.

Bin Laden is considered the man behind the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. The former Tennessee senator and actor argued that "bin Laden is more symbolism than anything else. I think it demonstrates to people once again that we're in a global war."

Thompson said the al-Qaida leader and the Iraq war must be seen as part of the larger war on terrorism.

"It's one that bin Laden and people like him are heading up and we need to catch him and we surely need to deal with him, but if he disappeared tomorrow we still have this problem. If Iraq disappeared tomorrow, we'd still have this problem," Thompson said.

Later in the day, and after Democrats had been critical of his earlier remarks, Thompson took a much tougher stance. "Apparently Osama bin Laden has crawled out of his cave long enough to send another video and he is getting a lot of attention," he said at a rally in Mason City. "He ought to be caught and killed."

Thompson maintained, however, that killing bin Laden would not end the terrorist threat.

[snip]

On Iraq, Thompson defended his support for the war and contended that progress has been made months after President Bush sent in 30,000 more combat troops. The American people, he said, recognize that the situation has improved.

"I think you're already seeing a change in perception as better news comes out of Iraq," Thompson said. "I think the American people will come to that view as they see things develop. We are finally on the right track in Iraq and we're making progress."

Asked whether the U.S. should have focused on getting bin Laden instead of going to war in Iraq, Thompson said: "It's not an either or situation. Saddam Hussein was on the cusp of having defeated the United Nations and the free world and the United States. He had certainly had weapons of mass destruction and the capability of reviving his nuclear program."

Uh, Fred? No, he didn't. And if you hadn't spent the last six years pretending to be a tough guy on TV, you might know that.

What an idiot.

If it weren't possible that one of these men would be the next president, it would be fun watching Frederick of Hollywood and Flip Flop Mitt falling all over themselves trying to find the right way to both put lipstick on the so-called Global War on Terror pig and keep the population nice and frightened at the same time.

One has to wonder how they think it's going to be possible to spin the fact that Bin Laden is looking healthier than ever six years after bringing the United States Constitution to its knees simply by arming nineteen guys with boxcutters as some kind of proof that the Bush Doctrine is working.

Labels: Fred Thompson, idiocy, Osama bin Laden

Today Paul Krugman joined the well deserved pile-on urging Congressional Democrats to take a stand and act like they have some balls when General Petraeus testifies about the white house penned report on Iraq this week. It is unreal that we are at a point where we are looking at our representatives as cowards who are afraid, not as much of what we might think of them, but of the political bubble-world of Washington DC that seems to be so hermetically sealed that any statement of dissent is treated like a huge achievement. I think that these politicians might do themselves a service by taking a look around outside of the beltway, because Americans are disgruntled, to say the least. According to Krugman, we should plan on the report to be a bunch of bullshit, twisted facts, and numbers:

Here’s what will definitely happen when Gen. David Petraeus testifies before Congress next week: he’ll assert that the surge has reduced violence in Iraq — as long as you don’t count Sunnis killed by Sunnis, Shiites killed by Shiites, Iraqis killed by car bombs and people shot in the front of the head.

Here’s what I’m afraid will happen: Democrats will look at Gen. Petraeus’s uniform and medals and fall into their usual cringe. They won’t ask hard questions out of fear that someone might accuse them of attacking the military. After the testimony, they’ll desperately try to get Republicans to agree to a resolution that politely asks President Bush to maybe, possibly, withdraw some troops.

This report is just a piece of fluff which cherry picks information down to the smallest detail, but clearly overlooks the secondary (or, hell, primary at this point,) effect of this occupation on what is left of Iraqi society; in that we might perhaps expect an increase in crime, not just because there is an increase in crime but because we are there and have disrupted everything...of course we have to count those deaths!

Its clear at this point that Bush likes to have something going on that lets him feel like he is "kicking ass," but alot of us have known for a long time that he is a sociopath riding a hobby horse, and even the doubters are beginning to realize the truth, so why are these white house Rovian operatives allowed to shape the debate? How dare any of them call Democrats who question this clearly erroneous report unpatriotic? And where do our representatives get off backing down after promising to go and deliver a strong and brave message for us. The founders would spit on the way that their hopeful plans have been twisted by this crowd. What kind of cowards do we have running this country?I hope to hear something from someone, maybe even a question that makes sense, but I'm not hopeful.

Krugman notes that Petraeus "...has a history of making wildly overoptimistic assessments of progress in Iraq that happen to be convenient for his political masters." And if its true, as Krugman believes, that the democrats will be accused of being unpatriotic no matter what they say or what happens, then I would hope to hear some all out probing of this report and perhaps even some dissent and protest. One thing we can be sure of is that this report is not likely to hint at the very real need for, and the strong possibility of, a draft.

So why bother with this piece of theater? Because Americans like to see committees and circumstance, and guys in suits acting like they are actually solving problems. Americans also like symbols...like, um...Osama Bin Laden, as the universal bad guy killer. Its a shame that Fred Thompson chose now to belittle the importance of the Bin Laden symbolism to American culture, considering that the government already has the pre-release of Bin Laden's yearly 9-11 commemoration tape, and the outrage is already palpable, even all these years later.

Thompson would do well to pull himself up by his bootstraps, get out of his limo, and try to take the pulse of the American people a little more carefully. What the hell is this guy doing talking about where he thinks Bin Laden is? We haven't caught him because we are in the wrong place doing the wrong thing, and the last thing we need is the suggestion that we should invade another country for the hell of it, when its clear that the guy moves around pretty easily in the Middle East and its gonna take good intelligence work to find him.







