"I'm up for Constitution abusin'"

"How 'bout you Renfield?"*



*Thanks to Cyberpj at DU

Speaking of Neutering

Josh Marshall, uber blogger, birthday boy, 36 years old. Younger than Attaturk, smarter than Attaturk, and I thought, undoubtedly cooler...well, maybe not.

What on earth are you doing to your dog for crap sake?

As a general rule, straight or gay, men should not get their dogs expensive fur-styles and definitely should not dress them up like they are on the lam!

My dog? Kept au natural, and only occasionally sheared.

Dressing them up is something you only do to cats, and only because they dislike it so much.

Unintentionally Humorous Post of the Day

Where else but from the intersection of Spayed Street & Neutered Avenue:

RE: DOG SHOWS [K. J. Lopez]
Good to hear--I guess. I defer to Jonah on dogs. I only pay attention to them when they are near jumping on me and I can't ignore them.
Posted at 02:36 PM

So is there only one Newspaper in the Country Now?

Champollion just quoted the LA Times, so let me comment on another article today from their columnist (and frequent right-wing verbal assault victime) Robert Scheer.

The terrible fact is that the administration took none of the steps that would have put the protection of human life ahead of a diverse set of economic and political interests, which included not offending our friends the Saudis and not hurting the share prices of airline corporations.

The warnings provided by intelligence agencies to the FAA were far clearer and more specific than suggested by Condoleezza Rice's testimony before the 9/11 commission when she reluctantly conceded the existence of a presidential briefing that warned of impending Al Qaeda attacks. Rice had dismissed those warnings as "historical," but according to the newly released section of the 9/11 report, an astonishing 52 of the 105 daily intelligence briefings received by the FAA — and available to Rice — before the Sept. 11 attacks made specific reference to Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.

Given this shocking record of indifference on the part of the administration, it is politically understandable that it tried to prevent the formation of the 9/11 commission in the first place, and then for five months prevented the declassification of key sections of the final report. Commission members, including its Republican chairman, Thomas Kean, stated in the past that there was no national security concern that justified keeping those sections of the report from the public.

And let's be clear: The failure to fully disclose what is known about the 9/11 tragedy is not some minor bureaucratic transgression. Not since the Soviets first detonated an atomic bomb more than half a century ago has a single event so affected decision-making in this country, yet the main questions as to how and why it happened remain mostly unanswered.

Meanwhile, Howie Kurtz goes after Bloggers for pointing out that the White House gave preferential treatment to a male prostitute posing as a reporter as being beyond the pale.

Welcome to the "Last Best Hope for Mankind" circa 2005.

Stepping in Their Own Dung

Can we hope they keep doing stupid stuff like this?

WASHINGTON — The latest chapter in the legal history of torture is being written by American pilots who were beaten and abused by Iraqis during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. And it has taken a strange twist.

The Bush administration is fighting the former prisoners of war in court, trying to prevent them from collecting nearly $1 billion from Iraq that a federal judge awarded them as compensation for their torture at the hands of Saddam Hussein's regime.

The rationale: Today's Iraqis are good guys, and they need the money.

The case abounds with ironies. It pits the U.S. government squarely against its own war heroes and the Geneva Convention.

Many of the pilots were tortured in the same Iraqi prison, Abu Ghraib, where American soldiers abused Iraqis 15 months ago. Those Iraqi victims, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said, deserve compensation from the United States.

Beautiful, just beautiful.

Odious Maximus

Gee whose side to be on; a genuinely talented comedian, or excrement?



Or



Gee, I guess the former. Certainly easier on my footwear.

Impressive Strategery

Your Bush Budget in Action

For the second time in as many months, a test of the Pentagon's missile defense system has ended in fiasco with an interceptor missile failing to launch from its silo, defense officials said.

The Missile Defense Agency said the failure became apparent when an interceptor that was supposed to shoot down an incoming target missile carrying a mock warhead did not take off from the Ronald Reagan Test Site located on the Marshall Islands in the central Pacific.

...

However, it was the second failed test in a row for the beleaguered national missile defense system whose deployment was championed by President George W. Bush in his first term as a means of defending the country against missiles launched by "rogue states" such as North Korea or Iran.

...

The failure was likely to further delay the declaration of the system, which is projected to cost more than 50 billion dollars over the next five years, "operational."

No Sex & No City

HBO needs a new jaunty show to replace its former half-hour money maker. Oh sure, it has 'Curb Your Enthusiasm', but it needs another half-hour to feed the subscription beast.

This is an email I sent the HBO Programming Geniuses, and I use that derisively because, I just cannot understand how this did not make it.

"Head of Programming, Home Box Office

Dear Sir,

My name is Atta J. Turk and I am writing this email to pitch to you an idea for a replacement series for your departed show about four tawdry tarts having regular sex for a half-hour in New York each week. Perhaps you remember it, it was called "Sex and the City" which I believe based its success upon the fact that the bigger named the starlet, the less likely it was we got to see boobies or hoo-hah. For example, Kim Catrell, we pretty much got to see everything but insertion; Sarah Jessica Parker, not even anything transparent.

Despite the success of that formula, I have a show to pitch that would have remarkable uniformity in that not one of its stars would ever be requested to do nudity. In fact, layering would be requested.

The show I suggest would be a natural follow-up to a show called 'Sex and the City', I suggest the show, "No Sex no City".

Four conservative woman hang out in the exurban midwest each week and express shock and experience dyspepsia over the various cultural and social events being reported on their media outlet of choice "FoxNews".

I suggest four particular individuals for these roles.

Ann Coulter -- The Large-mouthed, mysteriously androgynous mini-skirted fuhrer of the group by virtue of its constant vitriol and cursing. Sort of an Al Swearingen type.

Michelle Magalangalangshebang-- Believes she is Ann's best friend as she pretty much parrots it at every opportunity. The major difference between Ann & Michelle is that the former prefers ball-gags, the latter, sensory deprivation and isolation. We see her boyfriend Yojimbo in various stages of decay each week as he is locked in her basement.

Laura Ingraham-- The lipstick conservative of the group, who is tired of dating liberal men and being each other's respective grudge f**k. Spends most of her time in cut offs and short t-shirts dreaming about going to Sturgis for the biker rally this year.

Peggy Noonan-- The matron of the group. Usually spends time leaning her head back and fluttering her eyes. Most of her free time is spent watching porno videos and hugging her blow-up Ronnie doll.


I have written a sample scene, involving Ann coming home from a night of drinking with her date Sean Hannity.

INT. DIL'S ANN'S FLAT - NIGHT.

She enters; FERGUS SEAN walks in slowly. He looks from the cricket
whites that are hanging up behind a curtain to the photographs.

ANN
What you thinking of, hon?

SEAN
I'm thinking of your man.

ANN
Why?

SEAN
I'm wondering why you keep his things.

ANN
Told you, I'm superstitious.

She turns toward him and undoes her hair. It falls around her shoulders.

SEAN
Did he ever tell you you were beautiful?

ANN
All the time.

SEAN runs his hand down her throat, playing with her mysterious Adam's apple.

ANN
Even now.

SEAN
No...

ANN
He looks after me. He's a gentleman too.

She draws him behind a curtain toward the bed, pulls him down. They kiss passionately.

ANN
Give me one minute.

She walks into the bathroom. SEAN lies there, looking at the picture, listening to the sound of running water. She comes out then, dressed in a silk kimono. She looks, by her standards, extraordinarily unloathsome.

He reaches out his hand and grasps hers. He draws her toward him. He begins to kiss her face and neck.

SEAN
Would he have minded?

She murmurs no. His hands slip the wrap down from her shoulders.

CLOSE ON HIS HANDS, traveling down her neck, in the darkness. Then the hands stop. The kimono falls to the floor gently, with a whisper. The camera travels with it, and we see, in a close-up, that she is a man.

SEAN sits there, frozen, staring at her.

ANN
You did know, didn't you?

SEAN says nothing.

ANN
Oh my God.

She gives a strange little laugh, then reaches out to touch him. SEAN smacks the hand away, but then she overpowers him.

I look forward to hearing about whether you want the 10 or 12 episode order.

Sincerely,

Atta J. Turk
Producer/Writer/Gaffer/Best Boy

Westminster Dog or NRO Member?

Bill Buckley?


Michelle Malkin's dog showed up.


The New Right-Wing Pundits were lined up for deployment

Not Just Politics

In his first efforts at magnanimity and working with those that are willing to work with him, the White House has announced it is going to shove the collective nose of the Democrats into the puddle of piss on the floor.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush (news - web sites) set up a showdown with Senate Democrats on Monday by renominating 20 failed judicial nominees, many of whom had been denounced by critics as "right-wing extremists."

The renewed battle over the nominees promises to produce plenty of fireworks as Bush begins his second term with an expanded Senate Republican majority and still-defiant Senate Democrats.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican, has threatened to change the Senate's rules to prevent any more procedural hurdles known as filibusters against judicial nominees.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada has vowed Democrats are "not going to cut and run" from any such fight.

This is not politics as usual, it is the most blatant display of political arrogance one can imagine.

Sen. John Cornyn (news, bio, voting record), a Texas Republican, said, "The American people sent a strong message on November 2 against the obstructionist tactics that, unfortunately, we saw all too often in the past four years."

"I'm hopeful that the will of the American people has been made clear to the obstructionists and that these 20 nominees will receive swift up-or-down votes, as all judicial nominees deserve," Cornyn said.

The arrogance of that statement is beyond explanation other than to recognize people like Cornyn are nothing more than teenagers drunk for the first time on peppermint schnapps. It's like watching a continuous loop of the Police Academy movies over and over and over again.

The Newshour on Welfare Reform and On Bloggers and the Media

Great story tonight on the Newshour (with Jim Lehrer) about welfare reform and how it is working, or not. The conlusion of one expert is that on the margins most kids are a little better off but on the whole the cycle of poverty, lack of education, and early pregnancy is unbroken. The report raises the fair question if poverty and chaos still reign in the homes of people who have moved from welfare to work, whether welfare reform is meeting its goals.

I have to think that forcing people off the welfare rolls without consideration of whether they can meet basic needs such as adequate child care, housing, or food obviously does a disservice to society, let alone the people directly affected.

It is a sign of the times in which we live and a reminder that people scratching out a subsistence living are nothing more than the effluent of the Bush machine. I am constantly amazed and outraged that some (not all) of the most overtly "religious" among us have forgotten about economic and social justice and the plight of children who are innocent of anything other than being born into poverty.

The motto for this White House ought to be: "I've got mine."

The story on bloggers had Jay Rosen of Columbia law school, David Gergen, and some pasty young puffy boy from Natinal Review Online. They spent most of the time talking about Eason Jordan, and a moment on J.D. Guckert. Really not enlightening discussion.

An Alternative to the "White Feather"

Jonah, Jonah, Jonah.

Doesn't like getting the White Feathers. Poor baby.

So I offer a compromise and a melding of events, a synchronicity if you will.

Ladies and Gentlemen.

Send a White Dude to Jonah

This would enable Jonah to avoid having to go to Iraq to hang with the Marines, he could have a former Marine come and hang with him.

He could help him write his columns. Wash each others cars. Go to sporting events. They could watch the pro-rasslin' they could, um, rassle a bit themselves.

I'm a Top!

Jeff Gannon/Guckert.

Aiyeeeeeeeee!

Andy Sullivan's classified ad at Milky Loads was an embarassment to him and pointed out his hypocrisy of bashing the gay community for what he termed promiscuity. But that little episode (pun intended) pales in comparison. How the hell did this guy get security clearance unless the Bush Administration knew exactly what he was there for?

So the man was, in essence, a male prostitute...putting the whore into mediawhore...literally.

The Pending Gannon Story from Americablog

John Aravosis has been the signature blogger on the Gannon story. He says that there is a BIG item on Gannon to break today. He has been leaving hints at his blog.

I have to be away from my computer for a few hours today, so I'm going to get my guess out of the way early.

Amelia Earhardt and Jimmy Hoffa killed Anastasia Romanov in the Conservatory with a lead pipe, the only witnesses to watch it being "Jeff Gannon, Male Prostitute" and his fraternity brother from Yale University.

Phew, let's see how that works.

Our Whore Media

Jeebus.

CNN on separate days shows pictures of one Nuclear Facility allegedly in Eurasia Iran, and another supposedly in Oceania North Korea.

It's the same fucking picture at different magnifications.

Go to Bradblog.

My Bloody Valentine

Somewhere in the bowels of suburban Virginia a clang emits from the front entry way at the Coulter Lair.

*Clang, Clang, Clang*

Ann Coulter sits in her black leather medieval-inspired living room, a large fire burning in her fire place, the fire fueled by stacked paper and straw effigies of various Kennedys.

*Clang, Clang, Clang*

Ann Coulter: (in an annoyed voice) Consuella? Consuella! Are you going to answer that, or are you going to pretend its the INS again?

*Clang, Clang, Clang*

Consuella: (with thick Honduran accept) I am locked in ze closet Meez Coulter, remember you leeft me in here yesterday. And please, I'm so hungry.

Ann Coulter: Shut Up, you stupid third world heathen. If you don't knock it off immediately, I'll sell your remaining kidney!

Consuella: I'm not a heathen, I'm Catholic.

Ann Coulter: Shut Up! If you'd have been legally here, who knows what damage you could have done, what with having to pay social security taxes or voting for Kerry, I shudder to think about it. You just stay down there in your manacles. Apparently, I as a right-thinking Republican have to do all the work around here.

*Clang, Clang, Clang*

Ann Coulter: I'm coming you annoying fuck.

[opens large door, which makes a echoing metallic noise]

[As the door opens, it is a Postal Delivery person, a woman]

Ann Coulter: Oh great a unionized, clerical, postal woman. The world was better when women didn't do anything but wear corsetts and take their opium in absinthe.

Postal Worker: Registered package for you, uh, Ma'am? I need you to sign for it.

Ann Coulter: I'm tired of you and your socialistic restrictions. You people are the reason we lost the Vientnam War?

Postal Worker: The Postal System lost Vietnam?

Ann Coulter: Be quiet and take your scorn like a man, you stupid woman.

[Coulter grabs package and slams door without signing]

Ann Coulter: Oh look, a Valentine for me. It's from Sean Hannity, and there is a note.

"Dear Ann,

On this Valentine's Day, I wanted to thank you for that magical night you beat me with a cudgel, stabbed me with a shiv, poured hot candlewax on my nipples, and finally allowed me to use my hands to stroke you to sweet release. Never in my life have I loved another androgynous she-man beast more than I love you. I'm sorry for that night I spent with Kellyann Fitzpatrick, and you need to know that I was forced into that position with Karen Hughes...her hands so cold, and strong, so strong.

Please accept this as a token of my love and affection, and a hope that soon you can place those closepins upon my breasts and give me the barium enema of love you promised me that magical night.

I give you Alan Combes testicles.

Love,

Sean."

[Ann a first emits a sly smile, her adams apple bobs up and down as her thin lips tremble. But then her chin clinches, her long bony fingers squeeze the box, and a look of anger comes over her].

Ann Coulter: That bastard gave me those last year!

I know Jack-shite about Music

I don't know what is hip and what isn't. My knowledge of popular music pretty much ends with the end of the British Invasion era. Ask me about Pete Townshend or Ray Davies I might be able to get something right.

However, even I know that historically this makes me more of an expert on rock music than the Grammys. I am pretty sure that the Who and the Kinks never won a Grammy. "Who's Next" probably lost out to the Archies or something, hell probably wasn't even nominated.

Anyhoo, it stands as a surprise to me then that, as Digby points out that a song with these lyrics wins a Grammy.

Don't wanna be an American idiot.
Don't want a nation under the new media.
And can you hear the sound of hysteria?
The subliminal mindfuck America.
...

Well maybe I'm the faggot America.
I'm not a part of a redneck agenda.
Now everybody do the propaganda.
And sing along in the age of paranoia.

...
Don't wanna be an American idiot.
One nation controlled by the media.
Information nation of hysteria.
It's going out to idiot America.

Of course, the media is about as clueless as the Grammys (or perhaps just more mendacious) as no mention of Green Day's left-wing populism is mentioned.

What You Want Hear Much at the Wolfowitz House or NRO

From Juan Cole regarding the winning party in Iraq:

One of the Neoconservatives' goals had been the installation of a pro-Israel government in Baghdad. But at Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution rallies and Friday prayers services, crowds have been known to chant "Death to Israel!"

...

The chorus from people like Senator Frisk that the failure of the United Iraqi Alliance (the Shiite religious parties) to gain 51 percent would require them to compromise and may benefit Iyad Allawi was nonsensical even on Sunday, and is now shown to be entirely untrue.

The UIA has in the end received 51 percent of seats in parliament, because of the electoral method being used, which added percentages from parties that did not quite pass the threshold for being seated to the parties that did, in a sort of second round. Second, the UIA may still be able to pick up some allies from small Shiite parties that ran separately but have similar goals (they are more theocratic than the UIA)-- which suggests that they may actually have 52 or 53 percent.

Allawi is irrelevant, since it is easier and more of a sure thing for the UIA to ally with the Kurds, who bring another 24 percent (more, now) into the coalition. They do not need to throw Allawi a bone to get the Kurds, they need to throw the Kurds some bones.

So Allawi is out of the running, at least if parliamentary politics is the game being played here. Were the Kurds to prove too intransigent, I suppose the UIA could try to cobble together 66 percent with Allawi and several tiny parties like the Communists. But they would still be unlikely to give away the prime minister post.

Throwing a bone to the Kurds?

A Turkey Wishbone perhaps?

Oopsy

Before going to war with Iraq, the Bush Administration said we had to make the world safe for Democracy. Oops, sorry, wrong war.

They told us that if we didn't go to war with Iraq "we was all gonna die".

Well, it is true that in the wake of the war we have not died yet. Of course, it turns out we were not going to die if we didn't invade.

Specifically 1,461 Americans though did Die.
About 10,000 have been seriously injured.
Perhaps in excess of 100,000, but certainly tens of thousands of Iraqis are dead.
Misplaced Idealism, has been replaced by hypocritical idealism.

Now, the PNAC can begin the official gnashing of teeth, while much of the broadcast media continues to be painfully inaccurate in reporting. But at least some in the print media get what is actually happening. Robin Wright at the Washington Post is one of them.

When the Bush administration decided to invade Iraq two years ago, it envisioned a quick handover to handpicked allies in a secular government that would be the antithesis of Iran's theocracy -- potentially even a foil to Tehran's regional ambitions.

But, in one of the greatest ironies of the U.S. intervention, Iraqis instead went to the polls and elected a government with a strong religious base -- and very close ties to the Islamic republic next door. It is the last thing the administration expected from its costly Iraq policy -- $300 billion and counting, U.S. and regional analysts say.

...the top two winning parties -- which together won more than 70 percent of the vote and are expected to name Iraq's new prime minister and president -- are Iran's closest allies in Iraq.

Thousands of members of the United Iraqi Alliance, a Shiite-dominated slate that won almost half of the 8.5 million votes and will name the prime minister, spent decades in exile in Iran. Most of the militia members in its largest faction were trained in Shiite-dominated Iran.

...

Conversely, the Iraqi secular democrats backed most strongly by the Bush administration lost big. During his State of the Union address last year, Bush invited Adnan Pachachi, a longtime Sunni politician and then-president of the Iraqi Governing Council, to sit with first lady Laura Bush. Pachachi's party fared so poorly in the election that it won no seats in the national assembly.

And current Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, backed by the CIA during his years in exile and handpicked by U.S. and U.N. officials to lead the interim government, came in third. He addressed a joint session of Congress in September, a rare honor reserved for heads of state of the closest U.S. allies. But now, U.S. hopes that Allawi will tally enough votes to vie as a compromise candidate and continue his leadership are unrealistic, analysts say.

"The big losers in this election are the liberals," said Stanford University's Larry Diamond, who was an adviser to the U.S. occupation government. "The fact that three-quarters of the national assembly seats have gone to just two [out of 111] slates is a worrisome trend. Unless the ruling coalition reaches out to broaden itself to include all groups, the insurgency will continue -- and may gain ground."

Good job, "Inarticulate Napoleon".

Sunday Morning Yammer

Today I was in a mood for testing my limits of self-inflicted agony and watched both This Week with George Stephanopolous and Lil' Russ's Meet the Press.

On This Week George smooched with James Baker for a few minutes before talking with Judd Gregg (R. NH) and Ken Conrad (D. ND).

I'm not sure where Conrad is listed by Josh Marshall (Conscinece Caucus or Fainthearted Faction) but he is not the person we want out talking on behalf of the party on the issue of Social Security privatization. He agrees too often with his friend Senator Gregg and is positively conciliatory on the President's "plan", saying that there is a kernel of a good idea in what the President proposes. Really all we got from this interview was that any plan would have to be bipartisan. Big deal.

Nothing to say about the panel discussion other than Sam and Cokie joined George Will suggesting whatever pride they once had is gone.

On Lil' Russ's Republican amateur hour we had Charles Grassley (R. Ia) and Charles Rangel (D. NY). We also go to see Pat Buchanan and Natan Sharansky. Now I'm not expecting much from the Lil' feller these days as he has obviously sold out, hosting panels full of rabid right wing bobble-heads and meek tender-hearts to represent the opposing viewpoint.

First, Grassley and Rangel.

Iraq

Grassley first on Iraq: there is a movement toward freedom, people are naturally born free, they want to be free, you cannot impose democracy, democracy is natural, you can only impose dictatorship. Uggh. How do you talk to person whose view of the human condition was obtained from Dr. Seuss books? Rangel knows how. It is good news (the Iraqi elections) by Republican standards. Beautiful. But it wasn't worth the cost of wounded and dead Americans and Iraqis then he shifted to when do we leave, invoking his service in Korea in 1950, and we're still there. Even better.

Then Grassley makes the mistake of saying that it was one more step in the war on terrorism so we don't have another 9/11. Rangel then dangled the innaugural address in Grasslaey's face, like he was showing Grassley what the dog left on the Persian rug the night before: if the President meant what he said we would be in Syria, North Korea, and China. Grassley really looked like Rangel showed him a turd:

REP. RANGEL: I tell you this, if the president means what he says in his inaugural address, then we're going to have to go into Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, North Korea and China. You know, for Americans to get so hypocritical over democracies with countries that we trade with every day, it really amazes me. And I'm telling you, we went into Iraq not for elections. We went there to knock off Saddam Hussein, but the American people thought it was connected with 9/11, there was weapons of mass destruction, there were connections with al-Qaeda. It was all a fraud. Now, if this is the benefit that we get for going to war, we cannot afford to free people all over the world. We don't have that many lives to give up. Of course, if it was a draft, we wouldn't even be talking about freeing people all over the world. We're fighting this war with other people's kids.

SEN. GRASSLEY: The president did not declare war on January the 20 in his speech. What he declared is the natural goal of human beings all over the world and that's simply to be free. It's just natural.

REP. RANGEL: By American troops?

SEN. GRASSLEY: It's in man's basic nature going back to John Locke that people want to be free and they're born free.

REP. RANGEL: And they don't want their children to die for other people's freedom.

Social Security

MR. RUSSERT: I've heard the president talk about private personal accounts. I have not heard him talk about benefit reductions or tax increases. Does he understand the true problem of Social Security?

SEN. GRASSLEY: The person who defines the issue will determine the outcome. That's an old adage. The president is a Professor Bush doing exactly what needs to be done. He's out there having a seminar with the American people on the problems of Social Security that everybody knows exists but the public has not concentrated on it. He's going to force the people of this country to concentrate on it. And I will find the solution, and all of those issues are on the table. The president knows that there's problems beyond, and he knows that personal accounts will not solve the problem. They're just a small part of the problem.

There are 100 moving parts. It's up to Chuck Grassley and Charlie Rangel in a bipartisan way to bring those parts together so that we guarantee our seniors a safe and secure retirement that they're entitled to, peace of mind that people who are retired today will not have their benefits cut. But for the present generation, the issue is that the New Deal program of the last 70 years was good for our grandparents and today, but do Grandma and Grandpa Grassley and everybody else want our children and grandchildren to have the same good deal we have? And if we don't, our grandchildren--if we don't make changes, our children and grandchildren are going have a raw deal.
***
MR. RUSSERT: Congressman Rangel, you said that you "vowed to make Republicans back down from their current effort to distance `privatization' from Social Security reform plans many of them embrace. `We're going to wrap it around their neck until they come to the floor and say they didn't mean what they said. ...Every time they say "Social Security," we'll say "privatization."'"

Is that your plan?

REP. RANGEL: I don't remember saying that, but it sure sounds like me. First of all, this whole idea of correcting a very complex piece of legislation like Social Security screams out for a bipartisan solution. I could not agree with Chairman Grassley more. But there is no Democrat in the House of Representatives, or on my committee, that this president has reached out for. I'm telling you now, Social Security reform by the president is dead, and he killed it.

In 1978, a young fellow ran for Congress in Texas. His name was George Bush. And he said then that unless you privatize Social Security it will be busted in 10 years. He thought it then, and he thinks it now. This whole concept is to scare young people into believing that their benefits are not going to be there. When I met with the president and several Republicans and Democrats on his committee and the Ways and Means Committee, the president promised us that he will present to the Congress a plan to show how he was going to do it. This privatization plan just leads to a privatization and cuts the benefits and deprives the government of the promises that we've made to those people who pay into the system.

Then Lil' Russ reverted to his Republican ways.

MR. RUSSERT: But, Congressman, December 1, 1999, this is Charlie Rangel. "I am one Democrat that truly believes that Democrats will not benefit by doing nothing on Social Security." If you oppose the president's plan, what is your plan? What would you do?

Could Rangel handle the question? Uh, I think so.

REP. RANGEL: What a question. What president's plan? The president has not presented us a plan. He talks about cutting benefits. He talks about taking away the guaranteed benefit and substitute it with the gamble on Wall Street. If the president would give us a plan, there's no question in my mind I could sit down with Charlie Grassley, some Republicans on the Ways and Means Committee, and say, "Mr. President, this is right and this is wrong."

But why should the Democrats, when there is no crisis, and I think the president is backing off of that, when the president is talking about cutting up the taxes by over a trillion dollars, not putting the budget figures for the war in there? We got tens of thousands of middle-income people that will get caught with a tax with the alternative minimum tax crushing them, and then all of a sudden, on his watch, he says that he wants to privatize Social Security, and we can't find Republicans embracing it. He doesn't buy the Republican ideas. We can't find Bill Thomas embracing them. We find House Republicans rejecting it. And you're asking me for the Democratic plan?

Russ then showed that he may somewhere up there have a couple testicles that want to drop.

MR. RUSSERT: But, Senator, shouldn't there be truth in packaging, the suggestion being made around the country that if we have private or personal accounts, then that's going to really be a big step towards dealing with the long-term financial problems of Social Security?

SEN. GRASSLEY: OK.