In other disgusting news, apparently Joementum Lieberman is co-chairing a meeting of the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Monday. Again we are in a position where this pseudo liberal "I" who is supposedly caucusing with the Democrats, (but always threatening to flip to the other side,) is going to be the one representing the left side for balance...I have alot of trouble getting my mind around this! This guy gets to keep all of his committee posts and chair all sorts of meetings...representing US!...and who will ask the important questions about our security? No one...forget it.
Its gonna be a clown parade, with Skeletor Chertoff leading other top officials in making assessments about our security and how safe we are..,or not.... The clear fact that we are not safer now than we were before 9-11 points to more of the same; especially knowing how the reports are presented and how afraid our representatives seem to be to make waves.

Its been another day in the car listening to news, podcasts of Ring of Fire, and an old Majority Report rant by Janeane Garafolo about cognitive dissonance, (which has long been one of my favorite subjects.) She was talking about the woman who had the face transplant and the story of how she lost her face: passing out from drugs and alcohol and waking, but not realizing that the dog had removed her face for some reason...that is until trying to light a cigarette and, oops, what the fuck?? Janeane likened the strange shocky feeling of having just had your face eaten off by your dog to what has been going on in this country. Its strange how well some of those Air America shows from over a year ago still hold up...and sad that they still apply, even though the truth is out. Everyone knows that this is all wrong, but they just look uncomfortably at each other and hide their cowardice in some sort of idea of respect for the office and protocol. Fuck that! The feeling of embracing the lie because one can't come to terms with the fact that one was wrong in the first place, or over-identification with the lie, is the only way that some people can live with themselves. Its a form of mental illness that drives itself, in that the stress caused by conflicting belief and evidence needs to resolve so the truth is actively shifted in order to relieve the stress....and then there you are; your dog just took a bite out of your face...but it all makes sense because....because...because...it does!

Here I am in my house of cement pouring, alarm going off, firemen swarming, and contractors moving piles of my laundry round the basement, strangely quiet...for a minute...seeing what it might be like to feel like everything was OK out there...but then, on the news comes Rudy, Rudy, Rudy, who is, against all odds, holding his own in the weak Republican field...the debate, ugh...the news ugh....How did this happen? How did he manage to plow under his extreme weakness as a human being and a leader? His popularity is not dropping the way it should, which worries me, and makes me think that the American people are, as usual, not paying attention.

That Rudy has the nerve to say that he is not a perfect person but was a strong leader in NYC is just laughable. The idea that he could even fill the position of dogcatcher is incredible; but then...look what we have now!
The reign of Rudy in NYC was a strange time of knee jerk over-reaction to Dinkins and his PC liberalism. The swing was not so much to the right, because Rudy is pretty left on social issues, but more towards the Reich.

Among other insanity the homeless folks that were all over the place were hassled all the time and told to move on, with no place to go, and it was said that a large number of them had moved underground into old subway stations or were given one way tickets to places like Bridgeport, CT. I kept wondering where those people went...it was like they were just loaded on trucks one day and removed. The idea of just jostling sleeping people over and over is sort of inhumane, and the lack of real programs to help people made the whole exercise rather abusive.

Rudy set about defining the rules of what he felt was right, as if he was the arbiter of all things social, artistic and monetary. His people were less than sophisticated, and the whole thing echoed a strange mafia novella with goombas and good-fellas. Yeah, Rudy played tough, and he reversed some of Dinkin's soft policing measures, but his real focus was not on infrastructure and safety, but on surface and shine. This was not good management and it alienated many, many people...real New Yorkers for one, were disgusted, and many people who work to make the city work were disgruntled. He didn't solve problems so much as to sweep them away and make things look pretty. But, as we know about those shiny apple Republicans these days, the core is rotten, and sooner or later the worm is gonna crawl out. I'm just waiting for Rudy to blow. He not only lacks the personality for the office but he is rotten to the core.

Rudy left us in a very vulnerable position while he shined up his command center that was in the middle of his universe...with a big target on it. For anyone who doubts that Rudy absolutely sucked as a leader, and for anyone who thinks that it might make sense to have a strong guy like him at the helm, take a visit to The Real Rudy and lift the rock on old Rudy. I don't say this lightly: for anyone who might ever consider giving this guy a job with big responsibility, do some research. Your life may depend on it!


Cross Posted from RIPCoco

Labels: General Petraeus, Iraq War, Joe Lieberman, Paul Krugman, Rudy Giuliani

Even if we don't wind up nuking ourselves into extinction, America has other things to worry about.

Forget about Stephen King and his fake boogeymen. If you want to have the shit scared out of you, then read this nightmare scenario by David Michael Green, a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York:

"One day you’re gonna wake up in a hostile world where your country no longer has any friends. There will be governments of other countries – former long-standing allies – that cannot afford to have anything to do with you, lest their publics angrily remove them from office for collaborating with a country as hated as yours. Nor will those governments trust yours anyway. They will perhaps possess intelligence that could save your life, but they will not share it. They will possess forces that could help you survive real security threats, but they will not provide them. Your country will have become an international pariah, the South Africa of the twenty-first century."

See what seven years of easy answers have gotten us? Bupkes.

Complex issues don't have simple solutions. Leaping before you look isn't "staying the course", especially if you're stepping off the roof. But that stubbornly-loyal 28% of the public with fifteen second attention spans doesn't want to hear that. What they want is fast food news they can gulp down without thinking, and big, won't-go-away political headaches like Iraq solved by tossing it in the microwave. Bush is the type of President they want, the guy they can have a beer with and not worry about him making them feel stupid. That's why loud empty barrels like Mutt and Ghouliani are so popular; they're just selling more of the same. What's worse, there are other voters who feel the same way as the 28% does, they're just not out of the closet yet.

It's a seductive but false luxury America can't afford anymore. Ignorance isn't bliss; it's a temporary blindness that keeps you from seeing the beast that's gonna tear your throat out. Personally, I wouldn't want the guy I'm having a beer with to fix my car, never mind putting him in the White House. I don't want a boozehound that's going to vomit on my shoes. I want the sober, boring, responsible guy who's going to drive my drunken carcass home. What I and the rest of this country needs is somebody in charge who isn't afraid to be smart. As Thomas Fuller said, “Get the facts, or the facts will get you. And when you get em, get em right, or they will get you wrong.”

Labels: Global politics, Isolationism, President Bush

Labels: The Iraq invasion and occupation, Tony Auth

A big tip of the hat to Press Esc

Labels: Iran, President Bush, World War III

ROPER Arrest him!

ALICE Yes!

MORE For what?

ALICE He's dangerous!

ROPER For libel; he's a spy.

MARGARET Father, that man's bad.

MORE There's no law against that.

ROPER There is! God's law!

MORE Then God can arrest him.

ROPER Sophistication upon sophistication!

MORE No, sheer simplicity. The law, Roper, the law. I know what's legal not what's right. And I'll stick to what's legal.

ROPER Then you set man's law above God's!

MORE No, far below; but let me draw your attention to a fact--I'm not God. The currents and eddies of right and wrong, which you find such plain sailing, I can't navigate. I'm no voyager. But in the thickets of the law, oh, there I'm a forester. I doubt if there's a man alive who could follow me there, thank God...

ALICE While you talk, he's gone!

MORE And go he should, if he was the Devil himself, until he broke the law!

ROPER So now you'd give the Devil benefit of law!

MORE Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

ROPER I'd cut down every law in England to do that!

MORE Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you--where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast--man's laws, not God's--and if you cut them down--and you're just the man to do it--d'you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake.

--"A Man For All Seasons", by Robert Bolt

Labels: A Man For All Seasons, Paul Scofield, Robert Bolt

Books are still my favorite toys.

It makes it easy for people when it’s my birthday or those other special occasions when I get free stuff. Other than CDs or DVDs, you want to make me smile? Give me a book. So, of course, whenever I go to somebody’s place for the first time, I automatically steer myself towards their playground, and take a look at what toys they have.

This time, however, thanks to this clever video I discovered, this gentleman has brought his playground to me. Think of it as an online Toys ‘R’ Us store for bookworms.

Let’s play.

Labels: Chuck Palahniuk, Harlan Ellison, John Steinbeck, Jorge Luis Borges, Kurt Vonnegut, Ray Bradbury, Saki

Yesterday while driving to work I heard about the extraordinary security measures taken at the APEC conference in Australia:

Potential troublemakers have been blacklisted. Police were given extraordinary powers to stop and search people in the street. High school students were warned that their parents would be told if they skipped school to protest.

Officials in Australia — which prides itself on a long history of liberal democracy and respect for human rights — have gone to unusual lengths to make sure world leaders at a summit in Sydney this week are not bothered by unruly protests.

The measures which Prime Minister John Howard defended as necessary to head off potential violence have drawn harsh criticism from civil rights groups and touched off a wide debate in the media about the balance between security and a free society.

"We are out there saying 'we are a modern democracy, we're a free nation, we respect people's rights,'" said Cameron Murphy, president of the Australia Council for Civil Liberties.

"But they're putting up fences, stopping people from protesting, and it's not about security. It's about hiding people away so that leaders don't see that there is diversity of opinion."

[snip]

Most outrageous to Sydneysiders, as locals call themselves, is the 5-kilometer (3-mile) -long, 3-meter (10-foot) -high metal fence that bisects the city, sealing off the toniest hotels and the Sydney Opera House meeting venue from the rest of downtown

Yup, that 10-foot high metal fence is foolproof, all right:



I love Australians -- funny, crazy -- and gorgeous.

I want The Chaser to broadcast here. These guys are seriously funny. And crazy. And gorgeous:



On the other hand, when you have a president who does this:

The US president thanked Australian premier John Howard for visiting 'Austrian troops' in Iraq.

There are no Austrian troops there, although Australia has 1,500 military personnel in the region.

He continued his blunders by then confusing the organisations of APEC and OPEC.

Talking at a business forum on the eve of an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Sydney, Mr Bush also told Mr Howard: "Mr Prime Minister, thank you for your introduction. Thank you for being such a fine host for the OPEC summit."

As the audience laughed, the US president corrected himself and joked: "He invited me to the OPEC summit next year."

Australia has never been a member of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

...who needs satire?

Labels: comedy

Think Rudy Giuliani can keep you safe from terrorists? You think he's a good decisionmaker?