MR. RUSSERT: Here's what a memo that was written by Peter Wehner, who's Bush's director of strategic initiatives. And he says that, "The suspicion that personal savings accounts may have little to do with making Social Security solvent over the long run was reinforced by his e-mail. If we duck our duty on benefit calculations, it can have serious short-term economic consequences. Here's why. If we borrow $1 - $2 trillion dollars to cover transition costs for personal savings accounts and make no changes to wage indexing," future payoffs to recipients, "we'll have borrowed trillions and will still confront more than $10 trillion in unfunded liabilities."

So when the president talks about private accounts, the second piece of that is what has to be done to pay for those? Now, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has done an analysis of what the commission that reported to President Bush recommended in terms of wage indexing. And this is what they found, that under current law, in 2042, recipients would get a 36 percent replacement, money--their three highest years' income, a 36 percent replacement; 2075 it would be 36 percent. Under a proposal of so-called wage indexing, it would drop to 27 percent, and in 2075 to 20 percent, which would be a benefit cut of 26 percent and 46 percent. OK. Now, that's reality. That's part of what an honest presentation to the American people would include. Why haven't we heard that?

Hmmm. Yes? Senator Grassley?

SEN. GRASSLEY: The president has a rare opportunity to get this issue out there. And in the next months, this is all going to be made transparent. There's no way that you cover this up. I don't want to cover it up. Everything has to be on the table. But here's what you got to look at. You have got to look at the fact that we do have a problem, and now's the time to do something about it. And there's 100 moving parts. What do you put together to get a solution? We can do that. But with the president not defining the issue with the American people first, nothing's going to get done. So he's doing that.

Nope. That won't cut it.

Then Lil' Russ's testicles shrank back up into his abdomen.

MR. RUSSERT: OK, so let's talk on the table. The number of people on Social Security is going to double from 40 million to 80 million. Life expectancy is now going--78, 79, 80 years old.

REP. RANGEL: Exactly.

MR. RUSSERT: People on the program for 15 years. There used to be 16 workers per retiree. There's soon to be three workers-retiree, two workers-retiree. Knowing all that, hearing President Clinton, what should we do? Should we raise the cap on the payroll tax? Should we have a means testing for affluent Americans? Should we have an indexing of the cost of living or indexing of benefits, wages, price? What should we do?

Oh well.

Here was the best moment:

SEN. GRASSLEY: Everything's on the table as far as I'm concerned. I've said it once. I'll say it twice and I'm going to say it until I put a bill before the United States Senate. And there are bipartisan groups, people working together, to consider all these things right now. Charlie may not want to admit it, but there's some Democrats coming to the table. But what you're proposing...

REP. RANGEL: Not in the House.

Priceless.

As to Buchanan and Sharansky...just read the transcript.

For the Good of the Cause

Torturing people, that is. Is this a story that will just fade away or will our elected representatives do their job? I have doubts, but maybe, just maybe some more sunlight will be shed on this horrible episode in our history. Seymour Hersh and Jane Mayer have done great work on the issue but more needs to be done.

In today's NYT we read about one of the people caught up in the mess of rendition and Guantanamo. Now I have no idea about the guy's innocence but the fact that we just let him go, given the justice department's and administration's policies on handling these people, one would think that if we had an airtight case against the guy, he would still be behind bars. Whatever they had on him, whether he deserved it or not, they put him through hell. Among the horrors was 40 months being held incommunicado.

After being arrested in Pakistan in the weeks after Sept. 11, 2001, he was held as a terror suspect by the Americans for 40 months. Back home now, Mr. Habib alleges that at every step of his detention - from Pakistan, to Egypt, to Afghanistan, to Guantánamo - he endured physical and psychological abuse.
***
American officials said he admitted to training some of the Sept. 11 hijackers and to having prior knowledge of the attack, but they never charged him. Mr. Habib said any confessions he made were a result of torture and were not genuine.

"Whatever they wanted me to sign," he said, "I signed to survive."

Despite his activities in Afghanistan, Australian officials said there was no evidence that he trained any of the hijackers. One official said, "I have absolutely no sympathy for him," but added that whatever he did, it did not justify the torture he said he had endured.
***
He said the American woman told him "this is your last chance," and that an Australian official said, "I'm sorry for you, Mr. Habib, you're never going to see your kids anymore."

Mr. Habib said he was taken to a room with hooks on the wall and a barrel, set sideways like a roller, on the floor. His arms were stretched out, he said, and each wrist was handcuffed and fastened to a hook on the wall. By his description, the only way not to be left hanging was to stand on the barrel; an electric wire ran through it. Mr. Habib said he believed the interrogators in that room were Pakistani.

Mr. Habib said that when he refused to confess to being part of a 1995 terror plot, one man turned on the current. He lifted his feet to avoid the shock, he recalled, and he was suspended from the wall.

"I lost everything," he said. He doesn't know how long he was unconscious, but he said that when he came to, he again refused to confess to terrorism. While he was still hanging from the wall, another man, who said he was a martial arts expert, came in and, Mr. Habib said, "starts jump-kicking in my face, jump-kicking in my stomach."

The next night, he said, the Pakistanis took him to an airport where he saw 15 or 20 beefy men wearing masks, black T-shirts and combat boots. From their voices, he said, he knew they were Americans. Mr. Habib started to fight with the Pakistanis, he recalled, and "then the Americans came and started beating me."

They beat him quiet and stripped him naked, he said. Men in black masks came into the room. One had a still camera, the other a video camera. "They make picture of everything in my body," he said.
***
He said he was handcuffed and shackled and put on a plane. Then, he said, the men put duct tape over his mouth, a bag over his head and goggles over the bag.

In November 2001, Maha Habib received a fax from the Australian Foreign Ministry. "We remain confident that your husband is detained in Egypt," it said, adding that "the government has received credible advice that he is well and being treated well."

Mr. Habib said that his chief interrogator spoke Arabic and English and later appeared in Afghanistan when Mr. Habib was held there. He said that during interrogations, he was surrounded by men who hit him and doused him with ice water.

During what he called "the worst day in my life," Mr. Habib said an interrogator told him: "Mamdouh, I've got your family here - you're going to talk to us.' " The interrogator taunted him with the possibility of seeing his wife and four children. Mr. Habib said that in his delirium, he believed they were there. When he realized they were not, he said, "I became crazy."

He said he jumped up, still shackled to a chair, and attacked the interrogator.

He said he was dragged from the room, handcuffed. "And they hang me from the ceiling," he said. "They got sticks and everyone, they go on beating me." He lifted his shirt to show the bruise on his back. "I want to die," he said.
***
In Afghanistan, he said, female soldiers "touched me in the private areas" while questioning him. "They was swearing at me, 'you criminal,' 'you terrorist,' " he said. Interrogators also put a helmet connected to wires on his head, Mr. Habib said. When they did not like his answers, he said he would feel a jolt, and his body would start shaking.

He spent only a week at Bagram before being flown to Guantánamo in May 2002. He arrived sick and faint. "I was really scared," he said. "I don't know who I am."

When his interrogators asked about his treatment in Egypt, he said, he told them about the psychological abuse using his wife and children. Soon, he said, his Guantánamo interrogators were doing the same.

Three or four times, he said, when he was taken to an interrogation room, there were pictures doctored to make it appear that his wife was naked next to Osama bin Laden. "I see my wife everywhere, everywhere," he said.

He said that during one interrogation session, a woman wearing a skirt said to him, "You Muslim people don't like to see woman," he said. Then she reached under her skirt, Mr. Habib said, pulling out what he described as a bloody stick. "She threw the blood in my face," he said.

The way I have it figured, I would say anything to appease an interrogator who was threatening me with physical and mental pain, not to mention the possibility I wouldn't see my family again. Does anyone really think this is an effective way to get information?

The next step is real hearings on the matter. Where is McCain? Where is Hagel? Where is Kerry, Reid, Durbin? The NYT reported today that we may be close to hearings.

The inquiry would be the first by Congress to address the C.I.A.'s conduct in what has remained a shadowy corner of American counterterrorism efforts. The agency is believed to be holding at least three dozen senior members of Al Qaeda at secret sites around the world, and former intelligence officials say it has been involved in the extrajudicial handing over to third countries of scores of other suspects, in an arrangement known as rendition.
***
The top Republican on the panel, Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, confirmed in an interview on Friday that he and his staff were reviewing a proposal submitted by the top Democrat, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, which called for a formal investigation into detention, interrogation and rendition. Mr. Roberts said he was not sure that a formal investigation was warranted, but he suggested that the two sides could agree on a review.

It's a start.

I'm Off

Have work to do, damned reality.

But before I go, let me express my incredulity at the suckiness of our major broadcast news corporate media whores for their rampant spinning of the Iraqi election. Meta-reality usually loses to actual-reality, except when it comes to pulling wool over the eyes of the electorate. Notice how well those associated with the American occupation performed.

The Shiite-dominated ticket received more than 4 million votes, or about 48 percent of the total cast, Iraqi election officials said. A Kurdish alliance was second with 2.175 million votes, or 26 percent, and Allawi's list was third with about 1.168 million, or 13.8 percent. Of Iraq's 14 million eligible voters, 8,456,266 cast ballots for 111 candidate lists, the commission said. That represents a turnout of about 60 percent, several points higher than the predicted 57 percent.

The figures also indicate that many Sunni Arabs stayed at home on election day, with only 17,893 votes -- or 2 percent -- cast in the National Assembly race in Anbar province, a stronghold of the Sunni Muslim insurgency. In Ninevah province, which includes the third-largest city, Mosul, only 17 percent of the voters participated in the National Assembly race and 14 percent voted in the provincial council contests. A ticket headed by the country's president Ghazi al-Yawer, a Sunni Arab, won only about 150,000 votes -- less than 2 percent. A list headed by Sunni elder statesman Adnan Pachachi took only 12,000 votes -- or 0.1 percent.
Also Sunday, gunmen assassinated an Iraqi general and two companions in a Shiite neighborhood of Baghdad. The attack occurred as Brig. Gen. Jadaan Farhan and his companions were traveling through Baghdad's Kazimiyah district, an Iraqi police officer said on condition of anonymity.

Now what spare time I have, the rest of the day, I'll be finishing up the "Deadwood" DVD I have. And in the spirit of that show, I declare this a "fucking cocksucker" of an open goddamned thread.

Ask Dr. Attaturk, February 12, 2005

Question 1:

Why do people hate my husband so much? Is it because I'm black and he's white? Is it because I'm well-educated and he's dumb as a brick? Is it
because he's also married to another woman, and she's white? Is it because he takes from the poor and gives to the rich? Is it because he gave up liquor? Is it because he loves the Lord? Is it because people say it's not right to marry people who work for you? WHY? WHY do people hate my husband so much?

I'm afraid to get off the plane now,

My Husband's Wife

Dear MHW,

Perhaps you don't realize it, but if you do not live in Utah, and even there more often, folks just don't like the concept of bigamy.

Oh, believe me I know. Years ago, during the Carter years, Dr. Atta J. Turk, discovered just how lucrative the "guru" business could be. That was really the golden age of being a charismatic cult leader -- we'll until the current Cult of the Chimperor reintroduced us to the concept.

I mean the 1970s were great for that sort of thing. Where Mao had spent much of the 1960s sucking up all the cult Karma, his death really opened the doors for your Marcos, your Pol Pots, your "Doc" this or that. And even in this country, it started to become more popular, and Dr. Turk is many things, but unable to notice a trend is not one of them.

It all started where I invented something called "Pet Dirt", and it really grew into the multinational commodity known as "Thefingerhut", a mail order business selling various soils and battery-powered sex toys. We made money, and dammit we saved souls. But granted the power did sort of go to my head. I made up my own Opium Bar in the basement of my 45,000 square foot mansion set in the wilds of the Yukon Territory. I dispensed constant streams of advice such as "If you are worried about something, give money to me and I'll tell you things will be okay...as long as you give more money to me...and have yourself a large dildo buried in the finest Wisconsin topsoil."

A side benefit was the development of a harum of wives, where we had constant orgies of sex and basket-making.

It all came apart when the fucking Canadians honored that damn extradition treaty. But it gave me insight into a new form of multiple marriage, in my role as Prison-Bitch at the Stillwater State Penitentiary in Minnesota. With my partners Hakim, Gunther, and Raul -- we had a mixed race grouping to be sure. Ah the times we had!

...I'm sorry what was the question?

I think people hate your husband because he is an arrogant boob that cannot put a sentence together.



Question 2:

Dear Dr. Atta J. Turk:

Why does my head explode when I hear Dear Leader mis-pro-nounc-iate even small words?

Thank you, Blue American.

Because freedom isn't free, though it can be remarkably hard for our Chimperor to say.

During my time on Oprah, as the advice guru, before that a-hole Dr. "fucking" Phil bogarted me out of my spot by sucking up to Oprah..."Good point Oprah this" and "always listen to Oprah that". Fucking big-boned, small-pricked Texan!

Sorry, some repressed anger there. Must breathe deeply...go to my happy place...my happy place...

As I was saying, some of you may remember my time as Oprah's dispenser of psychological advice in the mid-1990s. It was during that time that I was invited to address the "American Society of Sociopathic Federal Underwriters, Copysetters, and Keynote Speakers" in Austin, Texas. It was at that time that I first encountered then Texas Governor George Bush. He was, in essense my warm up act. We chatted at the time and he even gave me the nickname of "Turkeydurkee" and I called him "Motherfucker".

After that we didn't have much contact. But I was aware even then of the truth. That Mr. Bush speaks in tongues at all times. What you are hearing is the holy spirit passing through him. At least that's what Karen Hughes told me, and I believed her, because I had it on good authority that the Shriners had been in town the week before and when one of them challenged that explanation she ripped the fez off his body with her bare hands...with the head still attached!

I hope that answers your question.

Faith-Based Science

Billmon is no longer one of the best writers on the blogosphere. But he has become one of the best researchers and users of other writings to prove a point.

Never moreso than with this comparison to our new American Lysenkos.

Feel a Draft (or insert your own witty headline)

From Rolling Stone:

But with the Army and Marines perilously overextended by the war in Iraq, that volunteer foundation is starting to crack. The "weekend warriors" of the Army Reserve and the National Guard now make up almost half the fighting force on the front lines, and young officers in the Reserve are retiring in droves. The Pentagon, which can barely attract enough recruits to maintain current troop levels, has involuntarily extended the enlistments of as many as 100,000 soldiers. Desperate for troops, the Army has lowered its standards to let in twenty-five percent more high school dropouts, and the Marines are now offering as much as $30,000 to anyone who re-enlists. To understand the scope of the crisis, consider this: The United States is pouring nearly as much money into incentives for new recruits -- almost $300 million -- as it is into international tsunami relief.

"The Army's maxed out here," says retired Gen. Merrill McPeak, who served as Air Force chief of staff under the first President Bush. "The Defense Department and the president seem to be still operating off the rosy scenario that this will be over soon, that this pain is temporary and therefore we'll just grit our teeth, hunker down and get out on the other side of this. That's a bad assumption." The Bush administration has sworn up and down that it will never reinstate a draft. During the campaign last year, the president dismissed the idea as nothing more than "rumors on the Internets" and declared, "We're not going to have a draft -- period." Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, in an Op-Ed blaming "conspiracy mongers" for "attempting to scare and mislead young Americans," insisted that "the idea of reinstating the draft has never been debated, endorsed, discussed, theorized, pondered or even whispered by anyone in the Bush administration."

That assertion is demonstrably false. According to an internal Selective Service memo made public under the Freedom of Information Act, the agency's acting director met with two of Rumsfeld's undersecretaries in February 2003 precisely to debate, discuss and ponder a return to the draft. The memo duly notes the administration's aversion to a draft but adds, "Defense manpower officials concede there are critical shortages of military personnel with certain special skills, such as medical personnel, linguists, computer network engineers, etc." The potentially prohibitive cost of "attracting and retaining such personnel for military service," the memo adds, has led "some officials to conclude that, while a conventional draft may never be needed, a draft of men and women possessing these critical skills may be warranted in a future crisis." This new draft, it suggests, could be invoked to meet the needs of both the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security.

The memo then proposes, in detail, that the Selective Service be "re-engineered" to cover all Americans -- "men and (for the first time) women" -- ages eighteen to thirty-four. In addition to name, date of birth and Social Security number, young adults would have to provide the agency with details of their specialized skills on an ongoing basis until they passed out of draft jeopardy at age thirty-five. Testifying before Congress two weeks after the meeting, acting director of Selective Service Lewis Brodsky acknowledged that "consultations with senior Defense manpower officials" have spurred the agency to shift its preparations away from a full-scale, Vietnam-style draft of untrained men "to a draft of smaller numbers of critical-skills personnel."

Eighteen to Thirty-Four?

Whew, that's a relief!

There is much more inequity and ominous matters found here.

We all remember the Upton Sinclair classic "Bobo" right?

The world's most intellectually flatulant columnist demonstrates his talent by writing about his inability to get the best seats for the new Baseball team. Nevermind the fact that he can afford season tickets for a MLB team. Bobo would be lucky to get a job as a vender, let alone have such disposable income from a job and media appearance that literally hundreds of peanut, hotdog, and beer venders would be more qualified to perform.

This is the age of Renaissance Weekends and Davos. This is an age in which it is immoral to discriminate according to race or sex, but discrimination according to career status is so thoroughly baked into society that it governs everything from restaurant table assignments to elementary school admissions prospects. We have worked up so many subtle gradations based on occupational status that if the characters from Edith Wharton novels could come to earth, they'd be so put off by our social stratifications they'd probably turn into Bolsheviks.

This is literally the most jejune hack working today complaining of his lack of status! Brain melting...soul hurting...must put down gun...

It's not surprising that the Nationals would reserve seats for the usual array of eminences. What's surprising is that the team president would so piously use this argument as his defense, as if he were simply pointing out the obvious order of the universe. We've gone from a culture of piously denied inequality to one of brazenly acknowledged Big Shot-ism.

And, it is YOUR FUCKING SHILLING for the Party that perpetuates such inequities that is responsible you ass!

Our Question of the Week

Yesterday brother Attaturk posted on the Condi lies regarding what the administration knew about Al Quaeda and when. More specifically Rice lied about whether the Bush administration was handed a plan for dealing with the terrorist threat by the Clinton administration.

Today renee Montagne discussed the memo with Mary Louise Kelly, NPR's intelligence correspondent. Montagne asked Kelly about the discrepancy between the representation by Rice and the facts of a 13 page document attached to the memo. (What follows is not a transcript or verbatim repeat, to listen to the story go here):

Montagne: There's been some talk about how much of a plan the Clinton administration handed over, after all they had 8 years and the Bush administration had only a few months.

Kelly: It depends on who's reading it and what their politics are. This memo interestingly contained two attachments, one a 13 page document titled "Strategy for Eliminating the Threat from Jihadi Networks of Al Quaeda".

Depends on one's politics. UnEFFINGbelievable.

Our question: with NPR's efforts never to try to play everything right down the middle, even where there is proof that the administration LIED, how far can it be before becoming known as Fox radio news?

Children Scarred for Life

Imagine the enjoyment of the children hearing children's stories from these people.

The Children's Hour
A Reading of New and Classic Children's Poetry
Tuesday, January 25, 2005 5:30 PM - 7:00 PM

Wohlstetter Conference Center, Twelfth Floor, AEI

Announcer: Okay, children, okay, bring your whole milk and freedom cookies over here and gather round in a semi-circle...that's good, that's good. Now, we have a special program of poetry reading for you. Our first reader is this nice man, Michael Novak who will read a poem of his own composition to you. Are you ready Mike?

Michael Novak: Yes, it's nice to see so many young children gathered 'round, so young, I'm glad you children are here today. I wrote a little poem for you, I hope you like it.

"Jack and Jill, went off the pill
and made themselves a baby
But they were liberal and rich
and Jill was a bitch
so they threw fetus in a ditch"

[...silence, followed by crying...]

Okay, I have another...

"Hillary was a craven old whore
Formerly the friend of bad Al Gore
Supported by Dykes
She stole beanies and trykes
And voted to turn you all gay"

[...screaming and crying]

What is your problem kids? This is life you spoiled little brats. Here's one last one.

"If your Mom voted Kerry
Then your Dad is a fairy
and God's anger will be wroth

They will end up in hell,
of flamed sulfur 'twill smell
and your Parents oh they will suffer
...a lot!"

Random three-year old, "You are a mean man!"

Micheal Novak: "Oh yeah? I'm a mean man? Well fuck you, you little brat!"

Announcer: Sorry, sorry Children. Settle down now. Could someone help out that little girl in the red pants I think she had an accident...oh, I guess most of them did. Let's take a little break so people can get you all changed children.

[20 minutes later]

Announcer: Alright children, we are ready to go again. We are sorry about the restraining fence, but we have to keep you all in this area and too many of you were trying to run away across the street to the cemetary -- things will get better now, we promise. Okay, kids, now we have Bill Kristol to read a story to all of you. Bill?


Bill Kristol: Thanks children. So many bright, young, conservative faces. Um, you there, the little boy with the red hair, please stay back from me, Uncle Bill doesn't need any of your slobber juice on his wing-tips.

Okay, I'm going to read to you from the updated classic, "The Little Engine that Could, renamed the Little President that Could". Here we go.

"George was the new President, who felt very lonely,
George wasn't as popular as the last President,
Though he was sure that he was nicer, and better.
One day, when George was working real, real, hard
His friend Condi came and said things were historical,
And then things got really bad and stuff blew up.
So George said go bomb that place some of them were
And things went pretty much okay and it was good
And many people gathered round George for doing the obvious.

But George was still lonely and remembered his daddy
George's Daddy was a President too, who had had trouble
And George thought, that country that cause him trouble was bad
"I sure hope that I can do what my Daddy could not do" George thought
Maybe I can launch a major military operation thought George,
But many thought that he should not invade without a good plan
But George just stamped his feet and looked at them and smirked
George then said, "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can."
And then he told people what they wanted to hear about the war
And still some of other nasty people who were unAmerican said "no"
But George just said, "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can"

And you know what kids, George did invade...and now freedom is on the March.

Isn't that a nice story?

[silence...]

Bill Kristol: "What's wrong with you people? Well I'm off to FoxNews. Later, Losers."

Announcer: "Thank you Bill. Children! Children, stop laying with your faces down and thrashing and crying, we have one more person to speak, as soon as we can find him. Oh, here he comes on nice Mr. Johnson...oh, dear, he seems to have fallen down...okay...almost up...oh, down again. Yes, isn't he a funny man with his stumbling about. Yes, it's funny how Mr. Hitchens just punched that man in between the legs, he's a funny man. Here he is Children, Mr. Christopher Hitchens."


Hitchens: Help! Help! I'm thurrounded by angry midgef! Helph me!

Announcer: "Mr. Hitchens, these are children"

Hitchens: "Children?"

Announcer: "Yes"

Hitchens: Oh, well nowf, juth let me find my chair thath betta .

"Okay, who wanth to climb up onto Uncle Chrithyz lap?"



Announcer: "Okay, kids, that's all we have for today. Thanks for coming. I'd like to remind you all that all of this stuff that happened here today is a secret...a secret that if you tell anyone about, mommy and daddy...WILL DIE, THEY'LL BE DEAD! GOT IT?



DEAD! So let's be quiet about it and have a nice day."

Well, I once saw Brit Hume swallow a Funnel Cake whole!

Nothing like this ever happens to Atta J. Turk, as we experience, Josh Marshall's brush with banality:

Given all these questions about credentialing and pseudonyms, I'm also curious how 'Gannon' was credentialed at the Republican National Convention, though the RNC certainly has every right to credential whomever they choose, with whatever name they want to go by.

As fate would have it, I sat next to him in the press stands during President Bush's convention speech last September.

I didn't know who he was; he didn't know who I was. And that was probably a good thing all around. (I only found out his story when I looked him up later on the web, after what ended up happening; my recollection is that he gave me his card.) But that didn't stop it from being a surreal experience. Through some sort of double karmic inversion, the women sitting to my left -- 'Gannon', appropriately enough, was on my right ... God not only has a sense of humor, it seems; he is also well-organized -- turned out to be one of the protestors in the hall who lept to her feet mid-speech, tossed on a pink slip and began denouncing the president for about 1.32 seconds before being manhandled out of hall by some security guard who seemed to materialize out of nowhere.

I wrote about it that evening. The 'journalist' mentioned briefly at the end of the post is 'Gannon'.

And what was written at that time?

An unassuming women had been sitting on our press row for the couple hours prior to the speech. And about half way through out of the corner of my eye I saw a plainclothes police officer lunge in our direction. I looked back to see the woman who -- without my having noticed -- had tossed on a pink slip over her dress and I guess was about to start some sort of chant or statement.

He grabbed her; there was a brief commotion. Other officers rushed in our direction. And then before I could even figure out what was going on, she was gone.

There are some more details to the story, including the journalist sitting next to me, who started yelling at the woman -- or perhaps better to say, aggressively scolding her -- as she was dragged off. But I'll leave that till tomorrow

.

Pining

Karl, take this Lump off of me
I can't take it anymore.
She's now gone, and I'm down you see
I feel like knockin' upon Condi's door.


Knock, knock, knockin' on Condi's door
Knock, knock, knockin' on Condi's door

Knock, knock, knockin' on Condi's door
Knock, knock, knockin' on Condi's door


Karl, me and Lump have hit the ground
I just can't shoot it anymore.
That long sad day is comin' round
I feel like knockin' upon Condi's door.


Knock, knock, knockin' on Condi's door
Knock, knock, knockin' on Condi's door

Knock, knock, knockin' on Condi's door
Knock, knock, knockin' on Condi's door



Last picture from here.

Friday Miscellaneous Lifeform Blogging

Boy it was tough to come up with a lifeform this week. So after long and careful thought (ten seconds) and the assistance of a champion snarkerer, I decided to go with a creature that may be the least photographyed lifeform on earth, ubiquitous yet rarely seen. Perhaps with good reason.

I present to you today's lifeform.

Kathryn Jean Lopez


Aw, just kidding.

The Elephant Seal

Condi Rice L-I-A-R

With the complicity of the national media a whole range of lies was never put on full display to the American people.

March 22, 2004, Rice stated that at the time of the Bush Administration's beginning:

"No al Qaeda plan was turned over to the new administration."

LIAR!



See the whole thing from Richard Clarke, January 25, 2001, in PDF form here.

Not shown here, but attached to the original Clarke memo are two Clinton-era documents relating to al-Qaeda. (1) "Tab A December 2000 Paper: Strategy for Eliminating the Threat from the Jihadist Networks of al-Qida: Status and Prospects," was released to the National Security Archive along with the Clarke memo. (2)"Tab B, September 1998 Paper: Pol-Mil Plan for al-Qida," also known as the Delenda Plan, was attached to the original memo, but was not released to the Archive and remains under request with the National Security Council.

Torture Is As Torture Does

Digby wrote at length on the issue of how our torture policies are changing us and, predictably, has it down. Jane Mayer has written an important and thorough piece in the New Yorker that is well worth a full read. There is a lot there but there is some knock-you-off-your-feet stuff. One of the original cheerleaders advocating the use of torture is John Yoo, former law clerk to the honorable Clarence Thomas and now enlightener of young lawyers-to-be.

In a recent phone interview, Yoo was soft-spoken and resolute. “Why is it so hard for people to understand that there is a category of behavior not covered by the legal system?” he said. “What were pirates? They weren’t fighting on behalf of any nation. What were slave traders? Historically, there were people so bad that they were not given protection of the laws. There were no specific provisions for their trial, or imprisonment. If you were an illegal combatant, you didn’t deserve the protection of the laws of war.” Yoo cited precedents for his position. “The Lincoln assassins were treated this way, too,” he said. “They were tried in a military court, and executed.” The point, he said, was that the Geneva Conventions’“simple binary classification of civilian or soldier isn’t accurate.”

Yoo also argued that the Constitution granted the President plenary powers to override the U.N. Convention Against Torture when he is acting in the nation’s defense—a position that has drawn dissent from many scholars. As Yoo saw it, Congress doesn’t have the power to “tie the President’s hands in regard to torture as an interrogation technique.” He continued, “It’s the core of the Commander-in-Chief function. They can’t prevent the President from ordering torture.” If the President were to abuse his powers as Commander-in-Chief, Yoo said, the constitutional remedy was impeachment. He went on to suggest that President Bush’s victory in the 2004 election, along with the relatively mild challenge to Gonzales mounted by the Democrats in Congress, was “proof that the debate is over.” He said, “The issue is dying out. The public has had its referendum.”

Wow. An issue that caused a blip on the televised MSM, saw a couple of short sweep-it-under-the rug congressional hearings, and barely a moment of stir in the Gonzalez hearings does not constitute a referendum. The President saying he doesn't condone torture shouldn't cut it, yet apparently it does.

Many of the "suspects" we are detaining and subjecting to extraordinary rendition (picking people off the street or out of their home, blindfolding, gagging, drugging, and then shipping them off to a country that will torture them) will never see a courtroom let alone be formally charged.

The point of due process isn't to benefit the guilty, it is to protect the innocent. It is easy to justify torturing people like bin Laden (not that I am) but we institute safeguards that the few innocents inevitably caught in our web aren't treated like criminals. So how do we deal with the smugness that has created this awful situation? How do we teach people that it is easy to sit in judgment and proclaim what treatment is "legal" when you don't have a fear in the world that anything like this could ever happen to you?

I would remind the smug bastards Yoo, Gonzalez, Bybee, Bush, Cheney, Chertoff and all of those other assholes that a percentage of the people we are responsible for torturing are innocent. Then I would suggest they get a taste of their own medicine. Strip their clothes from them, beat them, whip them, deprive them of light, food, water, urinate on them, attach wires to their nuts. then pretend you are goin to drown them. When will they get the point that it isn't about coddling prisoners, it is about whether we become the animals that we set out to cage and torture.

I've Seen Boxers retire Less

I thought he was going away. But nooooooooooooooooooo.

Oh and how what a pleasant scenario this sounds like:

Even better time at Nick Denton's bash in Glenn's honor afterwards in a fabu Soho loft. Glenn [ed. As in Glenn Reynolds, aka ERNEST T. BASS, ESQ] is as shy and charming in person as in pixels. I was curious about his ccent.

So he chews with his mouth open and spew out "heh" and "indeed"?

I think people had more fun eathing out with Lucrecia Borgia myself.

Oh, and what's this?

HEADS UP: The Charlie Rose show on blogging with me, Wonkette, Instapundit and Joe Trippi will air tonight. I thought it was a great conversation. Check it out.

Why do the same calvalcade of hacks get trotted out to discuss blogging time after time?

Is there a worse choice as a representative of progressive blogging than Ana Marie Cox?

...Lord knows can't have Atrios, can't have Kos, can't even have Jesse, Oliver, or Steve (Network exec. "psst...their black, black people don't blog").

I made this statement about Howie the Putz one time, but get me on Charlie Rose and I promise my appearance will consist of this...

FUCK YOU CHARLIE!
FUCK YOU CHARLIE!
FUCK YOU CHARLIE!

The Moral Clarity of War

Boy-wonder progressives Ezra Klein & Matthew Yglesias have contributed an item to the Cole/Goldberg debate...well actually the intellectual massacre of the former over the doughy "squeeshy, pop-culture devouring because mommy ignores him" pantload.

Ezra says this:

The central point is whether young, healthy guys who advocate war are morally compelled to fight in it. The consensus is so long as we have a capable, volunteer army, no. I agree with that.

Glimmer Twin Yglesias says:

It's one thing, in other words, to let others serve in your stead when a sufficient number of others are willing to do so. It's another thing entirely to let others be conscripted to serve in your place (as George W. Bush, Tom DeLay, and Dick Cheney all did during Vietnam) during a war you support, or to stand aside while it becomes clear that there aren't a sufficient number of volunteers to get the job done.

So in essence you can support a war and as long as there are enough volunteers to go fight it, you're morally okay if you stay home and cheer for 'em.

To which I say, in a 19th century manner...

BALDERDASH


You know it is nice to live in a superpower where we can get to pick and choose wars because no other organized group can really nob on us too much, and certainly not a another nation-state.

But you know, I don't know about the rest of you humans, but after all these centuries, I think this needs to be re-emphasized,

WAR FUCKING SUCKS, ITS AN EVIL THING OKAY...ALWAYS A LAST RESORT,

Forgive me for attempting to take the high road of arguing for progress over war.

So, here is the clear and utterly logical point that I think all societies, especially the top dog (by a long shot), should follow.

YOU ONLY GO TO WAR IF YOU WOULD BE WILLING TO PUT YOUR OWN ASS ON THE LINE.

PERIOD, END OF STORY.

Now for some in their military years this adds a special level of significance to the matter, maybe if you would have to get your ass on the firing line, it might me a little harder to go to war.

To which I would say, yes that is exactly the point!

If the above standard were adhered to, we would have spared ourselves a few wars, including the current one.

It's also the ultimate in personal responsibility. You would think the Republicans would love it, but nope they like the primal urges more, the urges of hatred and blowing shit up. I am amazed sometimes that Bush does not request that Congress give him a big-ass magnifying glass so he can use it to watch some alleged "evildoers" burn up.

I know that the world would be a shitload better if the Cole Rule, as opposed to the Glimmer Twins' rule, were actually followed.

August 2007, Another Leader pulled out of his Hidey Hole

One can dream can't one?



Thanks to reader kbhat and here!

Breaking News

As stated in another post -- and as I make clear by deed every damn day -- Attaturk is no investigative journalist.

The closest I ever came to doing an investigative piece is when I attempted to bring down my class's fourth grade milk monitor by disclosing she was sneaking an extra chocolate on her way back to class. At the time, she may as well have been discovered to have secretly ordered the bombing of Cambodia.

But that doesn't mean that compulsive blogging in my spare time cannot produce results and evidence that even so accomplished and distinguished a journalist as Geraldo Rivera could admire, if not outright plagerize.

And last night, deep into the bowels of the early morning, I finally found what I believe to be conclusive evidence that Jeff Gannon is not alone. Nay, it appears that an even bigger name has a secret life and is hosting a series of websites that shed light upon his hidden alter-ego.

I speak of Robert Novak.

Last night, I did some serious IP Address Searches using the latest super-secret Google-Prototype and traced a series of URL's back to a common host. A common host called, "www.OPUSDEIRULESBIATCHES.com", owned by a person named, Rowland Evans. However, my research revealed that all of Mr. Evans domains have been purchased by a DBOLNOVAKULA CORP, at www.dbolnovakula.org. And tracing this I found that it resided at a location in Virginia, the home address of one Robert Novak, noted syndicated columnist and reknowned nice guy. There were a series of registered site names owned by DBolNovakula Corp. I also found a few rather disturbing photos at an AOL site under the name "fuliberty43x.jpg" and "Ilovebabyblood37S.jpg" which I will also show below.

The registered domain names are as follows:

beholdmyhypnoticteeth.com
reallymyteethbethebomb.org
mysecretlifeasanoperative.com
douchebagofliberty.com
theopusdeiguysinthaiwhorehouse.com
meandtonysinappropriatetouching.com

tronsexguy.com
iheartalhunt.com
themagicalundergarmentsofkateobeirnehubbahubba.edu

nightcruisingconservatives.com
teethteethbeholdmyhypnoticteeth.org
notsizeofboatbutmotionofocean.com
conservativecolumnistsm4.com

toplessoldsaggyexoticdancer.org
horrifyingnekkedpicsofluciannepolldancing.com
mickeykauscandidungulatephotos.edu
hellokittycollectorsclub.com


Unfortunately, it appears that my investigations were noticed and all of these domains have been taken down. So, like President Bush or Bob Novak, you'll just have to take my word for it.

But I do think we are on to something bigger than us here.



Thanks to Xian and to Image Shack

In a Better World

This picture would be the pinnacle of George Bush's success, circa 1974


Dry Gulch Valley Golf & Racket Club would like to welcome our new resident club pro George W. Bush.

And thirty-years later he'd be divorced from Pickles, who left him for an attractive John Anderson supporter she met in '80. He'd have gone through a pair of divorces, had a couple of bankruptcies; and be currently ensconsed in a trailer park outside of Scottsdale, Arizona looking for a wealthy widow to keep him supplied with disappointing sex, golf balls, and Cuervo.

And in a Perfect World, Bill O'Reilly would be 3rd Flute in the Tulsa Symphony Orchestra.



...originally posted August 21, 2004 (recycling, saves the blog environment)

Meanwhile in the Land of ERNEST T. BASS, ESQ

I believe someone is relieving the daily stress of life with pictures of Eason Jordan.

On the other hand, the blogger who once proclaimed himself too confused by the hole Valerie Plame thing to comment ... at least until the "Right-Wing Noise Machine Got its Bearings", is back in the "please NRO, Rush, FOXNEWS, somebody" tell me what to think mode".

Heh, Indeed!

I HAVEN'T PAID MUCH ATTENTION to the Jeff Gannon / Talon News story, but Rip-n-Read podcast has a roundup, available in audio or text. There seems to be some rather unsavory behavior going on here.

So let's Break the Darkest Scenario of Gannon Down

The White House used a "false" journalist, to push false evidence upon the public to cover its ass about political retaliation and the exposure of an operative and justify a disastrous and falsely based war.

That is damn close to treason, via the false-use of the First Amendment.

It's something that the Soviet Union would have done, or Julius Streicher.

I'm Going to Go Out on a Limb here and Guess this is NOT the Headline the White House wanted to see

From today's NY Daily News:

"Bush press pal quits over gay prostie link"

Ouch!

More from the article:

Gannon began covering the White House two years ago for an obscure Republican Web site (Talon-News.com). He was known for his friendly questions, including asking Bush at last month's news conference how he could work with Democrats "who seem to have divorced themselves from reality."

Gannon was also given a classified CIA memo that named agent Valerie Plame, leading to his grilling by the grand jury investigating her outing.

He came under lefty scrutiny after revelations that the administration was paying conservative pundits to talk up Bush's proposals. By examining Internet records, online sleuths at DailyKos.com figured out that his real name was Jim Guckert and he owned various Web sites, including HotMilitaryStud.com, MilitaryEscorts.com and MilitaryEscortsM4M.com.

"The issue here is whether someone with connections to male prostitution was given unfettered access to the White House and copies of internal CIA documents. For a family values administration, that's pretty creepy," said John Aravosis, one of the bloggers chasing the story.

The White House didn't return a call asking how someone using an alias was given daily clearance to enter the White House.

On his TalonNews Web site, Gannon had written that liberals were out to get him because he's a white conservative man who owns a gun, drives a sport-utility vehicle and is a born-again Christian.

Yesterday, however, he abruptly quit, and all of the stories he wrote were erased from the Web site. A great many were on gay issues, including one detailing John Kerry's "pro-homosexual platform" that was headlined mockingly, "Kerry Could Become First Gay President."

Let's deal with that last issue first. A commenter took exception yesterday to some of the mockery of Gannon dealing with the allusions of "homosexuality" in his picture on AOL. While I sympathize with his sensitivity, this site is more than just a news blog, it's purpose is to, when possible rip the fucking hide out of the reckless, powermad, jackasses that run the corporate media and the White House. Look at "Gannon's" statements and actions and tell me how the fuck I should avoid mocking this kind of fucking bald, scurrilous hypocrisy with the tool of sarcasm and parody?

As for the first point, that Gannon was the recipient of documents relating to Valerie Plame and her husband, the "sex" angle may drive this story, but the first story is the most disturbing.

The folks at KOS and AmericaBlog have been doing incredible yoeman's work on these things, I cannot compliment them enough.

The three of us that run this blog are not journalist, nor do we make pretensions to be. We all have establishment professional careers that take a lot of time. I started the blog and DeDurkheim and Champollion are friends of mine and a collaborative blog gives us all a chance to voice our opinions. But even though I post as the compulsive person I am, there is no way I could ever do anything but be alternatively snarky or pissed off about such things (Blogger Bi-Polar Disease).

Let's take a minute to look at the Plame matter:

Two KOS contributors SusanG and Spiderleaf have really put some great stuff together.

Spiderleaf on Gannon and Plame:

As the Iraq war raged and as the truth surrounding the forged documents that claimed Saddam attempted to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger emerged, a website and news organization came into being... Talon News (March 29, 2003)... owned by GOPUSA.com. Within days `Jeff Gannon', a man with no journalism experience secured White House briefing room press credentials (April 3, 2003).

As the hunt for the supposed WMDs kept going to no avail, Ambassador Joseph Wilson wrote a NYTimes Op-Ed entitled "What I didn't find in Africa" (July 6, 2003). On July 7, 2003 the White House retracted their Niger claim, which was their sole admission to date that the justification for war was not accurate.

Within a week Robert Novak (July 14, 2003) wrote a column and `outed' Joe Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame as a CIA operative and claimed she was responsible for the decision to send Mr. Wilson to Niger. It was quite clear that Novak was trying to discredit the CIA at the behest of "two senior administration officials" by silencing any critics and making the claim that the CIA sent a diplomat vs. an intelligence operative to verify the yellowcake documents for patronage reasons. Novak's CIA source however would not confirm that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA.

Two Newsday reporters, with CIA contacts, attempt to verify that Ms. Plame was an undercover operative, and they do so. They also interview Mr. Novak and he claims that "I didn't dig it out, it was given to me," he said. "They thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it."

Two days later, JeffGannon.com debuts online (July 24, 2003).

Mr. Wilson went on the offensive and started appearing in the press regularly to denounce the administration for using his wife and endangering other field operatives by leaking her name to Novak for political purposes. For months the news is filled with angry ex-CIA officials and journalists covering the outing of an undercover operative for political reasons by the administration. The CIA files a `crime report' with the Department of Justice and finally calls for an investigation.

The Department of Justice decides an investigation is warranted on September 26, 2003.

On September 28, 2003 a source inside the administration tells the Washington Post that at least 6 other journalists were contacted with the leak and claims: "Clearly, it was meant purely and simply for revenge." He stated that he was sharing the information because the disclosure was "wrong and a huge miscalculation, because they were irrelevant and did nothing to diminish Wilson's credibility."

Things are heating up for Novak and the Bush administration. The meme is not spreading according to plan and there is a criminal investigation beginning. Time to provide cover and quick.

On September 29, 2003 Clifford May in NRO tries to insert the claim that Valerie Plame's name "was common knowledge" and that he did not include it in his article on July 11th because he didn't see how it added value to the story. This is obviously a false claim since it definitely would have made a difference in helping to discredit the CIA and push the partisan and patronage claims. No other reporters step forward to verify they knew Valerie Plame worked for the CIA or had anything to do with sending Mr. Wilson to Niger.

Karl Rove's potential involvement is raised by numerous news sources and Novak on CNN continues to push the partisan politics of Wilson, claiming he was a supporter of Clintons.

The White House press briefing is quite contentious on September 30, 2003 with reporter after reporter hammering away at Scott McClellan about who knew what when and what was being done about the leak. And then Jeff Gannon asks his question:

Q Scott, a quote coming out of this controversy is that the real story is why Ambassador Wilson was chosen for this mission. Has the White House asked the CIA why they've sent somebody who was so vehemently opposed to the administration's position on Iraq?

MR. McCLELLAN: Not that I'm aware of. We made it clear that we weren't aware of his trip before we saw it in the media reports, and that still stands. (bold emphasis in WH press release)

And THAT is one of the key beginning points in changing the MEME of the Plame story and Gannon becomes intimately involved as Spiderleaf makes clear. Go read it.

Searching the Nations Stripclubs and Divebars

Talon News, ladies and gentlemen, looking for a new White House News Ho...

We are currently evaluating candidates to fill this critical assignment, and anticipate minimal interruption of Talon's coverage of our nation's capitol and the White House in the meantime.

Possible candidates:

Peter North?

Deuce Bigalow?

Julian Kay?

My money-shot is on somebody else though...he even has the proper poses down.


Ron Jeremy

Meanwhile in Media news Judgment

North Korea announces it has "the Bomb".

And CNN's lead story on its early news.

"Prince Charles to Marry Camilla Parker-Bowles"

WHO GIVES A SHIT!!!

Other than Britain (and even there it's dubious IMO) how on earth, when one of the most dangerous states in the world claims it has nukes does THIS become the lead story.

Jeebus.

Yet another fuck up

The use of "apostacy" as a foreign power tool has rarely if ever been successful. Look no further than Cuba, still under Castro, forty-six years after taking power, and fourteen years after the collapse of his benefactor.

But it worked so well there, that the Bush Administration thought the way to handle North Korea would be exactly the same. While Bush was warned that taking this much time to set up a complicated system of regional talks would cause additional risk, via additional time, for North Korea to develop weapons systems.

And now, for the first time, the North Koreans claim that they have just such weapons.
If true, and certainly North Korea in addition to repression and isolation has no small history of grandstanding, we can chalk up substantial responsibility for this development on Bush's inability to interact with a situation with creativity and dispatch.

Preparing for the Future Voting Problems in Ohio

The Ohio association of election officials have met in in Columbus, Ohio to make the decisions that will hand the next election to republicans (or as they call it create a "fair election process"). The big news from this meeting "officials" (almost all republicans) is that secretary of state, Ken "part of team Bush" Blackwell directed the boards of election in each of Ohio's 88 counties to decided between two optical scan vote counting systems by February 9th. Now, what is interesting about this is whether or not election officials can make an important decision like this in less than two weeks!!

The two systems are made by ES&S and Diebold. With the passage of legislation in Ohio last April requiring a voter verified paper audit trail by 2006 (no, Ohio currently cannot verify all votes via paper...) only
these two vendors have equipment certified for use in Ohio.

Both systems are optical scan systems that read paper ballots marked by the voter with a #2 lead pencil similar to the SAT, ACT or other multiple choice tests, alas no essay. Only three practices are planned in Ohio and of course we can all expect any "kinks in the machines" to be completely worked out by then. Yeah, right.

All I have to say is that several of these machines, especially the Diebold were problems in the Florida counties using Diebold voting machines in November '04. That inspires confidence, right?

Meet the New Far Right, Just like the Old Far Right

If you listen closely you can hear the far right marching and that is more than Ann Coulter's precarious high heels as she marches from interview to interview to try to convince Canadians that they did send troops to vietnam.

There is a new far right in Germany that is using a sickening view of the Holocaust to generate public attention and recruit new members. The incorrectly named National Democratic Party (NDP) famously walked out of an eastern Saxony state's parliament memorial service for the victims of the World War II German Third Reich. If that wasn't enough the NDP also issued a release "equating Auschwitz with abortion":

"Since the end of Auschwitz, 18 million unborn people have been murdered in Germany ... is Auschwitz really over?" says the NPD on its website...

Before we dismiss this group, it is important to note that they received almost ten percent of the vote in the economically depressed Saxony region of Germany where immigration, values, and politics. Although greater than half of polled Germans do not support the NDP, the shrill rantings are growing rather than ebbing.

In a political era where the "emergency legislation" of the patriot act is becoming permanent and expanded in an age of governmentally supported torture, where kid's cartoons Buster Bunny and SpongeBob Squarepants are agents of tarnation and as we all know now non-journalists can get picture passes because they write nice things about the imperial presidency, are the marching of boots so far behind here in the land of war against "Terra"?

Words are Stupid Things

In an era of "security accounts" and "Patriot Funds" masquerading the long term Bush goal (remember he has been pushing this idea since the late 1970s, only the dates have changed) unmaking of sociarl security, the PBS series Frontline exposed another aspect of the agenda conservative politicians and activists often have during their recent "crusades" against "liberal media": demonizing key buzzwords and creating new more friendly -- if misleading -- terms to be used over and over by their faithful followers. The episode, The Persuaders, followed consultant Frank Luntz, the man credited with turning the public against estate taxes by call them a "death tax." In his hands, "tax cuts" become "tax relief," and the "war on Iraq" becomes the "war on terror."

You can watch the program online.

I highly recommend it but give yourself plenty of time to watch it.

Bush Thinks Capitalism and Cronyism Mean the Same Thing

Capitalism 101

Which of the following looks more like capitalism and free enterprise?

Example A: The society has a justice system which provides an injured person can go to court and have her community peers, not the government, decide whether the malefactor acted negligently and if he did (and that negligence casued the actual injuries and damages) order the malefactor to compensate the injured person to the full extent of the injuries and damages sustained as a result of the negligent conduct.

Example B: The society provides that an injured person can go to court and have a jury decide whether the malefactor (individual or huge corporation) should compensate the injured person (that the malefactor was negligent and that the negligence actually casued the injury). However, in this society the government decides that even though the Constitution says that all people have the right to trial by jury that no matter how bad or extreme the injuries and suffering, the malefactor (for fun let's call the malefactor Halliburton) shall have to pay no more than $250,000 for the damages it caused.

Which society looks more the "capitalist" model? You know, the one that looks more free. The one that looks like it has less government regulation. I thought so too.

Not according to the chimperor.

I do want to put it in the larger context, though, about why we even ought to take on this issue. As Carlos said, lawsuits are -- a litigious society is one that makes it difficult for capital to flow freely. And a capitalist society depends on the capacity for people willing to take risk and to say there's a better future, and I want to take a risk toward that future. And I'm deeply concerned that too many lawsuits make it too difficult for people to do that.

And so I've called upon Congress to work with the administration on legal reform, whether it be to reform the asbestos litigation issue or medical liability reform to make sure medicine is cost-effective to our citizens, or whether it be class-action reform. Legal reform is part of a larger agenda to make sure this economy of ours continues to grow. We're seeing good growth now. As you know, last month, in the month of January, this country created 146,000 new jobs. The national unemployment rate is down to 5.2 percent. This is all progress. But it's important for the Congress to work with the administration to keep this progress going. And so legal reform is part of a strategy for economic vitality and growth.

I think he's on to something. Enron, Worldcom, Tyco, and Halliburton all put their duties to the American citizenry first. Don't they?

Rove Taking on Greater Responsibilities?

Via Digby, the following "news".

Rove, who was Bush's top political strategist during his 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns, will become a deputy White House chief of staff in charge of coordinating policy between the White House Domestic Policy Council, National Economic Council, National Security Council and Homeland Security Council.

Rove will continue to oversee White House strategy to advance Bush's agenda and will "make sure we have an open and fair process for the development of policy and to make sure the policy is complementary and consistent with the various councils," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.

"He is one of the president's most trusted advisers who has played an integral role in strategy and policy development for a long time," McClellan said.

The cold-blooded reptile has grabbed even more power, not that he needed it. Back in the bad old days of the first term of the Emperor George II, Rove had plenty of power and it was well documented. Oh, and I don't think there was ever an open and fair discussion of policy issues. Stick to message. Always stick to message. We are here for the wealthy and the Christians. Doing good so long as good is for them.

"I think it's an enormous position of power, and it's hard to overstate. I think he's unique in the modern presidency," says Lou Dubose, a Texan journalist and Rove biographer. Rove's office is tight-lipped about the extent of his duties, but the few un-vetted memoirs to have escaped from this highly disciplined administration have all portrayed him as the single most powerful figure in it, with the (possible) exceptions of the president and vice-president.

"Karl is enormously powerful, maybe the single most powerful person in the modern, post-Hoover era ever to occupy a political adviser post near the Oval Office," John DiIulio, a former presidential adviser, wrote in a notoriously frank email to a journalist from Esquire magazine, after resigning in 2001. "Little happens on any issue without Karl's OK, and often he supplies such policy substance as the administration puts out."

Earlier this year, for instance, Paul O'Neill, Bush's former treasury secretary, gave an account of a pivotal cabinet meeting in late 2002 to discuss a second round of deep tax cuts, at which the president apparently had second thoughts about focusing so much of the benefits on the wealthy. "Didn't we already give them a break at the top?" Bush asks, according to O'Neill's account. Rove brings the president back in line, urging him to "stick to principle". Rove won the day, and O'Neill was forced out of the cabinet.

Rove is more powerful than some-old Treasury Secretary that's for sure. He is the serpent in the temptation drama of our lives. None of these people can be trusted, not a one of them. They can't afford to tell the truth because that narrative wouldn't sell, yet I never cease to be amazed at the gullibility of the American people. Disgusting.

Juan Cole vs. Jonah Goldberg, Illustrated Play by Play

Jonah, Sunday Evening. Utters a challenge to Juan Cole.


Monday Morning



Monday Evening



Tuesday Morning



Tuesday Evening.

Jonah was last seen uttering, "I'm going to take my victory lap now."




Thanks to this site for most of the images.

Our Fickle and Dangerous Neighbor to the North

By Ann Coulter


Recently I had the unfortunate experience of being invited to go to the third-world backwater of Canada for the purposes of promoting my book, titled there "How to Talk to a Liberal, eh", and for judging the Saskatoon 'Chicks with Dicks' Parade. In preparing I did some research on the evil empire of socialized medicine that lies to our north.(1)

* Canada was originally settled by Satan worshipping sodomites who landed in Prince Edward Island seeking to sacrifice the souls of Viking settlers and eat their puppies.

* During the American Revolutionary War, the Canadians were traitors.

* During the American Civil War, the Canadians did not fight.

* President Wilson had to send the American Army into Canada in 1914 in search of evil filmmaker and revolutionary Pancho Mack Sennett.

* The Canadians fought in the First World War a long time before it became cool.

* Canada became a sovereign nation in 1977 when its independence was declared by Margaret Trudeau between lines of cocaine and dances with black men at Studio 54.

* From the time of Pierre Trudeau, all Canadian Prime Ministers have been cuckolded eunuchs.