Guess again:



Giuliani spokesman Mike McKeon responded: "It's unfortunate that a conspiracy theorist so disconnected from reality would launch a politically motivated hit video to coincide with the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks."

When you have a candidate whose whole campaign is about exploiting the 9/11 attacks for political gain, I don't see what McKeon's problem is. This is a guy who declared the air around the Ground Zero work site as safe:

An examination of Mr. Giuliani’s handling of the extraordinary recovery operation during his last months in office shows that he seized control and largely limited the influence of experienced federal agencies. In doing that, according to some experts and many of those who worked in the trade center’s ruins, Mr. Giuliani might have allowed his sense of purpose to trump caution in the rush to prove that his city was not crippled by the attack.

Administration documents and thousands of pages of legal testimony filed in a lawsuit against New York City, along with more than two dozen interviews with people involved in the events of the last four months of Mr. Giuliani’s administration, show that while the city had a safety plan for workers, it never meaningfully enforced federal requirements that those at the site wear respirators.

At the same time, the administration warned companies working on the pile that they would face penalties or be fired if work slowed. And according to public hearing transcripts and unpublished administration records, officials also on some occasions gave flawed public representations of the nature of the health threat, even as they privately worried about exposure to lawsuits by sickened workers.

“The city ran a generally slipshod, haphazard, uncoordinated, unfocused response to environmental concerns,” said David Newman, an industrial hygienist with the New York Committee on Occupational Safety and Health, a labor group.

City officials and a range of medical experts are now convinced that the dust and toxic materials in the air around the site were a menace. More than 2,000 New York City firefighters have been treated for serious respiratory problems. Seventy percent of nearly 10,000 recovery workers screened at Mount Sinai Medical Center have trouble breathing.

-- and now claims that he's as much at risk as the rescue workers (despite the fact that he spent more time at Yankee Stadium after the attacks than at Ground Zero.

This is a guy who paints himself as the guy who can keep you safe, when he couldn't even get functional radios to the FDNY, eight years after the previous attack on the World Trade Center:

Long before 9/11, radios were a constant issue at emergency scenes. Too many people talking on too few channels led to system overload. In the case of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, the inability of the fire department to communicate effectively was a major problem, so much so that it was pinpointed as such in an after-action report prepared by the department. Yet it was these same radios that firefighters brought to the World Trade Center on the crystal-clear morning of September 11, 2001, four months before the conclusion of Giuliani’s tenure in office.

On 9/11 the firefighters converging from all over the city at the

World Trade Center attempted to use the complex’s radio system, first testing it in the lobby of the North Tower. The test indicated that the system was not functional, even though it actually was. A volume control switch mistakenly had not been activated, so the system was of no use at all to firefighters ascending the North Tower, according to The 9/11 Commission Report, which investigated the city’s response.

The firefighters were confronting a disaster of immense proportions, much larger than what occurred in 1993. If there was ever a need for a robust communications system, it was now. Yet the communication system at their disposal failed them miserably, likely costing many firefighters in the North Tower their lives. These firefighters climbed the stairs of one of the world’s tallest buildings without a reliable means of communicating with commanders below. As they conducted their hazardous work as best as humanly possible, they were disadvantaged: there was no way of their getting word from their commanders about the location of the fire or that the tower was in danger of collapsing.

Tragically, while firefighters struggled to use their inadequate radios, new FDNY radios sat in boxes in a city warehouse. The new equipment, in fact, had been issued to firefighters on March 14, 2001, but it was pulled from service a few days later, after a trapped firefighter’s “mayday” message went unheard at a house fire in Queens. In the ensuing months leading to 9/11, an investigation by then city comptroller Alan Hevesi uncovered an exclusive “no bid/sole source” contract between the city and the manufacturer of the new radios under the watch of Tom Von Essen, Giuliani’s fire commissioner.

The city and the manufacturer maintained that the transaction was legal, and there the matter was left, although in a relatively little-known book titled Radio Silence FDNY—The Betrayal of New York’s Bravest, authors FDNY Captain John Joyce and Bill Bowen alleged additional improprieties on the part of city and the company. Giuliani, in his book Leadership, claims that it was necessary to have separate command posts so that the police could get telephone lines to protect the rest of the city from attack, while fire officers needed to observe the twin towers themselves. The flaw in this conclusion is that it assumes the response to the World Trade Center was composed solely of the FDNY, when, in reality, the NYPD was also a very important player at the trade center.

And if you think he'd be a good "decider" and assemble the best possible candidates for cabinet position, let's not forget the guy walking next to Rudy Giuliani in the above video.

And this is the Republican front-runner?

More at The Real Rudy.

Labels: Rudy Giuliani

Labels: Air America

Paul Krugman does....all too well:

Here’s what will definitely happen when Gen. David Petraeus testifies before Congress next week: he’ll assert that the surge has reduced violence in Iraq — as long as you don’t count Sunnis killed by Sunnis, Shiites killed by Shiites, Iraqis killed by car bombs and people shot in the front of the head.

Here’s what I’m afraid will happen: Democrats will look at Gen. Petraeus’s uniform and medals and fall into their usual cringe. They won’t ask hard questions out of fear that someone might accuse them of attacking the military. After the testimony, they’ll desperately try to get Republicans to agree to a resolution that politely asks President Bush to maybe, possibly, withdraw some troops, if he feels like it.

There are five things I hope Democrats in Congress will remember.