* Hockey was invented in the Upper Pennisula of Michigan in the mid-1960s by the Iron River VFW. However, after a few Vietnam draft Dodgers fled through the Sault Ste. Marie wall, the socialist Canadians claimed it as their own.

* Canadian law makes it mandatory that mixed race couples fornicate.

* Brave defectors from Canadian socialist repression include Anne Murray, Wayne Gretzky and Lorne Green, the latter of whom set up a successful ranch in Wyoming next to Dick Cheney.

* Canadians, shortly after the second world war, established a repressive socialized medicine program that forced Pamela Anderson to come to the United States for breast implants.

* Canada gave troops to fight the Vietnam War, but won't admit it.

* Osama bin Laden's real name is Mario Lemieux.

* Canadian football fields are based on the communist influenced metric system.


Note:
(1) All of the documentation for these facts can be requested, I may be able to get around to answering them...but I'll have to get back to you.

Year of the Rooster

That's what it is in China. Now before you start making Chickenhawk jokes remember that person described as a Rooster is allegedly:

-- deep thinkers, capable, and talented.
-- They like to be busy and are devoted beyond their capabilities and are deeply disappointed if they fail.
-- People born in the Rooster Year are often a bit eccentric, and often have rather difficult relationship with others.
-- They always think they are right and usually are!
-- They frequently are loners and though they give the outward impression of being adventurous, they are timid.

Let's see, looks like they are batting about .200.

No word on whether they are self-purported Simpsons experts.

Oh Yeah, they should be trusted with Social Security...

The Bush White House, always managing a newer more expensive boondoggle. Congratulations on being "bitches" conservative Republicans.

WASHINGTON, Feb. 8 - The Bush administration offered a new estimate of the cost of the Medicare drug benefit on Tuesday, saying it would cost $720 billion in the next 10 years.

That is much more than the $400 billion Congress assumed when it passed legislation creating the benefit in late 2003.

But administration officials said the numbers were not comparable. The original estimate was for the years 2004 to 2013. The new estimate covers the period from 2006, when the drug benefit becomes available, to 2015.

The higher figure, which provides the first glimpse of the true cost of the drug benefit, could touch off a political uproar in Congress, where conservative Republicans were already expressing alarm about the costs of Medicare, including the drug benefit.

In a recent interview, the new chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, Judd Gregg, Republican of New Hampshire, said he wanted to "put the brakes on the growth of entitlements" and take a close look at the new Medicare law.

"Since it was sold as a $400 billion program, that's what we should keep it at," Mr. Gregg said.

Representative Rahm Emanuel, Democrat of Illinois, asked about the issue on Tuesday when Treasury Secretary John W. Snow was testifying before the Ways and Means Committee. Mr. Snow said he did not have detailed figures at hand.

Dr. Mark B. McClellan, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said later that the drug benefit would cost $720 billion from 2006 to 2015.

Passage of the Medicare bill was a major political achievement for President Bush and the Republican leaders of Congress. It squeaked through the House by a vote of 220 to 215, and it would probably not have been approved in its current form if lawmakers had thought the cost would exceed a half-trillion dollars.

Mr. Emanuel said: "The new cost estimate destroys the credibility of the Bush administration. Officials were so far off in estimating the cost of the Medicare law. Why should we believe what they say about the financial problems of Social Security?"

Representative Pete Stark of California, the senior Democrat on the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health, said: "I told you so. We can't trust numbers provided by administration officials. They'll say anything to get a bill passed. And if the new drug benefit costs more, the extra money goes to their friends in the pharmaceutical industry, not to senior citizens."

Wither the Man-Date?

If this is accurate Jeff Gannon didn't want to hear Helen Thomas demand answers to why the fuck he was in the White House Press Room.

If we actually had a White House Press Corps somebody would continually challenge Little Scotty about the who, what, when and how of this known non-Journalist/Right-Wing shill getting such access and why he was so often used by the Administration to save their asses at briefings and press conferences.

More Jeff Gannon Fun

Here's "Jeff" at the National Bible Reading Marathon


Reading from Romanism 4:14-17

"(14)And verily those that follow with the soldiers of Christ will surely want to visit these places to show their solidarity and communion in the love of the savior; (15) Hotmilitarystud.com, militaryescorts.com; Militaryescortsm4m.com; and Exposejessejackson.com. (16)All those who have given their souls to the Lord may partake of bodily pleasures in exchange for thy Visa, Mastercard, or Discover Cards. (17) Those with but American Express cards are straight out, for they walketh in the darkest and damnation of those who have turned their back on manly virtues and easy credit."

Hey

The DAOU Report says it has a major upgrade coming.

Does that mean that Rising Hegemon might actually be cited once in a fucking while?!

Kevin Drum this...
James Walcott that...
Atrios says...
Liberal Oasis blah blah blah...
Talking Points has talking points...
Matthew Yglesias spouts forth...

But Rising Hegemon has this and they don't


A Bearded Clam


...ah fuck, I've been doing this shit for nearly a year and I've finally fucking become Carrot Top (a fate worse than death).

OY.

Preznit Speaks

So much malarkey, so little time. The preznit spoke today at the Detroit Economic Club and had quite a lot of nothing to say. Well, I guess he said enough for me to ridicule. In fact there is so much to ridicule I don't have time to deal with all of it now.

Here's our preznit addressing the students in the audience.

Glad to be here with the Secretary of State of Michigan, Terri Lynn Land; the Attorney General Mike Cox. I appreciate all the state and local officials who have come out. I want to thank all the college students, middle school, high school and college students who are here as part of the Detroit Economic Club student program. It was my honor to have shaken a lot of hands. I hope my advice was good, which was to aim high, make right choices, and listen to your mother. (Applause.) I'm still listening to mine.

I made my share of mistakes as a young shaver, but let me tell you, nothing like this hypocrite. It doesn't bother me when people who have turned their own lives around hold themselves up as examples; what bothers me is a person who got every break, every flippin' advantage, who did enough only enough to get by in college, the national guard, miscellaneous jobs, etc., and then he talks like this. But what should we expect? He got where he was through family connections, money from family connections, his family name, and dumb luck. Period.

Now, all budgets have got to be based on priorities, and mine are clear: The government's most solemn duty is to defend and protect the American people. In a time of war, we will always provide our military and homeland security personnel with the tools they need to do their jobs. And so our budget raises defense spending by almost 5 percent, and funds critical upgrades in homeland security, such as a new program to secure our chemical plants, ports, and public transportation systems.

Well, it's an outright lie, but let's dig a little deeper. If we consider his actions rather than words what he means is: We go to war when it suits us, whether or not we are well equipped to do it or are ready for the peace that follows. We'll finance the war by running a huge deficit while we cut taxes on the wealthiest among us, in other words, those that benefit the most from freedom's protections will not be asked to help pay more so that our children and grandchildren aren't saddled with the cost of pursuing the war. (Applause.)(Yes, I inserted the applause line)

A pro-growth strategy must address the growing burden of junk lawsuits. Last month I met Bruce McFee, who runs a manufacturing company in North Lansing. A few years back, Bruce bought a company called Sullivan Palatek. In the 1940s, another company with the name "Sullivan" in it made a product with asbestos. The two companies are in no way related. But that hasn't stopped trial lawyers from filing 53 asbestos claims against Bruce's company.

Here's what he said about the lawsuits: "If they put us out of business, the replacement is going to be an overseas business -- I believe there are hundreds of companies in the same mess. And it's sucking money out of our state." And he's right.

Junk lawsuits have driven the cost of America's tort system to more than $240 billion a year -- greater than any major industrialized nation. Think about that. It creates a competitive disadvantage in a global economy, for the American economy to have so many lawsuits. It imposes unfair costs on job creators. It raises prices for consumers. Our legal system must serve the cause of justice, not the interests of trial lawyers. Congress needs to pass meaningful class action and asbestos legal reform this year.
***
To reduce the cost of medicine for every doctor, every patient and every business, Congress needs to pass medical liability reform this year.

Ahhh, the breath of fresh air. Take it in, the problem with America is junk lawsuits. Let's just restrict people's ability to obtain fair and full compensation for injuries inflicted upon them by the negligence of others and that will solve all of our troubles. This is the worst kind of giveaway precisely because it rewards someone the preznit might call an evildoer. If one of his precious offspring were to be, G-d forbid, injured (or worse) by, say, a drunk-driver, would he want to limit her recovery to a maximum of $250,000 no matter how badly she was injured? I don't think so.

So why protect negligent doctors or asbestos manufacturers? Oh that's right, they're part of his "constituency". Take this story, a sad and tragic story that shows who might be harmed and who is rewarded with lawsuit reform.

APPALACHIA, Va. – It hurled like a cannonball into Dennis and Cindy Davidson’s house, right through the wall of the bedroom and onto the bed where 3-year-old Jeremy was sleeping.

The huge boulder continued its path, crashing through a closet before finally stopping at the foot of 8-year-old Zachary’s bed. Zachary would be fine. Jeremy was crushed to death.

A bulldozer operator widening a road at a strip mining operation atop Black Mountain had unknowingly dislodged the half-ton boulder that August night. And now, more than four months later, Jeremy’s death is still being felt across the coal mines of southwestern Virginia.

Should we restrict this family's rights of recovery Mr. Preznit sir? Why treat this family any differently than those that are the victims of medical negligence or faulty products?

And on to Social Security. We all know he doesn't really know what the hell he talks about, but...

I'm calling upon the Congress to act. Because if we don't act now, imagine what life is going to be like trying to fill the hole. When you're $200 billion short, and a couple of years later you're $300 billion short, and the shortfalls grow every year, there aren't many options available to you if you don't do something now. In other words, you can raise taxes significantly. That will wreck the economy. You can dramatically slash benefits. You can borrow a lot of money. But whatever the case is, the closer you get to the day in which we start going into the red, the problem only accelerates.

Man, this guy has no soul. You asked for him America.* Oh, and do you suppose the writers include the great phrase "in other words" or is that just his addled brain farting?

*Well I and 49 million others didn't but he is worse every day.

"Good Afternoon Mr. President

I'm Jeff Gannon, ace reporter...

...and I'll be your MANDATE for the rest of your term."

Update:

Holden has hot action shots of Chimp on Ho action at First Draft. A passion that dare not speak its name.


Thanks to OverSpun for saving the image above, as well as ChiHawk here.

Nice Catch my Faux Progressive Nemesis

Sometimes Attaturk is too busy plotting world conquest (not our world...for now, I CLAIM DOMINION OVER MERCURY!); doing actual compensated work; and ... of course, being the fidolla ho of the progressive blogosphere to read everything, even in the major papers.

But Holden at First Draft found a juicy little nugget in the NY Times today, regarding the REAL turnout of voters in Iraq...as opposed to what the Bush Administration sold to "up" its approval ratings and create its disconnect of "Chimperial Reality".

Leaders of the Shiite alliance have said they are counting on increasing their vote share to at least 55 percent as more votes come in from eight predominantly Shiite southern provinces, including Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city behind Baghdad. Partial returns for these provinces have totaled only 1.6 million votes, one for every five people, across an area where turnouts as high as 80 percent were reported on election day.

So it looks like 80 percent has turned into 20 percent. That's impressive meta-reality. Almost as impressive as the Beflightsuit Dear Leader's claim of fiscal competence in turning tens of billions of dollars in budget surplus into a projected 2006 FY deficit of $560 billion.

Rapturous!

Well, Here's Good News

It looks like we are safe from Bush's social security reform program.

Because Dick "Toe Sucker" Morris has pronounced it a lock to succeed, and Dick Morris' batting average? Let's just say he's so low he cannot even imagine hitting the mendoza line.

PRESIDENT Bush will succeed in his Social Security changes because he has skill fully drafted them in such a way that the only voters who are affected support his proposal — while the ones who oppose it won't be affected by it.

...

Yet the entire rest of the nation is likely to greet Bush's plan with relative equanimity. By avoiding the Reagan trap of seeking to cut benefits for existing retirees — and even exempting those now over 55 from any change — Bush has relegated the changes to the realm of theory for most voters. For most of these younger voters, retirement is a far-off thing and their confidence in their own ability to play the markets runs deep.

Democrats will rant and rave. But they won't find any mass constituency for their passion — and the program will pass.

Bush could still get shipwrecked by the cuts he proposes in benefits to avoid bankruptcy. But his privatization proposal should pass easily.

Disappointing

Reader Joshowitz, having studiously observed my posting habits (I just hope he doesn't start studying my scat or mating rituals, for his sake and mine!) asked me in effect, 'what up, nothing on 'El Boboliablo' (or el Diablobobo) today?

Brooks column today is pedestrian. But it is not insane or delusional (though it contradicts what he wrote a few weeks ago). Granted if his little scheme is yet another way of diverting social security funds, as it could be, then he continues his consistent douchebaggery, but it doesn't read clearly that way to me. Although his discovery of "compound interest" does make you wonder when Bobo is going to also discover he has hair in funny places.

I cannot even put up an Oh, Davey!

Dammit, BoBo!. Some of us rely on you to be a complete and utter dickweed on Tuesdays and Saturdays. How can I really put up 18 posts and 12 blogwhores a day if you do not cooperate.

Won't somebody think of the bloggers?

The Following is a Actual Recording of an On-Star Customer

(sound of phone ringing)

Operator: "Hello On-Star, how may I help you."

Frantic Voiced Man: "Yes, I've just been virtually horse-whipped by a midwestern college professor and I seem to be unable to find my ass. Nor can I find a hole in the ground."

Operator: "Do you require assistance, sir?"

F.V.M: "I dunno...I'm so lonely. Is K-Lo there?"

Operator: "I don't have a K-Lo here sir."

F.V.M.: "How about Derb. Is Derb there?"

Operator: "Sir, this is On-Star, we are a service offered to drivers of new GM Vehicles. Do you require assitance?"

F.V.M.: "Ah...are you a mommy?"

Operator: "Excuse me sir?"

F.V.M.: "Sometimes, I hear that if your mommy gives you a hug, you feel better. My mommy never gave me a hug. All she ever did is tell me to go play in the street while she and a variety of "Uncles" had some time alone. Sometimes, I saw what they did. Oh, the pain, the pain! It made me hurt...down there..."

Operator: "Can you tell me where you are sir, I can contact an ambulance?"

F.V.M.: "Can you call Rich Lowry for me?"

Operator: "Who sir?"

F.V.M.: "I don't wanna go to war. I'm scared and I want a mommy. Can you come hug me?"

Operator: "I'm sorry sir, please tell me where you are and I'll have an ambulance come and assist you."

F.V.M.: "I'm in my car."

Operator: "Yes sir, I figured that."

F.V.M.: "I'm not a coward you know. I laid on the ground and kicked up in the air really fast before those guys gave me a swirly that one time."

Operator: "Yes, sir."

F.V.M.: "And I'm smart too, no matter what my mommy says. I fooled those guys who kept giving me the wedgie by starting to wear Banana warmers"

Operator: "Huh? Sir, if you want help you really must be more detailed about your problem and what it is. According to our installed On-Star GPS, we have you outside a Marine Recruiting Station in Westchester, New York is that right?....Hello?....Hello?"

F.V.M.: "Okay, Star Trek is going to be on, I'm going to go now."

*click*

And the Bitchslapping contines

I agree with Kos, never get into an intellectual argument with Juan Cole. Particularly if you are not an intellectual pundit.

I don't think there is anything at all unpatriotic about a young man opposing a war and declining to enlist. But a young man (and this applies to W. and Cheney too) who mouths off strongly about the desirability of a war is a coward and a hypocrite if he does not go to fight it.

But Goldberg is just a dime a dozen pundit. Cranky rich people hire sharp-tongued and relatively uninformed young people all the time and put them on the mass media to badmouth the poor, spread bigotry, exalt mindless militarism, promote anti-intellectualism, and ensure generally that rightwing views come to predominate even among people who are harmed by such policies. One of their jobs is to marginalize progressives by smearing them as unreliable.

The thing that really annoyed me about Goldberg's sniping was it reminded me of how our country got into this mess in Iraq. It was because a lot of ignorant but very powerful and visible people told the American people things that were not true. In some instances I believe that they lied. In other instances, they were simply too ignorant of the facts to know when an argument put forward about, say, Iraq, was ridiculous. For instance, it was constantly said that Iraqis were "secular." This allegation ignored four decades of radical Shiite organizing and revolutionary activity by the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the al-Dawa Party, and others, as well as the influence on Iraqis of the Khomeini revolution and of the 1991 Saddam crackdown on Shiites. They were never contradicted when they said this on television, though.

...

Goldberg says his judgment is superior to mine. But I said Iraq was not a danger to the US. I ridiculed Colin Powell's UN performance. Goldberg said Iraq was near to having nukes. Whose judgment was superior?

The corporate media failed the United States in 2002-2003. The US government failed the American people in 2002-2003. That empty, and often empty-headed punditry, which Jon Stewart destroyed so skilfully, played a big role in dragooning the American people into a wasteful and destructive elective war that threatens to warp American society and very possibly to end the free Republic we have managed to maintain for over 200 years. Already severe challenges to our sacred Constitution have been launched by the Right. Goldberg is a big proponent of "profiling," which is to say, spying on people because of their ethnicity rather than because of anything they as individuals have done wrong. That is only the beginning, if such persons maintain their influence on public discourse.

Exactly. Go read the whole thing.

Jonah Goldberg and the cast of the Surreal Life, aka, the National Review are Parrots, the unthinking line of pundacracy, fully on display during prime time hours and mornings at Fox News. Hard core, or soft shoed, I'm not a big fan of fascism and jingoism and we are getting a steady beat of the latter and treading dangerously close to the former.

The Pleasure of his Company

Yesterday, I made the unfortunate Blogger strategic error of getting in an email exchange with a conservative about Cole vs. Goldberg. Not that I'm embarrassed about what I wrote, but it's a waste of time.

The conservative proceeded to write to me, and write to me, and write to me. I initially responded to him that his particular demand that I apologize for laying out just why Jonah, son of Lucianne, was a complete and utter douchebag was erroneous. Naturally, he had supported this demand by taking a position that had nothing to do with why, in laying out his argument for not serving, as a younger man, in a war he so stridently advocates (and advocates) Goldberg is a big sack o' puss.

I get soooooo many emails from people here at the colossus of a blog that we have...I get literally, "emails" each day that it is hard to take the time to respond to them.

There's plenty of other stuff that comes when your blog starts to attract a steady base of readers. You start to get swag: the sex (often videotaped and ebayed); the drugs (including a complimentary "my little meth lab" starter kit); the Conde Nast subscriptions, and for the right-wing blogger, the "ethnic" from an indeterminate central american nation that you never inquire about (they just refer to them as being from "Guatanduricadorize"). One gets so busy with the free stuff, you do not have time for the constant email exchanges of readers.

So I do try to answer most of my emails...well actually read them.

Anyway now back to the blogging and blogwhoring.

Sickening

Well, here's a new one coming down the pike. Just when you think you've heard about most of the bad stuff at Abu Ghraib, some more oozes out.

Unqualified US military medics stationed at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison carried out amputations, recycled used chest tubes and lacked medical supplies to treat the overcrowded jail's inmates after the fall of Baghdad, according to a report.

The Time magazine report, to hit newsstands Monday, also said that a medic was ordered, by one account, to cover up a homicide inside the jail.

Although the prison just outside Baghdad was jammed with as many as 7,000 detainees -- some of whom displayed serious mental illnesses -- no US doctor was in residence for most of 2003 following the US-led invasion of Iraq.

The report said "with straitjackets unavailable, tethers -- like the leash held by Private Lynndie England -- were put to use at Abu Ghraib to control unruly or mentally disturbed detainees, sometimes with the concurrence of a doctor."

England has been charged with abusing Iraqi detainees at the jail. She was infamously photographed holding a leash attached to the neck of a naked Iraqi inmate sprawled on a cell block floor.

In a statement obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union (news - web sites), Time reported that an Army medic based at Abu Ghraib spoke of examining 800 to 900 detainees daily as they were admitted. If he worked a 12-hour day, that gave him less than one minute for each exam.

The report cited National Guard Captain Kelly Parrson, a physician's assistant at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 and 2004. Parrson was seriously injured by a mortar during an insurgent attack that targetted the jail.

Parrson told Time there were times when he and other non-physicians carried out amputations and other procedures on inmates that should have been performed by surgeons.

"I took off an ankle and a lower leg," he recalls. "There was no one else, and if it was death or amputation, you just had to do it."

"When somebody died, we just took out their chest tube and inserted it into another, living person," he said.

The National Guard captain cited a shortage of catheters, breathing tubes, orthopedic supplies, including casts used to treat bone fractures caused by shrapnel from high explosives.

More great planning.

Better sell some more magnets.

Lil' Russ Could Have Asked a Tough Question or Two

I've already spent too much time on the MTP issue but one of my gripes is that Lil' Russ failed even to throw a punch at the great obfuscator. A few tough questions and follow-up questions on this issue would have been nice. Will it be only Bob Herbert and a few bloggers that keeps the issue alive?

The horror stories from the scandalous interrogation camp that the United States is operating at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, are coming to light with increased frequency. At some point the whole shameful tale of this exercise in extreme human degradation will be told. For the time being we have to piece together what we can from a variety of accounts that have escaped the government's obsessively reinforced barriers of secrecy.

We know that people were kept in cells that in some cases were the equivalent of animal cages, and that some detainees, disoriented and despairing, have been shackled like slaves and left to soil themselves with their own urine and feces. Detainees are frequently kicked, punched, beaten and sexually humiliated. Extremely long periods of psychologically damaging isolation are routine.
***
The Bush administration has turned Guantánamo into a place that is devoid of due process and the rule of law. It's a place where human beings can be imprisoned for life without being charged or tried, without ever seeing a lawyer, and without having their cases reviewed by a court. Congress and the courts should be uprooting this evil practice, but freedom and justice in the United States are on a post-9/11 downhill slide.

So we are stuck for the time being with the disgrace of Guantánamo, which will forever be a stain on the history of the United States, like the internment of the Japanese in World War II.

The Center for Constitutional Rights is doing great work, but they need help.

Can't we Just Throw Him back Into the Swamp?

What the hell did we do to deserve the chimp? Really, if there is such a thing as karma, imagine what we all must have done in some past lives. Here are a couple thoughts on the budget that the White House sent up to Congress today.

First, we're screwed. I guess that really isn't news but every day, in every way, we get screweder.

At first glance, he would seem to have grounds for optimism. After all, surging tax revenue did come to Washington's rescue during the economic boom of the 1990's, pushing the budget from the red to the black. Republican and Democratic budget analysts, however, say that such an event is much less likely this time around. The contrasts are stark:

¶Through most of the 1990's, government spending grew at a snail's pace. But government spending soared during President Bush's first term and is expected to keep growing rapidly as the nation's baby boomers start to claim old-age benefits.

¶In the 1990's, the biggest jump in revenues came from high-income taxpayers who made enormous profits in the stock market bubble that ended in 2000. But Mr. Bush's tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 reduced rates on the wealthiest taxpayers and cut in half the taxes on dividends and capital gains, making it all but impossible for revenues to rise at a substantially faster pace than economic growth.

¶Mr. Bush's own projections leave out the cost of rolling back the alternative minimum tax, a parallel tax that is expected to ensnare tens of millions of middle-income households as incomes rise with inflation. Republicans and Democrats both want to prevent such a trap, but a fix would cost roughly $500 billion over the next 10 years.

"I don't think we are likely to see a repeat of the 1990's," said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the Republican-appointed director of the Congressional Budget Office. "We can't grow our way out of this."

Nope, we're in a real fix largely because Bush shelled out big tax cuts to his friends.

"What's unrealistic is that they are trying to fund a government with today's demands on a 1950's stream of revenue," said Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a research group that advocates fiscal discipline by the government.

Tax revenues soared far beyond expectations during the economic boom and stock market bubble of the late 1990's, but budget analysts say there is little likelihood of repeating that feat in this decade.

One reason is that Mr. Bush's tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 went largely to the nation's wealthiest taxpayers, the same people who accounted for the unexpected flood of tax revenue last time around. White House officials are already counting on tax revenues to surge by at least $200 billion this year, an increase of about 10 percent, and to climb more gradually after that.

These people are incredible. Really, their unmitigated selfishness is beyond the pale. But don't try to tell them.

While calling it the tightest budget of Bush's presidency, Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) defended the spending blueprint against Democratic complaints that its austerity falls hardest on the poor.

"It's not something that we've done with a meat ax, nor are we suddenly turning our backs on the most needy people in our society," Cheney said on "Fox News Sunday."

You did that a long time ago, Dick. Now let's talk about values.

Weekend Captions

Why wouldn't you trust Mr. Potter to reform social security? "Who the fuck do you think you are George Bailey!"


Well, the national bullshit reserve is only this high, so we've got plenty of wiggle room on our Social Security "reform" plan.


Worst American Idol constestant ever.

Good Governance

Wow, this is some quality policy mendaciousness;

As Josh Marshall says:

As we've noted repeatedly here, the biggest threat to Social Security is our accumulated national debt -- actually, even more our accumulating national debt. If we only had the debt load we have now and weren't adding hundreds of billions of dollars every year because of the president's policies, we could probably grow our way out of it.

In any case, indebtedness is our problem. And Cheney's solution is to borrow many trillions more dollars over the next two or three decades, in addition to our existing structural budget deficits which are likely themselves unsustainable. And he and the White House now admit this will do nothing to improve the financial condition of Social Security.

Following any reasonable calculation the entire debate should end right there -- though I concede that rational calculation ain't what it used to be.

Now, I'm just a guy who is happy to balance his check book and make it through the month without my accumulated personal debt not being covered in a minimal fashiong until the crisis returns the next month so at least this will solve the pending Social Security Crisis right?

According to the White House itself it will do FUCK-ALL about that!

In a significant shift in his rationale for the accounts, Bush dropped his claim that they would help solve Social Security's fiscal problems — a link he sometimes made during last year's presidential campaign. Instead, he said the individual accounts were desirable because they would be "a better deal," providing workers what he said would be a higher rate of return and "greater security in retirement."

A Bush aide, briefing reporters on the condition of anonymity, was more explicit, saying that the individual accounts would do nothing to solve the system's long-term financial problems.

That candid analysis, although widely shared by economists, distressed some Republicans.

"Oh, my God," one GOP political strategist said when he learned of the shift in rhetoric. "The White House has made a lot of Republicans walk the plank on this. Now it sounds as if they are sawing off the board."

So there you have it, it solves nothing and it will cost TRILLIONS!

This is nothing but the investment brokerage house retirement act.

Now I know that that big boys, Atrios, Marshall obviously, and Kos have all spoken about this already so I don't contribute much to a debate in which I am certainly no expert.

But, I bet we are the only blog that explains the debate thusly.


Let these puppies represent your social security as it exists.


These are the men planning to drown them in the pond.


And sell the pelts to these people.