First, no independent assessment has concluded that violence in Iraq is down. On the contrary, estimates based on morgue, hospital and police records suggest that the daily number of civilian deaths is almost twice its average pace from last year. And a recent assessment by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office found no decline in the average number of daily attacks.

So how can the military be claiming otherwise? Apparently, the Pentagon has a double super secret formula that it uses to distinguish sectarian killings (bad) from other deaths (not important); according to press reports, all deaths from car bombs are excluded, and one intelligence analyst told The Washington Post that “if a bullet went through the back of the head, it’s sectarian. If it went through the front, it’s criminal.” So the number of dead is down, as long as you only count certain kinds of dead people.

Oh, and by the way: Baghdad is undergoing ethnic cleansing, with Shiite militias driving Sunnis out of much of the city. And guess what? When a Sunni enclave is eliminated and the death toll in that district falls because there’s nobody left to kill, that counts as progress by the Pentagon’s metric.

Second, Gen. Petraeus has a history of making wildly overoptimistic assessments of progress in Iraq that happen to be convenient for his political masters.

I’ve written before about the op-ed article Gen. Petraeus published six weeks before the 2004 election, claiming “tangible progress” in Iraq. Specifically, he declared that “Iraqi security elements are being rebuilt,” that “Iraqi leaders are stepping forward” and that “there has been progress in the effort to enable Iraqis to shoulder more of the load for their own security.” A year later, he declared that “there has been enormous progress with the Iraqi security forces.”

But now two more years have passed, and the independent commission of retired military officers appointed by Congress to assess Iraqi security forces has recommended that the national police force, which is riddled with corruption and sectarian influence, be disbanded, while Iraqi military forces “will be unable to fulfill their essential security responsibilities independently over the next 12-18 months.”

Third, any plan that depends on the White House recognizing reality is an idle fantasy. According to The Sydney Morning Herald, on Tuesday Mr. Bush told Australia’s deputy prime minister that “we’re kicking ass” in Iraq. Enough said.

Fourth, the lesson of the past six years is that Republicans will accuse Democrats of being unpatriotic no matter what the Democrats do. Democrats gave Mr. Bush everything he wanted in 2002; their reward was an ad attacking Max Cleland, who lost both legs and an arm in Vietnam, that featured images of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.

Finally, the public hates this war and wants to see it ended. Voters are exasperated with the Democrats, not because they think Congressional leaders are too liberal, but because they don’t see Congress doing anything to stop the war.

In light of all this, you have to wonder what Democrats, who according to The New York Times are considering a compromise that sets a “goal” for withdrawal rather than a timetable, are thinking. All such a compromise would accomplish would be to give Republicans who like to sound moderate — but who always vote with the Bush administration when it matters — political cover.

Yes, you DO have to wonder? Is it simple gutlessness? Too much spending time eating mini spanakopita with David Broder and William Kristol and not enough time talking to the people they're supposed to represent? Is it a lack of understanding that they are no longer dealing with intelligent people of goodwill who disagree when they are dealing with this administration, but instead with a bunch of power-mad criminals? Is Washington so rife with potential scandal and corruption, whether sexual impropriety, financial corruption, or something else, that the White House's warrantless surveillance was really all about pulling Democratic skeletons out of closets and using them as cudgels to browbeat Democrats into compliance? Or is it simply that despite their rhetoric, the Democrats are the same kind of corporatists as the Republicans in a different suit of clothing, and that despite their rhetoric, they're owned by the same defense contractors and others who benefit from Republican policies as the Republicans?

The latter would certainly explain the relentless and depressing march of Hillary Clinton towards the Democratic nomination. But is it that simple?

Labels: Democrats, Paul Krugman, spinelessness

The young mothers were telling each other how tired they were. This was one of their favorite topics, along with the eating, sleeping, and defecating habits of their offspring, the merits of certain local nursery schools, and the difficulty of sticking to an exercise routine. Smiling politely to mask a familiar feeling of desperation, Sarah reminded herself to think like an anthropologist. I'm a researcher studying the behavior of boring suburban women. I am not a boring suburban woman myself.

"Jerry and I started watching that Jim Carrey movie the other night?"

This was Cheryl, mother of Christian, a husky three-and-a-half-year-old who swaggered around the playground like a Mafia chieftain, shooting the younger children with any object that could plausibly stand in as a gun-a straw, a half-eaten banana, even a Barbie doll that had been abandoned in the sandbox. Sarah despised the boy and found it hard to look his mother in the eye.

"The Pet Guy?" inquired Mary Ann, mother of Troy and Isabelle. "I don't get it. Since when did passing gas become so hilarious?"

Only since there was human life on earth, Sarah thought, wishing she had the guts to say it out loud. Mary Ann was one of those depressing supermoms, a tiny, elaborately made-up woman who dressed in spandex workout clothes, drove an SUV the size of a UPS van, and listened to conservative talk radio all day. No matter how many hints Sarah dropped to the contrary, Mary Ann refused to believe that any of the other mothers thought any less of Rush Limbaugh or any more of Hillary Clinton than she did. Every day Sarah came to the playground determined to set her straight, and every day she chickened out.

"Not the Pet Guy," Cheryl said. "The state trooper with the split personality."

Me, Myself, and Irene, Sarah thought impatiently. By the Farrelly Brothers. Why was it that the other mothers could never remember the titles of anything, not even movies they'd actually seen, while she herself retained lots of useless information about movies she wouldn't even dream of watching while imprisoned on an airplane, not that she ever got to fly anywhere?

"Oh, I saw that," said Theresa, mother of Courtney. A big, raspy-voiced woman who often alluded to having drunk too much wine the night before, Theresa was Sarah's favorite of the group. Sometimes, if no one else was around, the two of them would sneak a cigarette, trading puffs like teenagers and making subversive comments about their husbands and children. When the others arrived, though, Theresa immediately turned into one of them. "I thought it was cute."

Of course you did, Sarah thought. There was no higher praise at the playground than cute. It meant harmless. Easily absorbed. Posing no threat to smug suburbanites. At her old playground, someone had actually used the c-word to describe American Beauty (not that she'd actually named the film; it was that thing with Kevin what's-his-name, you know, with the rose petals). That had been the last straw for Sarah. After exploring her options for a few days, she had switched to the Rayburn School playground, only to find that it was the same wherever you went. All the young mothers were tired. They all watched cute movies whose titles they couldn't remember.

Labels: Little Children, Peter Gabriel, Rene Magritte, Tom Perrotta

Time for the I-word again.

Impeachment.

I'm tired of feeling like a helpless, scared-to-death passenger trapped in the back seat of a speeding car as a boozy, coked-up Bush careens blindly towards the abyss. Melodrama? God help us, I don't think so.

We already have more than enough reasons: Katrina, Iraq, an economy on the edge of bankruptcy, and flat-earth bozos tossing copies of Origin of Species into trash cans. Yadda yadda yadda. It's goddamned terrible. It's gonna take years to fix this shit. But it can get much, much worse. Before January 2009, a lunatic, I-Don-t-Give-A-Fuck Bush still has the time to appoint a Supreme Court justice or two and--ready?--start dropping nukes on Iran. Can this country survive World War III? I don't think so.

Melodrama? I don't think so.

Impeachment is the only check and balance we have left, and threatening to use it with no intention of doing so is like waving a cap gun in Tony Soprano's face: it can get you killed.

It's not a political choice anymore. It's survival.

Thankfully, there is a reluctant but ever-growing awareness in the United States about how batshit crazy the bozo in the White House is.

It's the moment in a horror movie when the sneering cynics realize that the monsters are real. This usually happens before they're eaten. (Don't you hate when that happens?)

As the old saying goes, "Nothing focuses a man's mind like an imminent hanging."

Thank the Goddess for enlightened self-interest. It ain't pretty, but it works. Sometimes.

Labels: impeachment, Merle Haggard, President Bush

Labels: John and Elizabeth Edwards

It wasn't "bad intelligence." It wasn't a "mistake." It was a LIE:

On Sept. 18, 2002, CIA director George Tenet briefed President Bush in the Oval Office on top-secret intelligence that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, according to two former senior CIA officers. Bush dismissed as worthless this information from the Iraqi foreign minister, a member of Saddam's inner circle, although it turned out to be accurate in every detail. Tenet never brought it up again.

Nor was the intelligence included in the National Intelligence Estimate of October 2002, which stated categorically that Iraq possessed WMD. No one in Congress was aware of the secret intelligence that Saddam had no WMD as the House of Representatives and the Senate voted, a week after the submission of the NIE, on the Authorization for Use of Military Force in Iraq. The information, moreover, was not circulated within the CIA among those agents involved in operations to prove whether Saddam had WMD.

On April 23, 2006, CBS's "60 Minutes" interviewed Tyler Drumheller, the former CIA chief of clandestine operations for Europe, who disclosed that the agency had received documentary intelligence from Naji Sabri, Saddam's foreign minister, that Saddam did not have WMD. "We continued to validate him the whole way through," said Drumheller. "The policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming, and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy, to justify the policy."

Now two former senior CIA officers have confirmed Drumheller's account to me and provided the background to the story of how the information that might have stopped the invasion of Iraq was twisted in order to justify it. They described what Tenet said to Bush about the lack of WMD, and how Bush responded, and noted that Tenet never shared Sabri's intelligence with then Secretary of State Colin Powell. According to the former officers, the intelligence was also never shared with the senior military planning the invasion, which required U.S. soldiers to receive medical shots against the ill effects of WMD and to wear protective uniforms in the desert.

Instead, said the former officials, the information was distorted in a report written to fit the preconception that Saddam did have WMD programs. That false and restructured report was passed to Richard Dearlove, chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), who briefed Prime Minister Tony Blair on it as validation of the cause for war.

[snip]

In the congressional debate over the Authorization for the Use of Military Force, even those voting against it gave credence to the notion that Saddam possessed WMD. Even a leading opponent such as Sen. Bob Graham, then the Democratic chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who had instigated the production of the NIE, declared in his floor speech on Oct. 12, 2002, "Saddam Hussein's regime has chemical and biological weapons and is trying to get nuclear capacity." Not a single senator contested otherwise. None of them had an inkling of the Sabri intelligence.

The CIA officers assigned to Sabri still argued within the agency that his information must be taken seriously, but instead the administration preferred to rely on Curveball. Drumheller learned from the German intelligence service that held Curveball that it considered him and his claims about WMD to be highly unreliable. But the CIA's Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control Center (WINPAC) insisted that Curveball was credible because what he said was supposedly congruent with available public information.