Know Your Shiite

Well, if we are "lucky" from here on out, we'll manage to spend about $300 Billion and lose just under 2,000 soldiers (to go with the tens of thousands of Iraqis) in Chimptopia. And for our time and expense we will get a Islamic Theocracy based upon the Shariah. Good job neo-cons.

So what sort of expectations can you have in Iraq. Well thanks to Fubar and Swopa at Needlenose we find this link to the religious interpretations of Ayatolla Sistani.

Don't look for Mardi Gras or Annie Spinkle performance pieces.

Some of the topics of interest:

Question:If my wife wants me to masturbate in front of her, is it then allowed?

Answer:You are not allowed to do it with hand, but your wife is.

Hello...

Question:Is oral sex by husband or wife allowed?

Answer:It is permissible provided no liquid out swallowed.

Um...

Question:Can husband and wife have sex with each other while looking at each other in a mirror?

Answer:It's permissible.

Whew...

You know, however, I'm pretty sure this is a LOT more permissive, and less hypocritical, than similar questions to a Jerry Falwell.

Attaturk's Super Bowl Prediction

Commercials touting giving men a Boner -- 10

Exposed Female Boobies -- 0

Take the Boners and the points (so to speak)


Otherwise, though I'm an NFC guy, the Patriots will win the actual football game.

There Is No Tomorrow

Great analysis by Bill Moyers on the religious right and more. A must read!!

One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington.

Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a worldview despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts.

Remember James Watt, President Ronald Reagan's first secretary of the interior? My favorite online environmental journal, the ever-engaging Grist, reminded us recently of how James Watt told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. In public testimony he said, "after the last tree is felled, Christ will come back."

Beltway elites snickered. The press corps didn't know what he was talking about. But James Watt was serious. So were his compatriots out across the country. They are the people who believe the Bible is literally true - one-third of the American electorate, if a recent Gallup poll is accurate. In this past election several million good and decent citizens went to the polls believing in the rapture index.

That's right - the rapture index. Google it and you will find that the best-selling books in America today are the 12 volumes of the "Left Behind" series written by the Christian fundamentalist and religious-right warrior Timothy LaHaye. These true believers subscribe to a fantastical theology concocted in the 19th century by a couple of immigrant preachers who took disparate passages from the Bible and wove them into a narrative that has captivated the imagination of millions of
Americans.

Its outline is rather simple, if bizarre (the British writer George Monbiot recently did a brilliant dissection of it and I am indebted to him for adding to my own understanding): Once Israel has occupied the rest of its "biblical lands," legions of the antichrist will attack it, triggering a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon.

Lil' Russ and the Worst Secretary of Defense in History

Donald Rumsfeld visited with Lil' Russ today. Really it was an exercise in classic Rumsfeld obfuscation. The election was a magnificent example of democracy in action. He simply doesn't accept the notion that Iraqis will want a "small group of mullahs" running the country. Predictably, Lil' Russ used the big down pillow gloves on Rummy. Lil' Russ confronted him with one prior statement Rummy made from a year ago stating that there were 210,000 troops while Biden says there are 4000. Rummy did his usual hand-jive and Lil' Russ let him off the hook.

How many security officers do we need? As many as are needed. No kidding, that was his answer. "Noone predicted the level of the insurgency as it is today." Wha? Say that again, didn't predict the level of the insurgency. Did Russ follow up on that comment? Nope. Instead of walking through that open door, Russert stuck to script and asked him one more time. His response? You gotta remember, the enemy has a brain, it is a moving target. That's why we keep sending in assessment teams.

On to our broken forces. The National Guard and Marines are not hitting recruiting goals. Will it be necessary to say to the National Guard that you are going to have to serve another 24 months? We have no plans to change the rulings and the methods at the present time. Recruiting is "generally" on track. Blah, blah, blah.

Then Lil' Russ shows him the video of the soldier asking him why they aren't as equipped as they should be. That was unfair. It was not a complete representation of his answer and at that point he read a transcript of the answer which did not change at all the tenor of his answer. Lil' Russ backed down. Completely unprepared. Rummy decided what he was going to talk about next, quickly changing the topic to comments of Sen. Collins.

As bad as Lil' Russ has been lately, today he was really off his game. He didn't have his research ready. He wasn't prepared for a combative Rumsfeld. He looked like a deer-in-the-headlights. Lil' Russ failed because he didn't do his homework. He brought up Abu Ghraib and failed to address why it is that only the lowest levels soldiers are paying the price for that debacle. Nothing of Guantanamo. Tim, you failed that one. Lil' Russ confronted Rumsfeld with one prior quote on Iraqi security force levels and the video from Kuwait. There may not be figure in the administration with a record as dismal as Rumsfeld, not to mention a record of public statements.

Next up, Sen. Kennedy.

Kennedy says it isn't about a failed Secretary of Defense but about a failed policy. Then Lil' Russ went after Kennedy and several of his prior statements regarding troop withdrawal, a war based on fraud, the war in Iraq making a mushroom cloud more likely than less less likely, that he was glad Bush was not our Prsident during the Cuban missile crisis. Lil' Russ apparently felt emasculated after his interview with Rumsfeld so he beat up on Kennedy.

Then Lil' Russ moved on to Social Security. Kennedy said it isn't a crisis. Then Russ screamed that we have $5 trillion of "unfunded mandates" and all you want to do is roll back the President's tax cuts. Russ says the Presidnet says "everything should be on the table". Does hne now? Wow. I guess we know where Lil' Russ is on the issue. Someone let Josh Marshall know that Russ is behind the President on this one.

MTP has become an exercise in futility. Every week Lil' Russ spends part of the time either fellating the administration spokesperson or getting fisted, or both. Then he feels he has been used like a cheap whore and over-compensates by getting tough on someone speaking for the other side. Fox news has it down Tim, you won't feel used if you give-in to the reality. You are as bad as them and are in bed with the administration. Let go of the pretense that you are journalist and you'll feel free. Then the rough treatment from the Repugnicans will start to feel good.

Bulge or electronic cueing device?

Well, what do you know?! He wasn't glad to meet me.

In the weeks leading up to the November 2 election, the New York Times was abuzz with excitement. Besides the election itself, the paper’s reporters were hard at work on two hot investigative projects, each of which could have a major impact on the outcome of the tight presidential race.

One week before Election Day, the Times (10/25/04) ran a hard-hitting and controversial exposé of the Al-Qaqaa ammunition dump—identified by U.N. inspectors before the war as containing 400 tons of special high-density explosives useful for aircraft bombings and as triggers for nuclear devices, but left unguarded and available to insurgents by U.S. forces after the invasion.

On Thursday, just three days after that first exposé, the paper was set to run a second, perhaps more explosive piece, exposing how George W. Bush had worn an electronic cueing device in his ear and probably cheated during the presidential debates.



Ok, is anyone surprised that this guy may have cheated during the debates? And if he did, shouldn't he have performed just a little bit better? Man, Bush can't deliver even when he gets the lines given to him. Not that it mattered, millions who voted for Bush could not look past all of the "gay marriage" screams of the religious right.

Or maybe its just a stigmata on his back?

Law & Order Bush: More Order, Less Law

In a move that must be certain to alienate core elements of the classic law and order republicans, Bush is set to slash federal support for local law enforcement.

It is very interesting that during a time of unprecedented expansion of federal law enforcement powers (thanks, Patriot Act and Its ok to torture because the president as commander-in-chief is above the law memos), Bush is proposing far less money for grants to support local law enforcement. That's right, less money for local police to invest in basic crime prevention.

According to figures obtained by the AP, Bush would slice a $600 million grant program for local police agencies to $60 million next year. Grants to local firefighters, for which Congress provided $715 million this year, would fall to $500 million.

What is amazing about all of this is that Bush is receiving praise from some quarters for his "principled stand on spending" when he is pumping billions into a meaningless war that energized terrorism and has made us less safe, while cutting the grant budget for policing where it matters: at the local level.

Bush isn't stopping with curbing law enforcement efforts, ah no no no. His budget is also going to cut frivilous items like heating assistance to the poor (Bush's message here is simple: move to florida, deadbeat and vote republican so we can eventually beat California and New York's electoral votes), environmental protection (you want clean air and water, now your going to have to pay for it. Hell, if he can convince people that we can help social security by taking money out of it, then people can be convinced to pay for clean air), education supports (especially for poor, minority, and Native American schools), farm subsidies (hey, you farmers need to become a giant corporation, that is how you get governmental support!), Amtrack (get in your car and drive), and Medicaid (Bush's message here: the poor and disabled can just die because God did not make them well off like republicans).

If the democrats cannot take control of congress from Bush's republican-a-trons with these kinds of cuts, then they truly have nothing to offer us.

Sunday, Caption fun

Hey, don't go draggin' psedonyms into this!

Here's something interesting

John Dean, while decrying the use of confidential sources, reveals that news on the most famous of all confidential sources may be pending:

I have little doubt that one of my former Nixon White House colleagues is history's best-known anonymous source — Deep Throat. But I'll be damned if I can figure out exactly which one.

We'll all know one day very soon, however. Bob Woodward, a reporter on the team that covered the Watergate story, has advised his executive editor at the Washington Post that Throat is ill. And Ben Bradlee, former executive editor of the Post and one of the few people to whom Woodward confided his source's identity, has publicly acknowledged that he has written Throat's obituary.

Not to be too morbid, but this does lead to two strong possible candidates:



or

Hey GOP Congressman, How many American Soldiers Killed for Bush Today in Iraq?

That's right assholes, three, plus 33 Iraqis. Glad your empty gesture can educate us like a craven Sesame Street Episode.

Wonder if any of them were in their mid-30s, married, with children and yanked out of their civilian jobs? Wonder if you wonder about that too, Jonah?

"Let them Eat Cake"

Jonah Goldberg, Lord High Colonic of the intersection of Manure Street & Insouciance Avenue (hey, Sully's allegedly retiring somebody has to use that word).

He has given us the point blank statement of his excuse for being a young man gung ho for wars other young folks have to fight. Young folks without a trust fund and a mother with connections (or considering who his mother is more likely embarassing photos).

Why won't he hitch up his pants and become an Army of One?

As for why my sorry a** isn't in the kill zone, lots of people think this is a searingly pertinent question. No answer I could give -- I'm 35 years old, my family couldn't afford the lost income, I have a baby daughter, my a** is, er, sorry, are a few -- ever seem to suffice.

Well Jonah, you know there are about 150,000 Americans over in the "kill zone" now and I'd wager more than a third of 'em are married and have a kid. There are literally thousands who are your age and older, who belonged to the national guard, were working their civilian jobs, making their living for their wives (or husbands) and kids and they have been pulled into the war you so nobly cheered on...and for not a few of them...just when they think they were getting out, they've been sent back or kept over there. Meanwhile their boys and girls do not remember what they looked like, their employers have ironically soldiered on without them, and their spouses do the work of two parents.

And of course there are the 1,447 bodies carried home. Many parents of children they will not see grow, wives and husbands they will no longer be able to touch. All they ever had or could be taken away from them. Many starting from a far worse lot in life than you, and now certainly ending up that way.

Yes, you have to make your little living. Running a magazine employing unedited hacks, cheering on wars -- as long as a Republican is starting them. It must be just the fucking bees knees being you -- being so fucking righteous and unable to recognize your own piddling insignificance and foolishness.

Marie Antioinette was once famously accused of saying about the residents of Paris that were hungry, that if they had no bread "let them eat cake". Of course, it was not a true story, but it has survived in infamy anyway.

Today Jonah son of Lucianne, you really did make the morally equivalent statement. You are now defended by the Michael Ledeen's of the world.

BTW, Atrios commenter RCSanders informs us that his son, who is in the military, lost a friend from his unit today in Iraq.

For Jonah's information this man:

Sergeant First Class Sean Cooley, 35, of Ocean Springs, died south of Baghdad Thursday when an improvised explosive device exploded near the vehicle he was in. RC goes on to state in regard to Sergeant Cooley, Jonah Goldberg needs to know that being 35 and having a baby are not disqualifying factors for service in Iraq.

Sergeant Cooley was a man.

Jonah Goldberg is a chancre on the balls of civilization.

Consider this

With all of the hoopla given the calls and cheers following the Iraqi election, we need some historic context:

Something to consider given the recent Iraq election.

The O'Reilly

I have noticed that several bloggers have been rather quiet these days on the ratcheting up of FOX "news" systematic attacks on liberals, progressives, and most notably of late, academics.

Sure we can expect to see some indignant reactions to the current McCarthyist attacks on so-called "leftist" (in Bush's 'Merica these "un-American thunkers") academics being spearheaded by none other than FOX's Bill O'Reilly and supported by a horde of right-wing organizations. But no one seems to be commenting on these problems.

As you have probably heard, Northeastern University's Shahid Alam is the latest target, and a campaign is underway to have him removed. I can only imagine the chilling self-censorship this is going to produce in
college campuses and universities throughout the United States.

But how does this related to Bill "I am from the tough streets" O'Reilly?

In all the cases I have heard of, most unbiased professors from over a dozen universities have declined to go on Bill O'Reilly's self propaganda. Given the format, this is understandable. O'Reilly poses
as a mediator and usually has a far right-winger on along with "the liberal." This makes two conservatives against one liberal. I have even seen it as go as far as three conservatives against one liberal.

It even gets worse, the volume on his microphone seems to be turned up higher -- certainly he is louder by nature. O'Reilly plays on his Levittown working class roots and embellishes his accent. His tone is highly authoritative and he is constantly interrupting people, favorite strategies of the religious right, neocons, and the right wing talk radio rabble.

O'Reilly's favorite targets seem to be Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats. Last night, when responding to criticism of a Washington Post reporter named "Cohen," he referred to him as part of a "Kabal." Shouldn't the anti-Defamation league have cried foul on such obvious antisemitism. In an Orwellian newspeak, the O'Reilly factor claims to be "spin-free." Yet if one pays close attention to the comcercials and you see that the show has corporate sponsors including General Motors among others.

So, my friends I suggest we confront the lies and posturing of the O'Reillys of FOX "News" with "The Bill O'Reilly Challenge." The next so-called left-wing academic who is invited on the O'Reilly factor should do so under the following conditions -- and the following conditions only:

1) that the program be broadcast live with no delay
2) they be given a half an hour
3) that they be given equal time at equal volume.

The O'Reilly Factor won't have "the guts" to do this. Then that person should distribute a press release to all the major news media entitled "Bill O'Reilly is a silly Wuss!" and explain the fact that the O'Reilly show will not allow equal time to different views. If
O'Reilly ever accepts these terms, turn the show upside down and let them have it. More than likely they will then change the terms mid way through the show. Then distribute a different press release. "Bill O'Reilly is a liar who breaks his word!" That should get their attention.

And maybe then people will pay attention as they should to the lies of FOX "news."

Conservative Selfishness and "Toughness"

The fraud behind the whole "conservatives care" argument which includes Conservative Republicans talking about "compassionate conservatism", various Libertarians discusing how we need to be free from government and regulation, etc... is that they deny how much they depend on the labor of others, and how much they rely on government intervention to help them out. Corporate bail outs anyone?

One major failing of us progressives and liberals is that we generally critique the conservatives for advocating an individualistic ("not caring, not sharing") world, when in fact, the conservatives do believe in sharing, they believe in taking from the lower and working classes and using what others do (or we could argue fail to do to challenge the political and economic status quo). Conservatives love to share what others provide for them with other conservatives.

Leftists, liberals, and progressive are much more effective when we critique conservatives for being hypocrites and liars AND when we expose all the ways that the government helps the rich, rather than concede the myth that the rich earned their wealth, but that that the government "should take more from the rich and give to the poor".

The sharper approach is especially more effective with those young, white males who are drawn to the conservatives because of their preceived "toughness" and who scorn the left because the left appears so weak, as they truly are.

There is no reason why progressives have to propose a one-sided "Let's all play nice" in opposition to the nasty appeals to selfishness that is the core of Rightwing philosophy (which they try to cover up with their talk of moral values).

Of course, "being nice" is a major part of our philosophy and I'm not proposing that we trade the vicious "strength" of the Right with a one-sided nastiness of our own. But when we expose the contradictions, myths, and lies, especially the lie that the "tough conservatives" really did it "all on their own", we have a much more accurate, and effective way of critiquing the core of selfish philosophy that leads more people to the right.

And that would be good.

I love the Snark, I love administering the Snark

But oh baby...here are some all time classics.

Juan Cole completely up and slapping the living crud out of Jonah Goldberg. It is BEAUTIFUL. Goldberg, a self-professed Simpson's fan, who apparently cannot fathom its subtler jibes, is likely doing this repeatedly while reading Cole's thrashing of him.

D'Oh!
D'Oh!
D'Oh!
D'Oh!
D'Oh!
D'Oh!
D'Oh!
D'Oh!
D'OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHH!

And then, the cherry on top, as Walcott gives us the analysis of the deconstruction.

Attaturk (and Ba'al [inside joke]) is pleased!

Ask Dr. Attaturk, February 5, 2005

Letter No. 1:

Dear Dr. Attaturk,

I'm having a little trouble with the liberal media, particularly the so-called "independent" liberal media, America-hating pinkos that they are. Every day and night I blather endlessly about how they are destroying the country. I keep fighting the good fight and yet they don't submit to my will. I've tried telling them to shut the hell up, I've insulted them, I've belittled them, I've lied about them, I've demonized them, I've threatened them, but still, STILL, they continue to exist.

I really hate these people and I want them to worship me as I spit on them. So, my question is, why won't they just shut up and start kissing my ass like they should?

Insincerely,
Spinner O'Ribbentrop

Dear Spinner,

Do you not know that Freedom is on the March? Oh sure, not the type of freedom that the alternative media keeps carrying on and on about. You know, freedom of expression, freedom of worship, freedom of assembly. Those are, as you could so easily express, "tired old freedoms".

No the type of freedom that is on the march, are these type of freedoms:

-- Freedom from Responsibilty;
-- Freedom to kick ass;
-- Freedom to take names;
-- Freedom to cut taxes;
-- Freedom to live like the rich person you are;
-- Freedom to worship any religion, as long as it is the right one;
-- Freedom to think about Freedom as listed above;
-- And finally, Freedom to express just how much we love our Freedom!

Tiny flags and car magnets for all!

So don't let those little gnats decrying the restrictions of liberty get you down. You know full well, that Freedom isn't free, unless you're really rich. No, Freedom is whatever we say it is, and that is the cost of Freedom.

Follow?



Letter No. 2:

Hey Doc,

What body part should I dye purple in order to join my leaders in Congress when they dip their fingers whenever Chimpy has a big speech at the Dome?

Sincerely,

Manly Beast

Dear Manly,

Given what I saw from our Congressional Freedom Followers, I would suggest you get used to a purple sphincter.


Letter No. 3:

It's clear that the leader of the delusioned world and his crusty dick are quick to jump when it's pointed out by a few that Iraq could attack or social security could fail or Canadian drugs could be bad and so on. But why when so many warn about the ill effects of global warming do they look on the bright side?

Signed,

Angry Granola-Lover

Dear Granola-Lover,

See the answer to the first question. But let me elaborate a bit.

Freedom to Dear Leader and "Mr. Dick" means alternatively the Freedom to create one's own reality and then making sure that this meta-reality, this "better" reality is enforced as truth about the land.

Dear Leader and his sidekick would like to remind you that Canadian drugs are dangerous in that they could turn you into a mullet-wearing, hockey-loving, beer-drinking person, demanding your low-cost medical care that is open to all.

No, they say, it is much better to be a follower of theirs so you can be a mullet-wearing, NASCAR-loving, beer drinking person, demanding that 'Murica haters shut up and do as Dear Leader says for he truly embodies the spirit of #3!

Further, they might add, these global warming thingys will never occur while they and their old, rich, friends are alive, so why should you worry -- they'll be okay.


Letter No. 4:

Mr. Attaturk,

Why does no one ask the following question to the administration flacks. “If we have truly fully trained 120,000 Iraq military, then why can’t we withdraw 120,000 US troops?”.

Sincerely,

Angered Baghdaddy

Once again remember that Freedom is on the March, and the Iraqi people have been liberated. But you cannot make a people free and sovereign by entrusting them to do things by themselves.

No, the new sovereignty means sovereignty with the presence of our 'murican freedom fighters, our freedom loving 'Murican corporations, having you forget about your old culture and enjoy a good Starbucks Magnum Cum Grande Latte, and a GI Joe Action figure, while growing those seeds from a patriotic 'Murican business like Monsanto. For Freedom isn't free and can only be obtained through Freedom loving 'Murican corporations. That is the new lesson of Freedom that we are teaching the Iraqi people. So you folks should just settle down, shut up, and enjoy your freedom.

Freedom for the Iraqis is too precious to be entrusted to simply free Iraqis.


Letter No. 5:

Dear Mustafa Kemal:You, if anyone, will know how to help with my problem.I am the leader of a large, forward looking, secular democracy situatedbetween Europe and Asia. Since our founding, we have found orselves inconflict within due to minority groups who are not forward-looking. Since theend of World War II, we have also been the faithful friends of a largesuperpower on the other side of the world, even when our friendship upset theneighbors.Recently, our friend has been visiting a neighboring country and carrying onin such a way that, not only is the neighborhood even more upset, but acertain problem minority has gained political power, weapons, and a baseright at our back door.The leader of our friends is sending his girlfriend to talk to us. I don'ttrust her.What would you do?Bummed Out in the Bosphorus,Your admirer "Tay"

I suggest fewer burkas and more Doc Martens. I know your country has some nice big churches that have been made into worship places for other religions.

Well that just isn't going to cut it nowadays in the new world of Liberty and Freedom being created.

I suggest making a few "minor" changes to your faith.

First of all, stop getting together and praying towards some place 7 times a day. That is just gouche. No be like freedom loving 'Murican religious patriots and get yourself a model of a 9-week old fetus and parade it around like you found it in a garbage can.

Second, stop thinking that life's wisdom is found in some book spelled with a "Q" and accept more englishy sounding books as true. Nobody ever misspells "Bible" you know. That has to indicate something!

Third, stop thinking one bedouin guy was a prophet who talked to God. That is just nutty. Start worshipping something more practical and believable, like a guy being born to a virgin and who was the direct representation of God in the Flesh, walked around and talked a bit, then got strung up on a piece of wood, only to come back to life, roll a stone away and leave his image on a piece of cloth in indication of this true divinity! I've observed the way you folks conduct yourselves and you already share the knack of killing people for no reason other than their religious beliefs -- hell a decent religion like we have here in 'Murica got that down a long time ago, so we are sure you guys have the stuff in you to get it right. So get off your non-pork eatin' asses and start worshiping the Jeebus.

And just because you get rid of the Burkas, that doesn't mean complete debauchery, especially nudity, why even our former chief law enforcer was shocked to see a statuary with a bosom upon it...


So don't worry you can be assimilated.

Fourth, dump soccer for goodness sake and start realizing it's Super Bowl weekend, have some wings and chili.

Unbobolievable Denseness

Ah, David Brooks, so well parodied recently by Tom Tomorrow. One can never really believe just how jejune and dense he can be.

Today, he moves away from the perils of white people not having enough babies to the breakdown of fraternal organizations.

...Fraternal organizations are no area of expertise to Attaturk, but I'm pretty sure they were not the cross cultural, economic panacea that Bobolicious makes them out to be. In fact, I'm pretty damn sure of it. But that doesn't stop him.

He has the idiocy to state this:

Over the past two years, what we might loosely call the university-town elite has come to dominate the Democratic Party not just intellectually, but financially as well.

Howard Dean, in his fervent antiwar phase, mobilized new networks of small donors, and these donors have quickly become the money base of the party. Whereas Al Gore raised only about $50 million from individuals in 2000, John Kerry raised $225 million, including $87 million over the Internet alone. Many of these new donors are highly educated. The biggest groups of donors to the Dean and Kerry campaigns were employees of the University of California, Harvard, Stanford, Time Warner, Microsoft and so on.

They tend to be to the left of the country, especially on social and security issues. They may not agree with Michael Moore on everything, but many enjoyed "Fahrenheit 9/11." Perhaps they are among the hundreds of thousands of daily visitors to Daily Kos and other blogs that savage Democrats who violate party orthodoxy.

Many Republicans are mystified as to why the Democrats, having lost another election, are about to name Howard Dean as party chairman and have allowed Barbara Boxer and Ted Kennedy to emerge unchallenged as the loudest foreign policy voices.

The answer, as Mickey Kaus observes in Slate, is that the party is following the money. The energy and the dough are in the MoveOn.org wing, which is not even a wing of the party, but the head and the wallet. Only the most passionate and liberal voices can stir up this network of online donors from the educated class.

Howard Dean may not be as liberal as he appeared in the primaries, but in 1,001 ways - from his secularism to his stridency - he embodies the newly dominant educated class, which is large, self-contained and assertive.

Thanks to this newly dominant group, the Democrats are sure to carry Berkeley for decades to come.

First of all, he talks about the "insolarity" of these academic Democrats, while at the same time talking about his network of "small donors" ... anyone else NOT see the irony of that phrase.

Second, of all, while talking as if this is a small group of elites, what he is describing is "grass roots" politics the very thing he is accusing the Democrats of not doing.

Third, nice to slip in the right-wing talk radio and White House talking points about Boxer and Kennedy, ever the use of the "boogey men".

Fourth, Mickey Kaus! Mickey "Fucking" Kaus. Seeing Mickey fucking Kaus held up as some sort of thermometer is just short of having Zell Miller as your pollstar.

For the 50,823,973rd time, when conservative HACKS like Bobo are giving Democrats advice, give 'em the bird and do the opposite.

Pig of the Day

Ask Dr. Attaturk questions will be coming (I'm a bit busy this morning) but here is a lovely story of Right-Wing Republican Love.

It was fairly well-known last fall that the worst possible Republican Senate Candidate in the history of Illinois, Alan Keyes, while denouncing Dick Cheney's daughters lifestyle, had a daughter that was a lesbian working for him on his staff. However, she had not come "out" to the extent that Mary Cheney had [which I guess means that she publicly acknowledged it].

Keyes is a moron, let's get that front and center. For twenty years his novelty has been, "I'm Black and I'm crazy" and many conservatives, thinking that any black guy with a Ph.D and without gang colors will sway African-Americans on that point alone have thrown him in as a candidate. Such is the perception of Republicans on the black community. It takes an idiot to repeatedly tout an idiot.

Well, ever optimistic Washington Redskins fan and progressive Blogger Oliver Willis has discovered this little piece of "fathering" from Keyes:

I tried to love you and I failed...

Well, it's happened. Finally and officially.

A couple days ago I got my official two-week warning that I have to be out of this apartment; so finally for real I'm getting cut off. I got no severance or anything like that from my sudden termination of employment (don't I have freedom of speech? the right to protest Bush without losing my job? Hehe... most people would think that working under a parent would be security but for me it's quite the opposite.) and so I definitely don't have anywhere near enough cash to find a new apartment; not even one room rented from someone anywhere. I've been searching craigslist but even places where I'd have enough to pay the first month's rent on some room I never have enough for the deposit as well, so so far I've had no luck at all finding a new home, since shelter requires money. Sad boo.

After all the arguments and tension over the years, I always hoped it would never actually get to this point, although I suppose given our vastly divergent political beliefs it was inevitable.

My A n j u l s say no, no, it was not inevitable at all and this should never have happened. They say that parents have some modicum of responsibility to their kids - at least so far as making sure they are not homeless and starving - especially if their kids have done nothing aside from thinking for themselves. They say that different political beliefs should not lead to parents kicking kids out of the house. They say most parents would be thrilled to have a child who doesn't smoke, have sex, do drugs, hardly drinks; more thrilled to have a child who additionally does well in school, is active on all sorts of extracurriculars, gets good grades, gets into the Ivy League; even more thrilled to have a child who on top of that goes regularly to church, spends free time mentoring kids and serving food to homeless people; even more thrilled to have a child to on top of that is not only politically aware but actively going out to try and fight for the causes she believes in, considering the political apathy of most teenagers. They say that if all the above didn't cause parents to be thanking God every day for the child they were blessed with, that they certainly would be after the child puts off college for a year (wait, no, for ANOTHER year, since said child already deferred one year to go teach in India) to go support her father in his work. They say that I'm a good daughter, that I changed around my whole plans just because I thought it would be nicer for my dad if after the end of working all the time on the campaign trail he could come back to someone who loves him rather than an empty house. They say that it should be a source of pride, not of shame, for my parents that I'm so passionate about my beliefs, and work for what I believe in; even if they are not the beliefs my parents hold. They say that the only possible cause for shame anywhere in the whole situation is in the fact that after all this I am being cut off, jobless, soon to be homeless, and that although I have intelligence and motivation I won't be able to go to Brown after all because I have no money.

So my Anjuls say.

My parents say otherwise.

In order to sell himself as Mr. Family Man, Keyes tolerated her as long as she was quiet, the moment she wasn't?

He disowns his kid.

Ass.

Dick Cheney is hardly my favorite person, and he is dangerously greedy, but even he won't turn his back on his kid, though I hope he has to dwell on the other a-holes he enables.

Bad Day for John Cornyn

Via Atrios,

A New York State court ruled Friday that same-sex couples must be allowed to marry.

State Supreme Court Justice Doris Ling-Cohan said that the New York State Constitution guarantees basic freedoms to lesbian and gay people, and that those rights are violated when same-sex couples are not allowed to marry.

The next thing you know it'll be turtles!


Oh, Baby!

Soon to be Welcomed into the Loving Arms of Scaife or Anschutz

Armstrong Williams, I hope he didn't put that $240,000 into stocks BushCo recommends, fired!

Tribune Media Services will stop distributing columns written by conservative commentator Armstrong Williams because he received money to promote President Bush's education programs, the company said.

Meanwhile, the nation's largest African-American journalists' organization has asked other media outlets that use Williams' work to do the same.

Don't worry some wretched right-wing newspaper pusher will pick him up.

The Bush Dog and Pony Show

Our dear leader has taken his new order plan on the road to mixed reviews. Of course, his notion that we can save social security by taking money out of social security and not replacing it, is only popular among the die hard republicans who will do anything dear leader tells them and the account managers on wall street who will benefit greatly from the commissions and collusion that will come to them from this giant giveaway.

The only question is whether or not the public will allow themselves to be misled by the republicans lies and deciet. Of course, the Bush Dog and Pony Show is the usual closed event. The Fargo, North Dakota show even had a blacklists of over 30 local democrats.

So, with flags waving and people cheering -- hand picked that is -- Bush will appear as much a leader as that damn smirk will allow.

Do not be taken in by that good ol' boy language and BS. Bush has been pushing for private accounts since his first failed run for congress; only the dates have changed.

I guess for some people nothing changes, no matter how pretty they dress it up with flags, ribbons, and cheering crowds. Snake oil is still snake oil and its not going to fix anything.

Our Question of the Week

The MSM is going to portray this as "not on the agenda" but that isn't how I heard it. Remember when Tommy Franks lied about plans to invade Iraq? This was long after he had been asked to draw up plans to do just such a thing and had, in fact, been sent back to the drawing board by Rumsfeld a number of times.

Today our new Sexetary of State was asked about our plans to attack Iran. Her response:

LONDON - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) said on Friday a U.S. attack on Iran "is simply not on the agenda at this point," despite the United States' continued criticism of Iran's human rights record and suspected nuclear weapons ambitions.

What do I hear? "at this point".

Our question: How long have the invasion plans been on the drawing board?

I Guess Mutual Suicide Pacts aren't cool anymore

Pity.

From the Washington Post

And Fox News's Geraldo Rivera says that if Michael Jackson is convicted of child molestation, he'll shave off his trademark mustache. Yes, shave it.

Laura Bush, Foshizzle

So Laura Bush is going to be the woman leading efforts to reform the "Gang Problem"?

I somehow didn't catch this aspect of the SOTU, but fortunately the Daily Show pointed it out.

Here's Laura in action, and other caption worthy photographs:


"Did she really just ask me to bum a cigarette?"


The Black-Eyed Peas are going to sing "Let's Get it Started" before the Super Bowl." Oh fucking, hoo-ray. We never get to hear that song.


You see, I just jiggled me brain a bit and voila! I knew how to save Social Security.


Oh great, they are turning Rummy into a Batman villain now. Does that mean that Wolfowitz, Cambone, and Myers all have to wear the same colored jumpsuit? (Yes, I know, "Gitmo Orange" is a good suggestion)


Peek-a-Boob!


Wolfowitz shares a few remarks before heading back to the PNAC Mothership.


"Oh Lord, please give me the strength to fulfill my duties and do your service. Oh, and I'd really like to have wings so I could fly, and a train set, and if you could make Laura's ass just a bit smaller."


Cheney looked on with satisfaction as the electrodes kept the President "on message"

Charles Krauthammer's Dance Party

Chuckles seems particularly obsessed about dancing Iraqis in today's bilge.

Insert joke here.

My favorite section:

But it will not be terrifying to Iraqis, because they know that this is a different time and a different Bush. He won't listen to the Saudis. He won't listen to the Democrats. If the world knows anything about George W. Bush, it is that he does what he says.

Especially the parts you help write Chuckles?

Friday Miscellaneous Lifeform Blogging

Well, the purple fingered brigade could be mocked with lemmings.

But that's too easy.

This week they laughingly voted for Candlewax All. So many of them held up their fingers up like they were enjoying their version of the Beer Hall Putsch. They also managed to purge their ethics committees of anyone that may want to uphold, I don't know, ETHICS! This week's lifeform is thus fittingly:


The Hyena

War by PR Firm

In 1990, the first Iraqi War was made to go down easier over a divided Senate by trotting out a fifteen year old girl to tell us how Iraqi soldiers were tossing Kuwaiti babies out of incubators.

Even at the time, young, thin, full-head of haired, Attaturk, who otherwise supported military action at that time, thought that story was to say the least "a little much." For it reminded him of the propaganda of World War One when German soldiers were accused of tossing Belgian Babies into the air to skewer on their teutonic bayonets.

That turned out to be the case.

In fact, the most emotionally moving testimony on October 10 came from a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl, known only by her first name of Nayirah. According to the Caucus, Nayirah's full name was being kept confidential to prevent Iraqi reprisals against her family in occupied Kuwait. Sobbing, she described what she had seen with her own eyes in a hospital in Kuwait City. Her written testimony was passed out in a media kit prepared by Citizens for a Free Kuwait. "I volunteered at the al-Addan hospital," Nayirah said. "While I was there, I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns, and go into the room where . . . babies were in incubators. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the babies on the cold floor to die."

Three months passed between Nayirah's testimony and the start of the war. During those months, the story of babies torn from their incubators was repeated over and over again. President Bush told the story. It was recited as fact in Congressional testimony, on TV and radio talk shows, and at the UN Security Council. "Of all the accusations made against the dictator," MacArthur observed, "none had more impact on American public opinion than the one about Iraqi soldiers removing 312 babies from their incubators and leaving them to die on the cold hospital floors of Kuwait City."

At the Human Rights Caucus, however, Hill & Knowlton and Congressman Lantos had failed to reveal that Nayirah was a member of the Kuwaiti Royal Family. Her father, in fact, was Saud Nasir al-Sabah, Kuwait's Ambassador to the US, who sat listening in the hearing room during her testimony. The Caucus also failed to reveal that H&K vice-president Lauri Fitz-Pegado had coached Nayirah in what even the Kuwaitis' own investigators later confirmed was false testimony.

If Nayirah's outrageous lie had been exposed at the time it was told, it might have at least caused some in Congress and the news media to soberly reevaluate the extent to which they were being skillfully manipulated to support military action.

The lie then.

And then in the lead up to the current Iraqi War, another woman was pulled out and sold to the press, who again, with all the powers of discernment and investigation of a fluffy catepillar did not investigating of the source whatsoever.

An Iraqi woman who was granted refugee status in the United States after telling The Washington Post and U.S. officials that she had been imprisoned, tortured and sexually assaulted in Iraq during the 1990s appears to have made false claims about her past, according to a fresh examination of her statements.

Jumana Michael Hanna also claimed that her husband, Haitam Jamil Anwar, had been executed during the rule of ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. Her testimony led to the arrest of several Iraqi security officials. Based on her testimony, U.S. officials took her into protective custody in Baghdad and then to the United States.

She was the subject of a lengthy article in The Post in July 2003. Later, a writer who was interested in collaborating with Hanna on a book concluded that she was not telling the truth. The writer's article appears in the January issue of Esquire magazine.

In recent interviews in Baghdad, Hanna's in-laws -- including her husband's brother, uncle and cousin -- all said the husband was alive and had left Iraq several months ago. They also said that although Hanna was imprisoned in Baghdad in the 1990s, it was not for the reason she told The Post.

It took a year and a half, and the work of Esquire Magazine to expose Hanna as lying.

Now we have this little photo op of a woman named Safia Taleb Al Souhail.


Now considering that just last year we saw a State of the Union with this picture...

along with the past history of lies and overstatement forgive me for being skeptical. By the way what happened to the rest of these people surrounding Lump?

Thanks to another KOS comment (it's Kos day here apparently) we discover some interesting information on Ms. Al Souhail.

She was mentioned by Bush on Wednesday and got a prominant place next to Laura of course:

One of Iraq's leading democracy and human rights advocates is Safia
Taleb al-Suhail. She says of her country, "we were occupied for 35
years by Saddam Hussein. That was the real occupation. ... Thank you
to the American people who paid the cost ... but most of all to the
soldiers." Eleven years ago, Safia's father was assassinated by
Saddam's intelligence service. Three days ago in Baghdad, Safia was
finally able to vote for the leaders of her country - and we are
honored that she is with us tonight.

So truly, this woman (winner of any pending Iraqi Monica Lewinsky lookalike contest) must have been one of those millions of repressed people living and fighting for demoncracy in Iraq for lo these many years?

Not exactly.

She is a member of the Iraqi interim goverment. A review of the list of the interim goverment's ambassadors reveals this:

EGYPT: Ambassador Safia'a Al Suhail
Daughter of Sheikh Talib al Suhail al Tamimi; born and lived in Lebanon, where her mother comes from; became politically active after her father was assassinated in Beirut in 1996 by Saddam's secret service; married Bakhtyar Amin, Kurdish political activist and founder of Iraqi Democracy Institute in the US, who is now Minister for Human Rights.

She was a member of another group, which included Chalabi and Allawi called The following 65 individuals were selected to be on the Follow-Up and Arrangement Committee (FUAC) of the Iraqi opposition. You will find her as #31.

There is more to this story, but we all know, according to the SCLM that bloggers aren't journalists. But I would not be surprised if there is a substantial financial connection between this latest person and these prior two efforts. This is their pattern.

UPDATE:

Fnord traces this even farther and finds at the end...surprise...rich white guys pushing their agenda.

Ah, this is good

A commenter at Kos has these choice examples of what passes for the wit and wisdom of Sean Hannity:

Guess who gave this harsh quote about the war:

"No goal, no objective, not until we have those things and a compelling case is made, then I say, back out of it, because innocent people are going to die for nothing. That's why I'm against it."

That's right ... the one and only SEAN HANNITY, back in 1999, concerning Clinton's war in Kosovo! (April 5, 1999, FOX News)

"Congressman Moran, a couple of things that are in my mind. Number one is the president has really failed to lay out before the American people the reasons why we need to be involved militarily. That's number one.
And then we go back to Henry Kissinger's test, which is number one, is there a vital U.S. national interest? And do we have a plan to disengage? What's the exit strategy? I don't see that we've met that test either. And why does it have to happen this second, this hour? Why don't we have a national debate first?"

- Hannity, March 24, 1999

"Slobodan Milosevic is a bad guy. He's an evil man. Horrible things are happening. I agree with that. Is Bill O'Reilly then saying we go to Rwanda, Burundi, Somalia, Sudan? Where does this stop? And when you look at sheer numbers, 2,000 -- and I'm not minimizing death. It's horrible. What this man is doing with ethnic cleansing is abhorrent, but sheer numbers -- 2,000 killed in the last year versus hundreds of thousands, millions in some cases in other parts of the world. Are you saying the United States should go to all those places?"

- Hannity, on "The O'Reilly Factor," April 5, 1999

Theres more profound wisdom that the commenter got from just two weeks worth of statements back in 1999.

The Price Families Pay

The price of freedom grows exponentially but let us not pause over it long because Dear Leader showed us all last night why every death is worth the price we pay. 30 people dead including three more Marines.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqi officials Thursday released the first partial returns from national elections, showing a commanding lead by candidates backed by the Shiite Muslim clergy. Sunni insurgents unleashed a wave of attacks, killing at least 30 people, including three U.S. Marines and a dozen Iraqi army recruits.

But our "leaders" feel good about it.



We're #1. U.S.A. U.S.A. U.S.A.

Uber Quislings

Hey, next time, if I'm good, second base.


Going out tonight for Coors Light pitchers.


Typhoid Mary


Ben dover.


Half Nelson.


Lacking Pryorities

My Favorite Mandate

The President didn't really need to take desperate measures to get Lonely Joe to vote for Candle Wax Al Gonzales, but the guy is just so cuddly, and well, he'd "never kissed hisself a jewish dude before".


Mmmm, you've got a sheyner ponim!

Let us have a master administer the last slam

After telling us he was going, Andy Sullivan is certainly making his departure as overwrought as he can (and lord knows that is more overwrought than a Shatner Death Scene). So let us quote Wolcott on the "living" wake:

First, he ran a selection of emails from faithful readers telling him how much his blog meant to them, their loss tempered by gratitude and the understanding that there's more to life than blogging, such as savoring the aroma of Gevala coffee on a frosty morn. One heartbroke correspondent testified, "Your absence will mark a huge void in my daily life, but it is reassuring that you aren't gone entirely, and may return some day." Like the Lone Ranger, or a recurring rash.

This was barf-baggy enough, but then Andrew decided to blog the SOTU to model his ambivalent sensitivities one mo' time down the gangplank. Some parts he liked, others distressed him, but then the president started getting magisterially pissy.

"We're finally onto foreign policy ... and the speech suddenly improves. Love the dig at Zarqawi."

Yes, because everyone knows what a babyish pouter Zarqawi is. One cutting remark, and he crumples in the corner, unable to lift his cleaver. Of course, Bush also goaded the insurgents to "bring [it] on," which they obligingly did, so perhaps he might want to shelve his digs in the future, since they tend to get others killed.

There is more.

Query to Our Loyal Readers

Dr. Atta J. Turk has received a letter from an obvious admirer from the right with a simple and succinct Title:

"OK, Cunt"

Obviously, a person of both discernment and style.

There is also an attachment.

I'm leaning toward simply deleting.

Anybody disagree?

Well Imagine My Surprise to See the Same thing that Always Happens...Happen Again!

It seems like only yesterday I was saying...

As I've stated before, as others smarter than me have stated before, the pattern of the Bush Administration is to trumpet the thin veneer of its victories so loudly and early, that most of the public is back following American Idol and Fear Factor while the ugly truth emerges underneath.

Oh, cripes, that was only yesterday.

Editor and Publisher, with a thank you to Digby, shows us what the reality of the Iraqi vote is and how it is being completely drowned out by the chest thumping and finger displaying.

Carl Bialik, who writes the Numbers Guy column for Wall Street Journal Online, calls this "a great question ... how the journalists can know these numbers -- when so many of them aren't able to venture out all over that country." Speaking to E&P on Wednesday, Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post -- one of the few mainstream journalists to raise questions about the turnout percentage -- referred to the "fuzzy math" at the heart of it.

Those with long memories may recall the downward-adjusted turnout numbers that followed violence-plagued elections in South Vietnam in 1967 and in El Salvador in 1984.

And one thing we now know for sure: the early media blather about a "strong" Sunni turnout has proven false. Adding a dose of reality, The Associated Press on Wednesday cited a Western diplomat who declared that turnout appeared to have been "quite low" in Iraq's vast Anbar province. Meanwhile, Carlos Valenzuela, the chief United Nations elections expert in Iraq, cautioned that forecasts for the Sunni areas were so low to begin with that even a higher-than-expected turnout would remain low.

In a rare reference to an actual vote tabulation, The New York Times on Thursday reports that in the "diverse" city of Mosul, with 60% of the count completed, the overall turnout seems slightly above 10%, or "somewhat more than 50,000 of Mosul's 500,000 estimated eligible voters."

This, of course, is no minor matter: Iraq's leading Sunni Muslim clerics said Wednesday that the country's election lacked legitimacy because large numbers of Sunnis did not participate in the balloting. Sure, many of them are simply sore losers (they lost an entire country) but that doesn't make their reaction any less troublesome for Iraq's future.

Let us now remember odious men...

It's a big difference. Since Sunday, countless TV talking heads, such as Chris Matthews, and print pundits have compared the Iraq turnout favorably to U.S. national elections, not seeming to understand that 80%-90% of our registered voters usually turn out. The problem in our country is that so few people bother to register, bringing our overall turnout numbers way down.

Howard Kurtz at least looked into the Iraqi numbers. In a Tuesday column, he observed that "the 14 million figure is the number of registered Iraqis, while turnout is usually calculated using the number of eligible voters. The number of adults in Iraq is probably closer to 18 million," which would lower the turnout figure to 45% (if, indeed, the 8 million number holds up).

To put it clearly: If say, for example, 50,000 residents of a city registered and 25,000 voted, that would seem like a very respectable 50% turnout, by one standard. But if the adult population of the city was 150,000, then the actual turnout of 16% would look quite different.

"Election officials concede they did not have a reliable baseline on which to calculate turnout," Kurtz concluded.

It is nice to actually see Howie the Putz working on the side of reality for a change. However, correcting the constant drumbeat of bullshit shoveled out by the administration and the complete inability or refusal of our corporate media overlords to be able to avoid making drastic immediate pronouncements doesn't serve the nation well at all. Naturally, this means it does not serve you well, nor does it obtain its essential function at all.

But, it is just FANTASTIC for the Bush Administration.

So if the press disserves you, it serves Bush well.

Anybody got a problem with that?

Nerd News of the Day

After many many years of subpar efforts, Star Trek's latest wretched incarnation CANCELLED. This series needed to be put to sleep years ago.

You're next if you don't improve Lucas!

Let's see where we stand...

As the talking points change, the punditry alters in relevance.

INTERNATIONALLY,

Bin Laden determined to strike at U.S....that's historical! (Krauthammer, meh!)
Bin Laden wanted "dead" or "alive"(FoxNews, "What a Stud"!)
I don't really think about bin Laden much(FoxNews, "He's busy, but what a Stud!")
Saddam has Weapons of Mass Destruction(O'Reilly, "Damn Straight")
Saddam tried to buy yellowcake for nuclear weapons (Richard Perle, "Speaking of Cake...")
Saddam is hiding his Weapons of Mass Destruction(Hannity, "That's like no fair & stuff, Colmes get me a beer!")
Saddam maintains rape rooms and tortures people (FoxNews, "That's what makes us so much better than him")
Estimates that we need more than 200,000 soldiers is crazy talk(O'Reilly: "Why do you people want to keep us from having our war, What a bunch o' nuts!)
Estimates this could cost as much as $200 Billion, really crazy talk (Cavuto, "More Tax Cuts, More, More, More!")
Well a little looting of stuff like weapons dumps and natural history museums, shit happens, but hey, look at how nice the Oil Ministry looks? (Brooks, "Look at that Statue come down...if only Whittaker Chambers were alive...")
Mission Accomplished, things should be good now (Coulter, "Bush gives me such a chubby!")
If we fire all these Bathist folks, that'll show 'em who is the boss (Krauthammer, "We should hire AIPAC to manage things there.")
Bring 'em on (Coulter, "I mean it, I have a stiffy that must feel sweet release!")
Just a few deadenders (O'Reilly, "Let's kill 'em and let God sort 'em out)
All this is just a sign of their desperation (Coulter, "Yoo Hoo, speaking of desperate, I'm like sending so much blood down there I'm gonna pass out!")
We captured Saddam in a hidey-hole, things are gonna be sweet now (Hannity, "Can I like touch his gun." Coulter, "WHAT ABOUT ME, ME, ME, ME")
The Zarqawi guy is just a foreign goof, the rest of the Iraqi's love us (Brooks, "This reminds me of why white people need to have more babies.")
Hey, Falluja, let's wreck some of that stuff, that'll show 'em (O'Reilly, "Finally, we are going to show those Democratic, Micheal Moore loving Fallujan's what for. I reminds me of the time I was in the jungles of Argentina within 500 miles of the Falklands War.")
Hey, it was just some crazy kids letting off steam (Rush, "We all have to do it one way or another...sweet sweet sweet blue babies I miss you.")
Now that we've turned over Iraq to that Iraqi guy, things are gonna be better (Coulter, "Fine, I'll just whip out my Clinton pics and beat off then")
Once we bomb the shit outta Falluja, it'll be fine, you'll see (Krauthammer, "Mein Fuhrer, I can valk")
So they dropped a few dozen mortars into the Green Zone, they're desperate you see(O'Reilly, "Clearly so many people on the Left are perverts, unlike conservatives")
Look at these here purple fingers, say can we have another $80 Billion?


DOMESTICALLY...

Privatization of Social Security (Brooks, "I'm no economist, but here's what I've got from the White House.")
Ownership society (Brooks, "A society of white pregnant people who have their 18 children care for them in their old age...well except for mom who died during 18s birth, but that's the way God wanted it.")
Personalization (O'Reilly, "Say, ever seen a naked Thai girl")
Personalized Accounts (FoxNews, "Randy Moss wagged his fanny in Green Bay. The horror, that impudent black man!")
Self-managed Retirement Accounts (Coulter, "Where's my whip?")
Umm, miracle grow?

State of the Morons, Fingering America

Heeeeeeeere's Condi....redrum, redrum, redrum!


Even at the beginning of the speech, Denny Hastert realized that late Burrito dinner was a bad idea.


Nice, jackass has to have a pronounciation key.


"Here's your money, and here's your money"


Cheney smiles as Hastert suggests he visit Yad Veshem in a yellow rain slicker.


Republican's Encouraging American to "Smell My Finger" since 2001,


or alternatively "Given the finger to America"...


or alternatively "Kindergarten Nuremburg Rally"


Ein Riech, Ein Volk, Ein finger

Remember to Send those Advice Questions

We put in a sidebar in "red ink" so you know it's important!

So far this week only one question for Dr. Atta J. Turk to answer, surely the leaders of our nation are not out of questions already [though probably out of answers]?

Please all of your Republicans real or faux, send your questions to Dr. Atta J. Turk.

Keep Smalfish from becoming Smalfry

In an effort to assist a fellow progressive compatriot, I am joining with the First Drafter's and perhaps some others to ask folks, if they can, to contribute to a person in distress because of a TRULY wretched piece of legal abuse.

I'll let Smalfish describe it:

Apparently the government in their wisest of wise wisdom has found that it is leagal to steal someone's house and I am caught up in a shitstorm.

I had no idea what kind of bullshit was lurking untill yesterday when a local news reporter wanted to interview me because my house had just been sold without my knowledge.Needless to say I was floored.

For 1000 dollars and some change my homeowners association has thrown me and my family under the bus,and its going to take some serious running to get out from under it.

As Athenae says:

Look, this happens to people all the time, and not just through government bureaucrat ratfucking. People lose their jobs and run out of money, and with their whole savings tied up in the house, when that's gone, so is their future. For most people, the house is still everything they have. Which makes it all the better if we can help when we find out about it happening to someone we know.

We gave turkee to Kerry because we didn't want to see people suffer under this regime. No reason we can't continue to do our best to see that people don't suffer. The people who hang out on this blog, and on that one, are good people who are in politics because they care about one another. Let's do some good here.

Here's a chance to actually use our low wattage blog power to help a fellow citizen out a bit...so give he and his family something, if you can, at this paypal link.

Well Suckas

Instead of watching the atrocity that is Bush speaking, or attempting to speak, in sentences, perhaps you would rather peruse this complements of Letterman:

GEORGE W. BUSH FIRST TERM VS. SECOND TERM
How will things be different?

First Term: naps from 2 PM to 5 PM
Second Term: naps from 2 PM to 6 PM

First Term: wrecked the Middle East
Second Term: wrecking Social Security

First Term: Sure that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction
Second Term: come to think of it, it might have been Iran

First Term: spent a lot of time and energy running for re-election
Second Term: already gearing up to run for that elusive third term

First Term: chocked on a pretzel
Second Term: close to a deal with Nabisco to choke on an Oreo

First Term: Americans go to Canada to avoid expensive drugs
Second Term: Americans go to Canada to avoid draft

First Term: sought to bring dignity to the White House
Second Term: seeks to bring Monster-Truck shows to the White House

First Term: lies to get us into war with Iraq
Second Term: lies to get us out of war with Iraq

First Term: criticized for spending too much time vacationing on Texas ranch
Second Term: will instead spend more time vacationing at Kennebunkport beach house

First Term: dazed
Second Term: confused

First Term: tried to keep harmony between members of cabinet
Second Term: trying to keep Bush twins out of liquor cabinet

First Term: vows to one day put a man on Mars
Second Term: vows to one day put a man on Liza Minnelli


Okay, the last one was kind of weak. I usually dislike blatantly copying late night material of others, but I thought this one was pretty good.

Middling Triumvirate Gives Thumbs Down To SOTU

I've talked with the brothers and on behalf of the middling triumvirate am happy to announce that we give the SOTU a hearty thumbs down. I am confident we can do this even before Bush takes the podium to a room full of purple thumbed Repugnicans (funny how they don't mind letting us in on the secret of their circle-jerk Tom thumbery). We are gluttons, just not of sufficeient magnitude to tune in.