For two months, Drumheller fought against the use of Curveball, raising the red flag that he was likely a fraud, as he turned out to be. "Oh, my! I hope that's not true," said Deputy Director McLaughlin, according to Drumheller's book "On the Brink," published in 2006. When Curveball's information was put into Bush's Jan. 28, 2003, State of the Union address, McLaughlin and Tenet allowed it to pass into the speech. "From three Iraqi defectors," Bush declared, "we know that Iraq, in the late 1990s, had several mobile biological weapons labs ... Saddam Hussein has not disclosed these facilities. He's given no evidence that he has destroyed them." In fact, there was only one Iraqi source -- Curveball -- and there were no labs.

I don't understand why the notion that this president refused to heed anything that didn't correspond to his preconceived notion that he had to take out Saddam to prove that he's a bigger man than his father is so difficult for some to accept. It's a pattern of denial of reality that has been the hallmark of his presidency:



Yesterday in Australia he boasted that "we're kicking ass" in Iraq, despite the FACT that those who look at the full statistics on violence in Iraq paint a very different picture from the one the military wants us to see, and the FACT that an independent Congressional panel says that it will be at least a year to 18 months before Iraq can handle its own security. We are not "kicking ass." We are not "winning." And the "mushroom cloud" that George W. Bush warned us about was just so much smoke -- very much like the smoke now being blown in our faces about Iran.

And the only thing standing now between us and at best a repeat of the Iraq blunder in Iran, and at worst full-blown nuclear war, are a bunch of gutless Democrats too frightened of being called terrorist sympathizers to try to save this country from being driven off a cliff by a madman.

Labels: George W. Bush, insanity, Iran, Iraq, lies

When are these people going to realize that there is no such thing as "compromise" with this Republican party?

With a mixed picture emerging about progress in Iraq, Senate Democratic leaders are showing a new openness to compromise as they try to attract Republican support for forcing at least modest troop withdrawals in the coming months.

After short-circuiting consideration of votes on some bipartisan proposals on Iraq before the August break, senior Democrats now say they are willing to rethink their push to establish a withdrawal deadline of next spring if doing so will attract the 60 Senate votes needed to prevail.

Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, said, “If we have to make the spring part a goal, rather than something that is binding, and if that is able to produce some additional votes to get us over the filibuster, my own inclination would be to consider that.”

Democrats would need to lure the 60 senators in order to cut off a likely Republican filibuster.

The emerging proposal by Mr. Levin and Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island, would still order the administration to begin pulling at least some combat troops out of Iraq, probably by the end of the year. It is not clear what other provisions the measure may include.

But Mr. Levin, who is chairman of the Armed Services Committee and who met Wednesday with Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, said a compromise may be worth making. It would allow Congress to assert its own voice on Iraq policy, after falling short of that goal in most such votes throughout the year, he said.

And that accomplishes -- what? Don't these people realize that for Republicans, party loyalty trumps everything? Do they honestly believe that with a White House as vindictiveness as this is, they're going to get enough Republicans to risk their careers for this?

You want to know why Democrats are perceived as wimps? It has nothing to do with national security or war. It's the party's unwillingness to go to the mat for what's right -- and its willingness to sacrifice hundreds more American kids if it means David Broder won't call them "partisan." (Except he will anyway.)

Labels: Democrats, spinelessness

...or not watch either. I myself was watching "Fantasy Fruit Sculptures" on the Food Channel.

But if you want to know how the Party of Immigrant-Bashers did, here it is.

See also: Other intrepid souls who sat through this exercise in jingoism, hate, and cynicism.

The idea that any of these nimrods could become president is enough to make me want to stick an icepick in my own forehead.

Labels: idiocy, immigration, Republican Presidential Debates

New York Daily News:

Stand-up comic Eddie Griffin gets hook for spewing N-word

If comedian Eddie Griffin didn't know the N-word was banned and buried, he found out when the publisher of Black Enterprise magazine pulled the plug on his raunchy standup routine.

Griffin, who headlined a soldout show at Black Enterprise's 14th annual Golf and Tennis Challenge in Miami on Friday, was about 10 minutes into his N-word-laced act when publisher Earl Graves turned off the mike.

Minutes later, Graves appeared onstage with a cord and plug in one hand and a working microphone in the other. He told the audience at the posh Doral Golf Resort that Griffin's microphone had been turned off because he repeatedly used the N-word.

Graves, a prominent businessman whose Labor Day weekend event attracts corporate sponsors like Aetna, Pepsi and FedEx, got a standing ovation. He said Griffin, 39, would be paid.

Attendees said Griffin - who has appeared in "Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo," "Undercover Brother" and "Scary Movie 3" - sauntered onto the stage smoking a cigarette. He yelled "F--- y'all!" before walking off, they said.

"We at Black Enterprise will not allow our culture to go backward," Graves said. "Black Enterprise stands for decency, black culture and dignity."

The NAACP held a public "burial" for the racial slur during its annual convention in Detroit in July.

Griffin's publicist, Jeff Abraham, declined comment.

Eddie Griffin is a neutered house negro who would give the Klansman trying to burn a cross a match.

I remember an old joke where two men met in the street late one night. One was black, the other man was white. They got into a fight after the white man called the black man a "nigger". One violent struggle later, the white man was on the ground and the black man was standing over him with a huge rock in his hands.

"Apologize, goddamnit!" the black man screamed. "If you don't, I'll kill you!"