We shan't be live-blogging the wretched affair. So instead of watching the chimp I will be watching "Manos" Hands of Fate, Attaturk will be watching Teenagers from Outer Space, and DeDurkheim will view Attack of the Giant Leeches. Off to the movies.

Attacks on Science winning

Take a look at this artice from the "paper of record." Seems like the relgious right's attacks on evolution are bearing some bitter fruit for teachers and researchers.

Dr. John Frandsen, a retired zoologist, was at a dinner for teachers in Birmingham, Ala., recently when he met a young woman who had just begun work as a biology teacher in a small school district in the state. Their conversation turned to evolution.

"She confided that she simply ignored evolution because she knew she'd get in trouble with the principal if word got about that she was teaching it," he recalled. "She told me other teachers were doing the same thing."

Though the teaching of evolution makes the news when officials propose, as they did in Georgia, that evolution disclaimers be affixed to science textbooks, or that creationism be taught along with evolution in biology classes, stories like the one Dr. Frandsen tells are more common.

In districts around the country, even when evolution is in the curriculum it may not be in the classroom, according to researchers who follow the issue.

Bonus Captions

"Mr. Prime Minister, your steer is done"


"President Yushchenko, your Jiffy Pop is done."


Kathryn Lopez sees shadow. At least six more years of chastity.


"Condi, get up from under the podium and waive hello to the nice people."

What Many of You Don't Know

Sure it is Groundhog Day in the United States and all that.

But do you know that today in Iraq its Dhul-Qi'dah 18th and well, that just happens to be Sand Spider Day in Mosul?

Every year on Dhul-Qi'dah 18th a crowd gathers around Mosul Mahdi, the Sand Spider, and sees if she detects her own shadow with her eye clusters.

It is reported today that she did, thus there will be at least Six More Years of Civil War.

I can't wait for the Bill Murray movie about it.

History Recommendations?

The post below brings up an issue (non-comedic) that I think is worthy of some discussion. Lord knows this is hardly the first time it has been done.

I love history, though hardly a professional, History is perhaps the most approachable of all social sciences for the enthusiastic amatuer. For me I've always loved the forgotten underdogs of history (be they William Jennings Bryan, Jean Juares what have you) or the simply unappreciated.

It seems strange to say that George Washington of all people is unappreciated, but he has been ill-served by time and hagiography to the point where he is less flesh and blood than calcified monument. But the "real" George Washington was more than just "the father of his country" or "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen". Rather, in Washington we see such greatness that the blemishes should be examined and he can withstand them.

Washington for example, would he able to communicate with the present, would almost surely say he regretted slavery then, and certainly regrets the lack of effort the founders took on the issue for political expediency. Washington came to detest it and was the only Southern founder to actually put his feelings into practice when he freed slaves both at the time his presidency ended at upon his death, and then upon his wife's death. He would, however, also agree that this was not enough and he made a mistake.

There are periods that I am more familiar with than others. I'm fairly comfortable with my grasp of my own nation's history (though I can always be better), but here are some books that come to mind that I have loved concerning it...chronologically:

Here are some, off the top Historians (I'll limit it to American, though you need not) and Books that I heartily recommend, just a few, hardly exhaustive at all, and it is limited ONLY to books I've read.

-- Joseph Ellis's book on Washington is terrific, as is Thomas Flexners.
-- Read anything by Forrest MacDonald, perhaps the most entertaining writer there is on Revolutionary History.
-- Richard Hofstadter's, The American Political Tradition remains a terrific work
-- David McCullough's, John Adams is a terrific book.

Moving along in American History:

-- Read all the Robert Remini you can get your hands on, be it: his works on Andrew Jackson (especially the 3-Volume Biography)
-- Merrill Peterson's "The Great Triumvirate" (bio of Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and John C. Calhoun)
-- Arthur Schlesinger's "The Age of Jackson" remains a great work.

Civil War

-- There are a great number of Lincoln bios, but Donald Herbert Donald's is the best.
-- Gore Vidal's Lincoln is IMO his best written and most accurate historical work.

Late 19th Century:

-- Campbell & Steele's, The Human Tradition in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era
-- Devil in the White City, by Erik Larsen
-- Roy Morris, Fraud of the Century : Rutherford B. Hayes, Samuel Tilden, and the Stolen Election of 1876

Reform Age:

-- Edmund Morris' two Roosevelt Books (so far), The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt and Theodore Rex (hard to believe same guy wrote awful Reagan Bio)
-- Robert Cherney's William Jennings Bryan bio, "The Righteous Cause"
-- J. Anthony Lucas' "Big Trouble"

WWI Era:

-- Margaret McMillian's "Paris 1919 : Six Months That Changed the World"
-- John Judis, The Folly of Empire : What George W. Bush Could Learn from Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson

Well, that's enough, I'll just lop off the next 80 years...except to say...

-- James McGregor Burns, Roosevelt, The Lion and the Fox, wonderful
-- Robert Caro's "LBJ" series is phenomenal
-- Merrill Miller's "Ike the Soldier" is terrific
-- Stephen B. Oates, Let the Trumpet Sound (Props to commenter Mary for reminding me)
-- Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters
So many others, but time presses.

Your thoughts and recommendations?

Kudos

I love good writing using historical analogies...I especially enjoy it when I run across a post I wish I would have written.

Kidding on the Square writes such a post today. Here is an excerpt of "real" courage compared to "faux, er, FoxNews" courage:

Stop and think about this. Washington hears the sound of New York under attack, so he mounts his horse to ride to the scene. George W. Bush, on the other hand, hears word that New York is under attack and he reads My Pet Goat for seven minutes, and then, after gathering his thoughts, jumps on Air Force One to fly at warp speed in the opposite direction, as far away from New York as he can get. Of course, Congress had appointed Washington as Commander-in-Chief in 1775, and Bush was … well, the Supreme Court appointed him Commander-in-Chief.

Highly recommended. It is a great read and great research.

Attaturk Shrugs

Today is Ayn Rand's 100th Birthday.

Celebrate by yourself, or not.

Here's an Idea, oh and Photocaptions

You know all this global warming is taking the drama out of Groundhog Day -- tonight perhaps when not engaging in malaprops, The Chimperor will propose moving Groundhog day to January 2nd and call it "The National Holiday Restructuring Act", but knowing him he'll just be sensitive and propose combining it with M.L. King Day.


I submit the Pope, he got the Bird flu. However, the Vatican did have one bit of good news, his Holiness had won this year's "Peter Boyle Lookalike" contest.


Looks like Ann Coulter picked the wrong time to visit Vancouver.


True, it seems sad that Bush needs to have his intro on a teleprompter, but left to his own devices Dear Leader would start out his speech, "Dear Bitches..."


Forget being Secretary of State, Condi's biggest task will be filling in for Oprah.


The changes over the world the last dozen plus years are in evidence, as Messengill films a disposable douche commercial in red square.


"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein Iran recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he Iran has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production. Saddam Hussein The Iranian government has not credibly explained these activities. He They clearly has have much to hide.

The dictator of Iraq government of Iran is not disarming. To the contrary, he is they are deceiving."

And Now Reality Sets in

No one has a better record at reading the situation in Iraq, or predicting its course, than Juan Cole. The righties from time-to-time whine about his prose, because frankly they do not like reality continually bopping them on the nose while they are selling shinola to the disinterested or ignorant American populace (and yes Mr. and Ms. America for the most part you are one or the other).

As I've stated before, as others smarter than me have stated before, the pattern of the Bush Administration is to trumpet the thin veneer of its victories so loudly and early, that most of the public is back following American Idol and Fear Factor while the ugly truth emerges underneath.

But back to Professor Smooth and Debonair, today he points out the reality of what Iraq's election results actually mean:

Abdul Aziz al-Hakim claimed victory in the Sunday elections for the United Iraqi Alliance, the coalition of religious Shiite parties he leads. And this is what the winners, if they are winners, think of the US:

' "No one welcomes the foreign troops in Iraq. We believe in the ability of Iraqis to run their own issues, including the security issue," Mr Hakim said. "Of course this issue could be brought up by the new government."

The idea that the revolutionary Shiite al-Dawa Party, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the Badr Organization (trained by the Iranian revolutionary guards), all of them with close ties to Tehran, would welcome a permanent US military presence in Iraq was always a chimera. Most Shiites who voted on Sunday thought they were voting for an end to US hegemony in their country. This is why it is so bizarre that the US Right is interpreting the elections as a victory for the Bush administration.

Professor Cole, of course, knows the actual answer to his last statement, the right interprets the election the way they do because (1) the are delusional and (2) they have coopted the press into buying their delusion (3) the press continually demonstrate that either they are suckers or are on board with the delusion and (4) paraphrasing H.L. Mencken, no one ever went down by underestimating the american people. When they yell loudly at the beginning of any news event, the Bush Administration and its enablers create a meta-reality the manages to drown out actual reality.

Eventually this will catch up to them, the question is whether they go down themselves or drag the rest of us with them.

On February 2nd

Dear Leader will emerge tonight and cast no shadow at all.

Label under: WHA?????

Beer with caffeine

Would not that just lead to mass confusion?

Let's Extrapolate.

Thanks to uber Josh Marshall and boy wonder (ivy league edition) Matthew Yglesias (please send cookie for spelling it right on first try) comes this magic language out of the GOP playbook on doing to Social Security what they did for Iraq, base it upon the most simplistic and irrelevant logic possible:

From page 102 of the playbook:

Let me leave you with a question: Why should young people who will retire around the year 2035 be forced to live with a system that was invented in 1935, especially when that system is in such deep trouble? So many things have since changed then. When Social Security was created the Golden Gate Bridge didn’t exist and neither did Mount Rushmore. You couldn’t see the Wizard of Oz because it hadn’t been filmed and Cheerios hadn’t been introduced as a breakfast cereal. Americans in 1935 couldn’t imagine our world of cell phones, computers, or landing a man on the moon—and that was more than 30 years ago! Times have changed, even if the values behind Social Security haven’t. Young people ought to have a chance to do it differently than their grandparents. So let’s press our leaders for this change now, and start putting money into personal accounts as soon as possible.

So, in short, because Social Security is 70 years old it must be altered fundementally.

Well, let us take this thought and extrapolate it with a mere few alterations into a similar argument I'm sure is in the heart of heart of many a wingnut:

Let me leave you with a question: Why should young people who live here in the year 2005 be forced to live with a system that was invented in 1787, especially when that system is in such deep trouble? So many things have since changed then. When the Constitution was created the State of Missouri didn’t exist and neither did the telephone. You couldn’t see the Wizard of Oz because it hadn’t been filmed and breakfast cereal had not been invented. Americans in 1787 couldn’t imagine our world of cell phones, long pants, or flying and that was more than 100 years ago! Times have changed, even if the values behind America haven’t. Young people ought to have a chance to do it differently than their great great great grandparents. So let’s press our leaders for this change now, and start putting soldiers into other countries as soon as possible.

A Promise

There will be NO COVERAGE of celebrity trials ever at Rising Hegemon.

However, when Attaturk is carried off to military prison, we promise coverage of all the waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and a detailed description of any "thong" bearing interrogators.

Irresponsibility is not changed by a half-way decent Day every six months

A sickening headline at the Washington Post.

For Bush, Validation in Iraq


We've had so many self-proclaimed turing points in Iraq that fittingly the Bush Administration's policy would be a perfect NASCAR race (with RIGHT turns for left).

But it doesn't change things.

It is still much more likely that Iraq ends up win a worse state than it was by leaving Hussein isolated and surrounded. No amount of post-invasion spin and proclaimation that "the World is better off without Saddam" can really change that evident fact.

Indeed this is one of the real examples of the bugaboos of arguing this issue. So overwhelming were the denunciations of the obviously vile Hussein and the requisite cheers for his overthrow by "our brave boys and girls" that a rational approach has been impossible.

For if the world was actually better in early March 2003, then, well we are complete fucks aren't we?

But that is about the sum of it.

As cruel and vile as Hussein was, for the world outside of Iraq (and bluntly for the now nearly two years since he was tossed inside Iraq) was more stable and safer with the dictator there as a known, and toothless tiger (for he was clearly toothless outside Iraq).

I suppose this is a reality only a middling anonymous blogger can put forth (you more prominant people must shut up), but taking a survey of the landscape it is true. Just because Hussein was an evil motherfucker, doesn't mean that one cannot step back and take a glance at how we have fucked things up (and it's a collective we, as much as we can lay this on Bush, and he obviously has a healthier portion than most, it is "my" country doing this). Tens of thousands have died, and what do we have in Iraq? No matter what they tell you, nobody really knows.

A mature foreign policy recognizes the devils, but also realizes that when you decide to remove the pieces abruptly, when you don't have to, you really do not know what the hell you will get. Ask the Hohenzollens and the Romanovs how deciding to completely shake up the stable but unsatisfactory known works out.

And despite it all, despite all the lessons of history, Bush decided that the status quo was intolerable, having no idea, and still having no idea what he would get. That is not mature leadership, it is the action of a spoiled brat leading a disinterested and immature people.

It could work out to some passable situation, but I doubt it, and no matter how things work out, it came at a high cost and does not make the decision any more correct.

Attaturk's Vapid Television Review

Just to step away from politics for a minute and provide this trenchant analysis of a television show.

For those of you who saw the Discovery Channel's Pompeii the Last Day (repeated tonight -- yes they do something on that channel besides Monster House and 'Murican Chopper) I think you saw a really excellent historical recreation.

However, for those of you who saw the last half hour, or will tonight, I have but one simple statement...

WHO KNEW THERE WERE SO MANY HOT VOLCANOLOGISTS?

And I'm not just speaking in puns.

Self-Congratulatory Bullshit

Attaturk has been nominated for a couple of other Koufax's at Wampum making our total like 7 or something. A couple more and we can be 2005's version of "Master & Commander".

Apparently, blogwhoring can be good for something as I was nominated for "Best Commentor" for my so-called contributions to Atrios and the American Street. This leads me to a couple of thoughts. First, I got nominated for best commentor? Second, I contributed to the American Street?

In honor of this nomination, I hereby BLOGWHORE my own blog.

Wow, was that good for you too?

Somehow, given all the quality on other blogs, I was also nominated on a serious post. Just goes to show you that "blogpolar disorder" can come in handy.

While we are on the topic of awards (notice how I said "we" like you should give a shit)...

DON'T FORGET YOUR NOMINATIONS FOR .... THE SHITTIES! (click to nominate)

Could Someone Please Retrieve Bobo's Brain from the Pumpkin Please?

I've read some strange permutations out of what passes for thought from Bobo Brooks, but I have to admit even I never thought the man could plumb these depths...

As I watched the images of Iraqis lining up to vote, even in the face of terrorists who threatened to wash the streets with blood, I couldn't help thinking of Whittaker Chambers.

WHAT!?

Seriously...WHAT!?

For you kids that do not remember Whittaker Chambers, let's just say he pretty much served as the mid-wife of the McCarthy years in this country. A paranoid, depressive, who was determined to take his obvious shortcomings out on those who possessed all that he did not. In the 20s and 30s Chambers was a communist, who apparently did not get the sex from the far left he expected, Chambers decided to turn on his old "comrades" (who apparently got laid more) and claimed he was exposing State Department employee Alger Hiss. When matched up with an ambitious California Congressman, Richard Nixon, and a magic garden containing microfilm bearing produce, Chambers rocketed to embittered prominence.

In the wake of the downfall of the Soviet Union wingnuts were determined to try to prove that Chambers was a victim...as they had a half-century earlier, the verdict is in reality much in doubt, but one would never know it from dupes like Brooks.

Nevertheless, if anybody can think of any possible way that Whittaker Chambers has fuck-all to do with the Iraqi elections other than Bobo let me know.

Speaking of Bobo, Tom Tomorrow gives us a fine look at the fellow, yes indeedy.

Suckas!

Golly gee, just a few months after begging suckers for more money for his blog (for I don't know the 18th time in 2 years) saying it would allow him to keep doin' his "quality" stuff, Li'l Roy is going on hiatus.

If it was possible for him to be more lame, I guess he accomplished it.

And speaking of lame...

Justice for Detainees

Here's a quick one for those intrepid readers stopping by looking for something new.

More proof that the political affiliation of the president who appoints a judge often times is a reliable predictor of how the issues will be evaluated. Today a federal district court judge held that the detainees in Cuba have rights beyond those the White House wants them to have.

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration must let foreign terror suspects challenge their confinement in U.S. courts, a judge said Monday in a ruling that found unconstitutional the hearing system set up by the Pentagon (news - web sites).
U.S. District Judge Joyce Hens Green also raised concerns about whether detainees have been tortured during interrogations. Judges, she said, should make sure people are not detained indefinitely based on coerced and unreliable information.

Foreigners from about 40 different countries have been held at the U.S. Navy (news - web sites) base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba — some for more than three years — without being charged with any crimes. They were mainly swept up in the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan (news - web sites).

The government contends the prisoners are dangerous "enemy combatants" who, because they are foreigners, are not entitled to the same constitutional protections as Americans.

Judges are trying to sort out detainee rights following a landmark Supreme Court ruling last summer that federal courts are open to appeals on behalf of the foreigners.

Green's ruling conflicts with a decision about two weeks ago by another federal judge in the same court who considered a similar lawsuit brought by a different group of detainees. Judge Richard Leon found that while the Supreme Court gave detainees access to courts, it did not provide them the legal basis to try to win their freedom.

And how dare the judge tell the administration it has stepped over the line. Bush must have absolute and complete power to do whatever he wants, wherever he wants, however he wants, while he plants the flag of freedom all over the globe.

A Justice Department (news - web sites) spokesman said they would appeal the ruling to protect the president's long-standing detention powers that "are critical to the ongoing war on terrorism." The spokesman said the department hoped to have a quick resolution.

Green's decision was a sharp, but courteous, rebuke of the government.

"Although this nation unquestionably must take strong action under the leadership of the commander in chief to protect itself against enormous and unprecedented threats," she wrote, "that necessity cannot negate the existence of the most basic fundamental rights for which the people of this country have fought and died for well over 200 years."

Oh yeah, and which presidents appointed these two jurists?

Green, named to the bench by President Carter, was assigned to sort out issues in claims filed in federal court in Washington on behalf of about 50 detainees. Olshansky said more petitions are being filed this week.

Leon, put on the bench by President Bush (news - web sites) three years ago, declined to have his cases coordinated with others. He concluded that foreign citizens captured and detained outside the United States have no rights under the Constitution or international law.

What do you know, the Bush appointee wants Bush to have absolute power, the Carter appointee sees the limits of executive power. Four more years of the chimp appointing judges. Very bad indeed.

American Officials were Heartened

Well, because I am afflicted with blogging compulsions...

United States officials were surprised and heartened today at the size of turnout in UN-NAMED COUNTRIES presidential election despite the ________ terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting.

According to reports from CAPITOL CITY of UNNAMED COUNTRY, 83 per cent of the 5.85 million registered voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many of them risked reprisals threatened by the INSURGENTS.

The size of the popular vote and the inability of the INSURGENT GROUP to destroy the election machinery were the two salient facts in a preliminary assessment of the nation election based on the incomplete returns reaching here.

Fill in the appriopriate names and it would be a report from Iraq.

But it isn't. Except for the fill ins, it is a direct lift from the New York Times, September 4, 1967 about Vietnam.

Before The Preznit's Next Ride Around the Parade Grounds

Well the talking heads are already talking about the success of the elections. Another made for teevee news event happened over the weekend when the press could go out and find a few heartwarming stories to remind us how great we are. It's all well and good but before the preznit decides to celebrate this one like Patton reviewing the troops, I'm taking it upon myself to remind him we have been here before.

Even if there was 100% turnout, the equation is still the same. But now we have to hear the inevitable question by the news machine: this morning on NPR Renee Montagne asks one of the guests doesn't this vindicate the Bush foreign policy? Imagine that, all we have to do is throw an election and that justifies the policy of premptive war and occupation of any nation we want for any reason we want, even if we lie about the reason, hundreds of billions of dollars in treasure, tens of thousands of lives lost, tens of thousands of bodies maimed, and finally, occupation in the face of a growing insurgency. I'd say an election is the least we can do. But a vindication of the Bush foreign policy? Good thing I didn't eat before I heard that one.

*Like Attaturk, I'm making a living today and will be off at least for today, maybe tomorrow. Meantime, don't take any crap from the media. Please.

Shout Out to Cthulhu

It is not often one gets a chance to thank an H.P. Lovecraft character, but now I can.

My post below has been answered by blogger Call of Cthulhu, go to his blog and give him hits as he has provided Dr. Atta J. Turk with a permanent sidebar link for your "hard qweschens" to be answered every Saturday, or more depending on volume.

And now it's back to real-life and compensated work for Attaturk.

Hey Hegemon Readers

And/or Conservative Bobbleheads, if you have a question you want Dr. Atta J. Turk to answer, like last week, please keep those emails coming to attaturk2004@yahoo.com.

Oh and you HTML experts, how can I write a continuous request for such things in the sidebar (with a link to the email address) so I don't have to keep putting up these here obnoxious thingys? I suppose I could try to figure it out my own self...but dammit I'm too busy not entertaining America!

If you know please email me.

Oh, No!

As if I needed a real world reason to take the rest of the morning (at least) off from blogging, from the intersection of Homophobia Street & Latency Avenue:

And while the election proceedings have been heartening, euphoria is surely out of place. Elections don't by themselves guarantee constitutional government. I have just finished reviewing Philip Short's new biography of Pol Pot (review to appear in the NY Sun next week). The Cambodians had elections a-plenty, but they ended up with the Khmer Rouge just the same.

When I start nodding my head in agreement on a political matter with this guy...



Either the end times are here, or I need to do actual work.

Dupes

When your threshold of success in an election is "45 percent turnout for Kurds and Shia, 25 percent turnout for the Sunnis, under 200 murdered." , I'm not sure you really have any cognitive understanding of "success".

This is a song and dance.

As we have stated (and we are hardly alone) the Right-Wing will trumpet, and the media confined to within a small zone of Iraq will pass on stories of this "singular" triumph where people voted and they will state it by sheer percentages.

Of course we will now see what the returns are, we will now see just how overwhelming the Shia supported slate of candidates does in comparison to significantly lower turn outs of Kurds, and even more pathetically Shia.

The Right loves to govern by analogy, but analogy doesn't convert truth from reality. That only happens with American Corporate Media.

The ground will not change much in my opinion, and the truth will slowly ebb out. It may conflict with the comfortable meta-reality that war supporters continue to want to create, but it will come out nonetheless.

My advice, copy and past on those message boards that do not have "archives" (like this and most blogs do) and keep reference of your favorite overstatements made yesterday and over the next couple of days, because you are going to want to pull them out to show some neocon enablers at that puffed-up worst.

No more Judith Millers.

All You Need is Spin

Well, the enablers of the so called liberal media have worked their wonders to make sure that they emoted every ounce of the Bush Administration's ejaculatory load in Iraq...right down to the last little sperm. Judy Miller didn't even ask for a virtual towel as she got each prescious drop down her vacuum powered 10 amp gullet.

The secret, as the White House knows, and which the press and dupes known as Bush supporters seem unable and unwilling to learn, is to spin the initial impression as an absolutely smashing triumph.

Just look around the rightwing intellectual ghetto and you'll see it. Sing it long, sing it loud, I'm perpetually bamboozled and yet incredibly proud. Once again we have turned the corner triumphally, surely there will be no more corners now.

Enboldened that once again they have been able to create this meta-reality, the Bush team knows that it will be able to spin the same sort of tale in coming months in Iran.

I suggest the neo-cons called their planned Iranian and Syrian "freedom spreader" meme as SUPERDUPERSTAN.

It'll really play in the corporate newsrooms telling you what to think in Peoria.

And what if the Sunnis Don't Vote?

It is not a democracy without the Sunnis. But self disenfranchisement is not the same thing as being systematically oppressed, right? More than likely some Sunnis voted but if there is a skewed vote, we will have a skewed government which could lead to a skewed civil war.

And the media heads are all talking about how there was people walking in, marching in, dancing in to the polling places. And, on "this historic day" -- which makes me wonder why the same guy chanting "very happy" is on several news channels? -- we have a lack of an appreciation that voting is the easy part; now, government building that is hard.

And what of the insurgents? There was violence and some bombings but not nearly as much as expected. Of course, if you want to really strike a chord of fear and anger, how about waiting until the day after the vote and gun for people with the purple fingers? Yeah, only the best security in Bush's Iraq.

And what of our ex-good friend, Chalabi? Will he still get elected into a position in the new government?

Preliminary results are expected in about six days, with a full result not due for 10 days.

But correspondents say there was a marked division in voting - high in Shia and Kurdish strongholds and much lower in Sunni Arab areas.

The election was marred by a series of election-day attacks across Iraq which killed at least 36 people.

And just before voting officially ended, a British military transport plane crashed north of Baghdad killing at least nine soldiers.

Needlenose raises several questions about the Iraqi elections that we should consider as well.

How effective will this election be for the Iraqis? Only time will tell.

Religion and the Election

Pete Blackwell has a great analysis of the challenges faced by moderate Christians and liberals. I highly recommend his analysis on religion in modern America and the need to retake the idea and practice of Christianity from the extremist fundamentalists.

From the article:

The slander that liberals in America are frothing-at-the-mouth atheists who "despise" Christ is, it seems, a common one. I have heard similar comments on Rush Limbaugh's radio show amongst other places (and who could forget Jerry Falwell's rant blaming the 9/11 attacks on "the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians..., the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America"?). It is an often-repeated fact that America is the most religious country in the west. A poll from none other than Fox News found that 92% of Americans believe in God (compare that to 61% in Britain).

Let's take what Fox says at face value (wow, I never thought I would say that) and have a look at the election numbers. There were 117,897,556 votes cast for president in the 2004 election. If 8% of the voters don't believe in God, that makes 9,431,804.48 votes from atheists (we'll assume the half vote came from Florida). John Kerry got 57,288,974 votes. Let's assume all atheists voted for Kerry and none voted for either Bush or Nader (an obviously false proposition). That would mean atheists made up 16.46% of Kerry's vote total. Therefore, fully 83.54% of those who voted for Kerry believe in God.

The article only gets better from there.

How much is a good concert worth?

U2 tickets for their Vertigo tour are a bit pricey which raises the question, how much is a great concert worth? Now, before the slings and arrows of musical discontent are slung at me, I should point out that I do not attend many mega-concerts (just as I avoid mega-churches) but how many more shows is U2 going to play? And I will still argue that Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby are great records. And Vertigo is a great rock song, in my humble opinion.

While I will always ask people to attend shows by great local bands that most of us have never heard of, once in a while a show comes along that I must attend. And U2 in Chicago is one of those shows.