"O.K.! O.K.!" the white man begged. "I'm sorry, Mister Nigger!"

That joke always comes to mind whenever I hear African-American comedians or rappers babbling about using "nigger" as a word of empowerment. I don't think so. It's putting lipstick on a rabid pig.

Still, it just goes to show that despite that well-publicized funeral by the NAACP months ago, the N-word will never die. It's too useful.

Years ago, I was watching a documentary on one of those you're-gonna-learn-something TV stations like PBS, and I think it was about PETA, but I'm not sure. Anyway, I saw a bunch of doctors in a lab torturing animals. I saw kittens in cages defecating themselves, dogs submerged in water tanks, monkeys with exposed brains strapped in a chair like Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange. As I watched in horror, I learned something, although it probably wasn't what the guys making the film intended.

First, the doctors in the blood-stained white coats who worked with cold efficiency as they methodically killed these animals didn't call it torture. They called it "scientific research". Also, I noticed that they never called the animals by name, or even identified them by species. Instead, they gave Garfield, Benji, and Cheetah code names like "GL 6735", and I realized this was how the doctors were able to do the terrible things that they did. Before you kill, you have to turn your victim into an object.

That's exactly what bigots do.

Once you dehumanize the objects of your hatred, it becomes easy to lynch that nigger, rape that bitch, or kick that faggot's ass. Presto. Historically, we've seen this lunatic sorcery works on a larger scale, as well: Let's turn those Jews into ash, napalm those gooks, drop a nuke on those ragheads. Easy.

And it all starts with a word.

Labels: Bamboozled, Eddie Griffith, NAACP, racism, Spike Lee, The N-Word

Looks like I'm not the only one who went apoplectic over "mandatory preventive care". The campaign has issued a more detailed clarification:

"Senator Edwards believes it is critically important to take preventive steps that help reduce health care costs and prevent disease. The truth is many people do not currently seek medical services because they aren't covered or can't afford to see a doctor. That is why Edwards' universal health care plan would require most insurers to cover preventive measures at low or no cost. Through incentives like lower premiums, the Edwards plan would also encourage people to use preventive health care, from checkups to cancer screenings, which will result in lower costs for both the individual and the country."

This is a far cry from "You must get a mammogram because I say so." Still, I hope the Edwards campaign has learned from this that the way you phrase policy on the stump matters -- especially when you have a media circus bound and determined to make the nomination of Hillary Clinton inevitable.

The full plan (PDF) is here.

Labels: health care, John Edwards

After a nearly six-month blog absence, Riverbend is back with the news that she and her family are safe in Syria:

I cried as we left- in spite of promises not to. The aunt cried… the uncle cried. My parents tried to be stoic but there were tears in their voices as they said their goodbyes. The worst part is saying goodbye and wondering if you’re ever going to see these people again. My uncle tightened the shawl I’d thrown over my hair and advised me firmly to ‘keep it on until you get to the border’. The aunt rushed out behind us as the car pulled out of the garage and dumped a bowl of water on the ground, which is a tradition- its to wish the travelers a safe return… eventually.

The trip was long and uneventful, other than two checkpoints being run by masked men. They asked to see identification, took a cursory glance at the passports and asked where we were going. The same was done for the car behind us. Those checkpoints are terrifying but I’ve learned that the best technique is to avoid eye-contact, answer questions politely and pray under your breath. My mother and I had been careful not to wear any apparent jewelry, just in case, and we were both in long skirts and head scarves.

Syria is the only country, other than Jordan, that was allowing people in without a visa. The Jordanians are being horrible with refugees. Families risk being turned back at the Jordanian border, or denied entry at Amman Airport. It’s too high a risk for most families.

[snip]

As we crossed the border and saw the last of the Iraqi flags, the tears began again. The car was silent except for the prattling of the driver who was telling us stories of escapades he had while crossing the border. I sneaked a look at my mother sitting beside me and her tears were flowing as well. There was simply nothing to say as we left Iraq. I wanted to sob, but I didn’t want to seem like a baby. I didn’t want the driver to think I was ungrateful for the chance to leave what had become a hellish place over the last four and a half years.

The Syrian border was almost equally packed, but the environment was more relaxed. People were getting out of their cars and stretching. Some of them recognized each other and waved or shared woeful stories or comments through the windows of the cars. Most importantly, we were all equal. Sunnis and Shia, Arabs and Kurds… we were all equal in front of the Syrian border personnel.

We were all refugees- rich or poor. And refugees all look the same- there’s a unique expression you’ll find on their faces- relief, mixed with sorrow, tinged with apprehension. The faces almost all look the same.

The first minutes after passing the border were overwhelming. Overwhelming relief and overwhelming sadness… How is it that only a stretch of several kilometers and maybe twenty minutes, so firmly segregates life from death?

How is it that a border no one can see or touch stands between car bombs, militias, death squads and… peace, safety? It’s difficult to believe- even now. I sit here and write this and wonder why I can’t hear the explosions.

If Joe Lieberman has his way, she won't have to wonder for long, because living in Syria will be very much like living in Baghdad. If you haven't read Baghdad Burning, now is a good time to start. But start at the beginning, back at August 2003, after the fall of Saddam and the days of the Coalition Provisional Authority, for a chronicle of how George W. Bush's folly in Iraq has affected the lives of real people who are ultimately no different from you and me.

Labels: Iraq War