But apparently the shows for their North American concert tour are selling out at record speeds and there is a controversy with presales for members of the fan club. Of course, fans never think that they are entitled to special treatment. Ok, ok, I know... there are fans who always feel entitled because they believe that "I was their first" or "this band changed my life" or "no one else understands the band, the way I do."

However it does seem that there is evidence that scalpers and touts were selling presale tickets on ebay and other venues before concert goers had the opportunity to buy tickets. And while that is not fair, let us be honest... illegal sale of tickets has a long and ignoble history in rock and roll. And if these scalpers kept fans from buying tickets by line jumping so that only the scalpers got the tickets for sale at the box offices, that should be investigated immediately and steps taken to correct that problem.

But the question still remains, how much is a good concert worth? How much will people pay? Is a few hours with a rock and roll band worth $49, $95, $165, or even $195 per ticket?

Can we Slow Down the Derailing Train?

With the Sunday news shows today we have an example of mass delusion. The righties really are trying to turn the elections in Iraq into a "See we told you so moment" aren't they? This really brings out the whole point of the Bush years, scream so loudly about fantasy early on that there is no room later when reality sets in.

Today Mrs. Bush -- Condi Rice -- is doing the sunday morning talk circuit with a vengeance trying to convince us that this is the point of the Iraqi war and not once mentioning or even hinting about the controversy of why we originally went to war in Iraq, WMDs. Of course there was no discussion on any of the news programs that the elections were a second, or third, or far further down the line of reasons for going into Iraq.

But it gets worse apparently on This Week with George S., both the Iraqi turnout estimates in the 70 percent and those from international observers of 50-55 percent were discussed. Peter Jennings urged caution over and over, stressing that it was still way too early to assume anything. We here can only agree with him and encourage news outlets to hold off on making predictions until more verifiable information is released.

And we should view with skepticism information and estimates that come from those who have the most to gain from a successful election. What do impartial observers tell us?

Fox "news" is naturally pushing (and even CNN are pumping out) the low 70s figure like its a FACT... rather than waiting for reality to set in... Who has a dog in the fight and thus who is more credible?

Terrorist Ad Hoax

Terrorist Ad Hoax

From The Observer today:

The spoof ad opens with the suicide bomber leaving his home and jumping into his VW Polo. The bomber parks at a busy London restaurant where carefree diners crowd the pavement. Cut to the terrorist sitting in his car as he pushes the button to detonate his bomb. The blast is contained within the car, saving the diners. The ad ends: 'Polo. Small but tough'.

It has to be a candidate for the sickest advert of all time, but also one of the most deceptive. Despite the high quality production values, real Volkswagen logo and the free publicity it is attracting around the world, the commercial was not made by the car giant.

Indeed, the firm has expressed disgust at the spoof depiction of a suicide bomber blowing himself up in a VW Polo, and tomorrow it will consider legal action against its creators.

Hail the Conquering Voters

Since I was interested in seeing the neocon view of the elections in Iraq (and felt the need for abuse), I turned on trusty Fox "news" sunday. And I was not disappointed. Brit Hume gloated over how this validates the war in Iraq. Chris Wallace kept repeating over and over that this was historic and justified administration policies. Then battlin' Brit Hume came back to how the "much embattled" neocons were right... that this election -- and this election alone! -- justsifies everything this brave administration has done in Iraq.

Bill Kristol discussed who pushed for this election against naysayers and critics? Brave, farsighted, and the leader of the free world, preznit Bush.

Whoa!! This love fest of the preznit and his Iraqis policies is not unsurprising but no mention of the recent bombings. Oh, they are not kidding are they? This is not a model that can be replicated anywhere! This is not a model for Saudi Arabia.

Then the group turned to attacking Ted Kennedy for daring to question the plan in Iraq, comparing Iraq and Vietnam, and calling for a pull out. Huge Hume: "Intellectual equvialent of grafiti," "out of his mind for saying such nonesense." Amazing. This election is seen by the Fox Neocons as complete cover for a failed mess in Iraq.

Here is the summary of the discussion:

Elections = freedom and winning the war on terrorism

Are they out of touch with reality? Do they not understand that elections, while a wonderful idea, are not going to get rid of the insurgency or the terrorist who are now in Iraq that were not there before the war?

Apparently not.

And he calls this Democracy?

From the Guardian, we learn that Bush wants to ban "pro-homosexual" plays, dramas, and theatre. Is this what Bush means by democracy? Banning elements of culture he doesn't like in the guise of "protecting people?" Expect more of this as this imperial presidency rolls on.

What should we do with US classics like Cat on a Hot Tin Roof or The Color Purple? "Dig a hole," Gerald Allen recommends, "and dump them in it." Don't laugh. Gerald Allen's book-burying opinions are not a joke.

Earlier this week, Allen got a call from Washington. He will be meeting with President Bush on Monday. I asked him if this was his first invitation to the White House. "Oh no," he laughs. "It's my fifth meeting with Mr Bush."

Bush is interested in Allen's opinions because Allen is an elected Republican representative in the Alabama state legislature. He is Bush's base. Last week, Bush's base introduced a bill that would ban the use of state funds to purchase any books or other materials that "promote homosexuality". Allen does not want taxpayers' money to support "positive depictions of homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle". That's why Tennessee Williams and Alice Walker have got to go.

I ask Allen what prompted this bill. Was one of his children exposed to something in school that he considered inappropriate? Did he see some flamingly gay book displayed prominently at the public library?

No, nothing like that. "It was election day," he explains. Last month, "14 states passed referendums defining marriage as a relationship between a man and a woman". Exit polls asked people what they considered the most important issue, and "moral values in this country" were "the top of the list".

"Traditional family values are under attack," Allen informs me. They've been under attack "for the last 40 years". The enemy, this time, is not al-Qaida. The axis of evil is "Hollywood, the music industry". We have an obligation to "save society from moral destruction". We have to prevent liberal libarians and trendy teachers from "re-engineering society's fabric in the minds of our children". We have to "protect Alabamians".

Me time

I can't think of anything to blog today. So I'm taking the rest of the day off to surf e-bay to complete my collection of civil war decorative plates -- I'm just one Jeb Stuart from completing it.

Wish me luck.

Meanwhile, enjoy this depressing story of pending global environmental disaster.

How Many Times Have We Reached The Turning Point?

On this the eve of "historic" elections in Iraq I want to recognize some cold facts. We have reached turning points in the colonialization of Iraq on several occasions including the "end of major combat operations", capturing Saddam Hussein, putting in place an interim government, "destroying the insurgency", and on and on and...At each turning point Iraq has become less stable, more dangerous, provided fertile ground in which to plant and grow a lethal and effective insurgency.

No matter what happy talk we hear about the success of tomorrow's elections, it will be too soon to tell whether we have reached a "turning point". All of the evidence suggests that civil war is a distinct possibility, if not imminent. What are the possibilities? One of the best reporters in Iraq, John Burns, suggests it is, at best, a mixed bag.

Nearly 22 months after American troops captured Baghdad, lighting a fire of enthusiasm for the freedoms Iraqis had craved so long, it is a measure of how much has gone wrong that Iraqis committed to Western-style democratic ideals can differ so sharply over the best way to secure them. Much of the problem is that the elections are being held under the dominion of the United States.

Many Iraqis, interviews in recent months have shown, do not accept that fundamental choices about the shape of their future political system should be made by a foreign power, particularly one they regard as a harbinger of secular, materialistic values far removed from the Muslim world's.

But questions over the election go far beyond the American stewardship, to issues that touch on whether it was ever wise or realistic to think that Jeffersonian-style democracy, with its elaborate checks on power and guarantees for minority rights, could be implanted, at least so rapidly, in a country and a region that has little experience with anything but winner-take-all politics.

Compounding those objections, the elections are being held in the grip of a paralyzing fear that many Iraqis see as inconsistent with a free vote. A savage insurgency, and the harsh measures America's 150,000 troops have taken in response, have angered and terrified Iraqis, who now face election conditions that have made an obstacle course of the process, at every stage.

The whole thing is worth reading but this about captures it. There are mixed feelings among those we came to set free. If nothing else captures the predicament we face, that does. The adminstration can say anything it wants about turnout, whether significant or not, but that is not and will not be the measure of success. Peace and prosperity is what we promised as part of the dividend for going to get rid of WMD. They will welcome us with flowers. Not. So on this count call me a skeptic. This is a war we have already lost, elections or not, and time will prove the failure of the policy in due course.

Is Walmart doing the right thing?

I do not know what to say about this...

From the Rage Diaries, it appears that Walmart is recognizing the effort in some states to accord family rights to same sex partners. Man, Walmart doing the right thing? Should I be looking for the sound of trumpets and the horsies of the 'pocalypse?

How long before Dobson and others in the religion gone wrong collective jump on Walmart for this?

Trying to make lemonade from lemons

"Hi you may not recognize me, but I have been writing pro-Bush columns for pay. And let me tell you that my shil is the top quality. When you pay for me, you get the best pure shil that is available today. So, if you want me to convince people something about you, call me at 555-1212. No non-Christians please."

Internet Radio

Some RH readers might remember that several months back I wrote about the death of an independent radio station in Ohio, WOXY 97.7. This radio station like so many of its brother and sister alternative stations was sold to corporate radio (those of you who care about music and radio, know to what I refer). Well it turns out that several of the employees of that station have set up an Internet broadcast. WOXY radio became WOXY.com.

How many other progressive, alternative, or interesting radio stations have been driven "off the air?". How many alternative, progressive, and explicitly anti-corporate radio stations still remain? Or have they all been sold by the owners of the station to mainstream oligarchic corporate radio?

The WOXY story was sad for sevearl reasons: (1) because a community station was lost, (2) this was a station where the DJs actually could influence what got airplay rather than some corporate directors in a corporate HQ who sent their prepackaged radio programming out via satellite to their "affiliates." (3) the station, for all its failings, did listen to some of its listeners when they made requests. Can any of us imagine that corporate radio really takes to heart the suggestions of its listeners?

Note to owners of alternative radio stations: If you sell your station to a large radio conglomerate, you did sell out the values of your station for commercial profit! And there might even be times when that is unavoidable but do not lie to yourself or your former listeners and others that you did not sell out. Because in fact, you did.

With all of the discussion of Howard Stern and the move to Satellite radio, we need to also remember that Internet radio can be a viable option for alternative and progressive radio. Is the nature of radio right now changing? Are more and more broadcasters going to get away from an FCC run amok (will it really get any better with Michael "thanks for the job, Dad!" Powell stepping down. Probably not.)

Of course the FCC is not the only problem, we must remember, the religious nut-wing is interested in controlling all aspects of our culture, our lives, and our bodies. And some, like James Dobson -- who is quite busy scouring cartoons on PBS for "gay agenda" items, is happy that Stern is moving away from radio.

But I am happy to report -- yeah, we get occasional good news, go figure -- that WOXY radio has not only become WOXY.com but that it is moving forward. And with the success of liberal and progressive talk radio via Air America radio on the Internet eventually expanding on conventional radio, it is possible that the future of alternative and progressive radio talk or music is not controlled by the right-wing, whatever their type.

Consider this discussion of WOXY's move to Internet radio. I imagine that POD casting cannot be far behind.

Managing the CULT of Personality

This story in the Washington Post shows the depth of the new Stalinism, "minders" shuffling reporters to and fro at, for example the inaugural.

What free press?

But now the art of press handling has evolved into actual manhandling. The Bush team has expanded the use of "minders," employees or volunteers who escort journalists from interview to interview within a venue or at a newsworthy event.

...

Several reporters covering the balls were surprised to find themselves being monitored by young "escorts," who followed them from hors d'oeuvres table to dance floor and even to the bathroom.

I was among those who was assigned a little friend. Or to be precise, I was monitored for about half of the inaugural party I was covering for The Post. For the first couple of hours of the Independence Ball, I roamed the vast width and length of the Washington Convention Center hall dangerously unescorted.

I had arrived early to get a head start on mingling among the roughly 6,000 people eating and dancing to celebrate the president's reelection. Unaware of the new escort policy (it wasn't in place during the official parties following the 2001 inauguration), I blithely assumed that in the world's freest nation, I was free to walk around at will and ask the happy partygoers such national security-jeopardizing questions as, "Are you having a good time?"

Big mistake. After cruising by the media pen -- a sectioned-off area apparently designed for corralling journalists -- a sharp-eyed volunteer spotted my media badge. "You're not supposed to go out there without an escort," she said.

Okay, this is officially fucked up.

Isn't this one of their arguments for invading Iraq?

Cheney Style Questions

Seems like we at the Rising Hegemon are not the only ones to question what Mr. Style was wearing during his ski holiday. While it is always nice to be among others who confirm your ideas, we still have to wonder what led Cheney to such poor choices in clothing for a solemn occasion.

So, to increase the understanding of our pal Dick we offer a few helpful suggestions:

1. Cheney is color blind. While this does not explain all of his dreadful choices, it does explain several suits and why the man seems to really like grey.

2. Cheney is an avid hiker. Right after the ceremony, Cheney and several of his dudes were going to do some extreme hiking. Kewl!

3. Cheney likes to stand out in a crowd. Why if everyone is wearing black, you should wear something flashy, something sexy, something to set yourself apart. Besides just because everyone is doing the same thing, say like following the Geneva Conventions, why should you? Be an individual.

4. Cheney hates black clothing. It reminds him of his imminent demise. And no one likes to be constantly aware of their own death.

5. Related to #4, the secret service with the backup generator and spare batteries for Mr. Cheney have to always be able to pick him out in a crowd.

6. Cheney is no lemming and he does what he wants to do, you got a problem with that punk?!

7. Bush picked out his clothes before he left because George has always though of himself as a "Fancyboy clothes dresser guy."

8. For the more conspiracy minded among us... Cheney secretly wants to die and get away from an administration that is grossly and stupidly destroying the enviornment, ruining the reputation of the U.S. abroad, ruining the economy, and -- most importantly of all -- will soon go after Krispy Kreme donuts and Cheney does not want to live in a world without Krispy Kreme... so he makes himself an obvious target for a sniper.

9. Cheney doesn't care what the Germans think because they did not support our personal vendetta against Saddam, oops, no... did not support our war against Iraq because of WMDs, damn it, no... did not support our war to bring freedom and liberty to the people of Iraq and eventually Iran, Syria, etc etc.

10. Lynne dressed him and he secretly (or maybe not so secretly) has lost her boyhood crush on Dick. Plus Lynne had just finished shopping at Aushwitz Eagle, Old German Navy, and Luftwapostal.

Saturday Mail Call

The first, of what we hope is a regular column to answer questions submitted to Dr. Atta J. Turk, Unlicensed Therapist ("emailing" is preferable to attaturk2004@yahoo.com if you please).

Let's look at this weeks inquiries:

LETTER NO. 1:

Hi Dr. Attaturk,

It's me Noell.

There's a a big fundraiser for my daddy this weekend in West Palm. I've been feelin'a bit out of sorts lately, ya know...run-down, sluggish.

Should I take my usual fistful of Black Beauties or do I need a good dose of crystal meth to get my engine jump started?

Well Noell, whenever Dr. Atta J. Turk is down he doesn't turn to illegal drugs. A person with a drug addiction such as yourself should never try to go back down that road. Be strong.

However, have you ever considered alcohol?

It is not illegal, it is readily available in a wide variety of choices and flavors and is also relatively inexpensive. In fact, I have no doubt that at your father's fundraiser this weekend it should be at your fingertips. As a matter of fact, at a Republican gathering, given their policies and programs, I'd say the evidence is pretty strong that alcohol consumption is a given. I'd have a "Cutty and water", or six, if I were you. Considering who will be there, your Dad and his buddies, it may even be available intravenously.

Ah, sweet, sweet alcohol. In my many years of giving advice, I've found that people who have had addictions to other substances take quickly to distilled spirits and it does dull the pain. It is particularly effective in Republican Households.

Imbibe away.

LETTER NO. 2:

Dear Dr. Turk-

The mean old press corp keeps asking me why we have allies like Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan if we stand for Freedom, I tried to ask Mr. Cheney but he muttered something like Oil and Karimov is a model leader. I don't know who this Karimov fella is but accodring to Condi his first name is Islam so I guess he could be that Allah guy Mr. Falwell's always complainin' about, anyway, I'm confused, how can I stand for Freedom and be friends with a guy who boils dissidents alive?

Signed, Dear Leader

Dear Dear Leader,

At first, I am inclined to say, see the answer immediately proceeding, but perhaps that has already done all it can do for you.

Dear Leader, you have to continually remind yourself and continually repeat that "9/11 changed everything".

As the wise men of talk radio tell us, the only real kind of "freedom" is the freedom that comes stamped with the words "Made in the US of A". Freedom is after all precious, so precious in fact that it cannot be distributed too broadly. Why even in the United States we cannot be too free, as we have learned in the last three years, four months. Freedom, apparently, can only really be given to those who have the authority to wield it. Freedom is only to be apportioned among those already in power, or those with a great deal of money and the "right" (wink-wink) position on the issues, as Mr. Falwell will tell you "God's position".

You must also remind yourself that while your enablers talk about Islamo-facism and how it is a bad thing, the term is not to be applied to an Islamic Facist actually running a country. For those folks, like Karimov, are our friends and can give us that thing almost as sweet as alcohol, crude oil.

Remember, it is important to both you and Mr. Karimov that oil remain less expensive, but not too inexpensive. For your country, it will make sure that some of your supporters can keep driving their Hummers, while the rest keep cranking out babies through cheaper heating oil -- yet keep the profits high enough for ample income for your buddies (like Mr. Dick). For Mr. Karimov it means that deep frying is not prohibitively expensive and the cost of "lunch" doesn't become a cost too great to deal with.

Sometimes, the people you have to deal with are not nice, or sweet, but you have to interact with them anyway for your own political interest. This should be a concept you are familiar with.

Be strong.

LETTER NO. 3:

Dear Atta J. Turk --

I am the God-appointed Preznit of a large Western superpower, and I have a problem. There appear to be as many as a dozen cold Senators' and pundits' noses all up in my anal regions, all the way up to my colon at times, and what I want to know is this: How do I tell that Joe Lieberman guy to quit hogging, to knock it off and give other people their turn?

He just doesn't want to listen. He's worse even that that Chris guy with the high voice.

Thanks,
Little Georgy Jingo

Dear Little Georgy,

Here you see the problems that happen when one has to deal with those on the other side of the aisle and the cost that have to be paid. Once you were nice to that Zell fellow, it was only a matter of time before lonely Joe came a callin'. And I understand it is a problem, while Zell is crazy, he, at least is entertaining, lonely Joe on the other hand...well let's just say he makes Mitch McConnell seem charismatic in comparison.

Look, any Republican in your position is going to have to deal with a needy pet Democrat. They are not going to get love from their party, and so they come over to you for the occasional pat on the head and a public attaboy. Some Democrat has to want to be on Hannity & Colmes or O'Reilly as the "good" Democrat in order to serve some sort of pathological need to be loved by someone.

I think, however, that you are overestimating the amount of sphincter time you have to give someone like lonely Joe. It is my experience with him, that when it comes to the necessary affection from Republicans, allowing lonely Joe a quick sniff followed by a good thumping from the back of your hand should suffice to keep him in line. So for you, a quick reward followed by the pleasurable infliction of pain -- a momentary inconvenience and a precious release -- sounds like something you would like.

As for high-pitched Chrissy, just the back of your hand, or on special occasions a good bludgeoning with a mallet, will work.

LETTER NO. 4:

Dr. Atta J. Turk:

How come prezniting is such hard work?
Secret Reader.

Secret Reader,

Anything that we are not really qualified to do is hard work. For example, Dr. Atta J. Turk's time at the Art Instruction School of Minneapolis, was really difficult once he got done drawing Lucky. I found that drawing wasn't really for me, it was hard.

But fortunately, another type of degree was available to me, as that DeVry Diploma stating I'm a "Doctor of Brain Medicine" can attest.

My suggestion is that eventually you find something you are more qualified to do, and devote your remaining years to that task. May I suggest ceramic ashtrays?

LETTERS NO. 5 & 6: Similar Themes

dear sir,

my husb..., um, my boss, even though he has promoted me, it has moved me from his immediate presense. how do i get him to see me as the woman who should be his lump?

Signed,

Anonymous

Dear Dr. Attaturk,

I have this friend in a very powrfull posishun who fell in love with one of the people workin for him. She obiv obvee clearly shares this affecshun. There are a couple of problems here:

he is married; the people supportin him threw out the last person because of the kardnal sin of lust; the people that support him would not like to see him with a ni dar person of her color; if it doesn’t work, he will lose the best lack bootl person in his office.

Any suggeshchuns?

Sins Respek Love,

Christ’s Second Coming

Now, this would seem a conundrum. Since these questions came from from the same server address, I think it is possible that these two people work together, or did.

My advice is that if they are not already members of the Grand Old Party, they sign up and join immediately.

As I stated above, "9/11 Changed Everything" or at least it re-emphasized what we all know to be true. Moral scruples are only demanded of Democrats. The reason that those people threw out the last guy, is that he was hoggin' all the booty. Believe me, nobody swings pipe like Tom DeLay.

If you are a Republican, then have at it, do about anything you damn please except be two men having the anal sex and a marriage license, that apparently is out, but otherwise, have at it.


Well that is all we have for this week. If you are an individual with other questions that require the sage advice of an individual please seek help elsewhere, but otherwise, feel free to write attaturk2004@yahoo.com and on Saturdays Dr. Atta J. Turk will try to give you the answers, you want to see.

Peace, out, homies.

Charles Pierce sums it up about right

From Altercation, on the subject of the Iraqi vote:

Some people are going to vote even though they've been told they will be killed if they do. Nobody in this 40-percent turnout, sucker-for-the-cheap-wedge-issue, talk-show-babbling country of ours has a right to do anything but admire that, and make sure that the undeniable courage on display doesn't get sold down the river for a three-point bump in some future Gallup Poll. This war isn't just a monumental blunder. It's also an ongoing act of betrayal by a bunch of second-rate thinkers who never in their lives have displayed an ounce of the courage that some anonymous woman in Baghdad will evince today.

I know a lot of people praise Wolcott as a great writer, deservedly. But Pierce is no slouch and sums it up about perfectly.

Attaturk could probably work on being a better writer to get within some proximity of them, but somebody has to photocaption Cap'n Happypants and his Nubian Princess and/or compare conservative hacks to varmints and dammit it requires considerably less skill!

So, why this day?

Why January 30th for the Iraqi elections?

Were Georgie & Cheney too into their weed and blow back in the late 1960s to realize what January 30th was infamous (to Americans) for?

Ever hear of the Tet Offensive, Chimpy?

It stated in early 1968....January 30th!

Ask Dr. Attaturk

A Neocon with Questions that need answers? ("Have you considered a Lobotomy?") Get them every Saturday. Send your questions to attaturk2004@yahoo.com

Gee, since everybody seems to have Awards

Why not us?

I want to know what is the WORST blog on EARTH.

I'm not talking Little Green Fucksticks, or Ernest T. Bass, ESQ. We may disagree with them because we are afflicted with this little problem called 'sanity', but even they cannot be the worst, and let's be honest Professor Jethro may be disagreeable and occassionally loathsome, but between the "heh" and "indeed" he can write a complete sentence (usually no more than that but still...).

What we at Rising Hegemon want to know is WHAT is the WORST BLOG on EARTH. The more obscure the better.

Categories:

MOST VILE (Just for the record NO Sexual Deviants please [that should cut down half the internet])

COMMENTER MOST LIKELY TO BE CLINICALLY INSANE

WORST WRITING

And finally, the most frightening category of all...

WORST FAN FICTION
Who is most deserving not only of an award but also of a restraining order.

Nominations will be open until we say so. We shall call them THE SHITTIES!

The New Face of Torture

from Buzzflash

The loss of life

The following sad statistics underscore the need to get out of Iraq and keep pressure on the Bush misadministration to explain their lies, mistakes, and deceptions on WMDs, the lack of an exit strategy, no clear plan for so-called "nation building."

1425 Official U.S. Military Fatalities in Iraq (as of 01-28-05)
10371 Official Wounded (thru 1/8/05)

Bush and his misadministration lied, soldiers and Iraqis keep dying. The sacrifice is too great for unclear and unfocused goals. What were these goals again? And... are we there yet?

Attaturk Apologizes

I am making a sincere effort to be more mature, so in that light...

I've been pretty hard on the chief blog gal of the place where Aghast Street meets Enema Avenue, Kathryn Lopez. Often in the past I have remarked that the magazine will not let her be seen in public, or that they keep her in a cage.

However, it is clear that in the new edition of the National Review K-Lo will be prominantly featured:



So K-Lo sorry I made fun of you being a recluse.

The Chimp Really Cares About Civil Rights And Liberties

Our intrepid leader at his clarification meeting with the press:

Q Second question, on race. You brought it up in the inaugural address, and yesterday and today you have black leaders here at the White House discussing issues of race. Yesterday you didn't discuss civil rights. But where are you in the second term as it relates to race in America?

THE PRESIDENT: Civil rights is -- is a good education. Civil rights is opportunity. Civil rights is home ownership. Civil rights is owning your own business. Civil rights is making sure all aspects of our society are open for everybody. And we discussed that yesterday. And I believe that what I said was important, that we've got to shed ourselves of bigotry if we expect to lead by example. And I'll do the very best I can as the President to make sure that the promise -- and I believe in the promise of America -- is available for everybody.

Krugman today, as one who really, and I mean really, hits the proverbial nail on the head:

What's really shameful about Mr. Bush's exploitation of the black death rate, however, is what it takes for granted.

The persistent gap in life expectancy between African-Americans and whites is one measure of the deep inequalities that remain in our society - including highly unequal access to good-quality health care. We ought to be trying to diminish that gap, especially given the fact that black infants are two and half times as likely as white babies to die in their first year.

Now nobody can expect instant progress in reducing health inequalities. But the benefits of Social Security privatization, if any, won't materialize for many decades. By using blacks' low life expectancy as an argument for privatization, Mr. Bush is in effect taking it as a given that 40 or 50 years from now, large numbers of African-Americans will still be dying before their time.

Is this an example of what Mr. Bush famously called "the soft bigotry of low expectations?" Maybe not: it isn't particularly soft to treat premature black deaths not as a tragedy we must end but as just another way to push your ideological agenda. But bigotry - yes, that sounds like the right word.

Yeah, he talks a go....well he talks a game. But there's no walking, know what I mean? This is a great example of an issue we can shove up their ass and show people who don't ordinarily think about human or civil rights that it deserves some of their attention. This one issue can illustrate fundamental differences between Bush's "I've got mine philosophy," and ours.

Dumbed down in Ohio

Legislation that would restrict what college and university professors could say in their classrooms was introduced wednesday in that fine electoral state of republican red Ohio.

Apparently there are several other states where similar bills attacking higher education have been proposed or are beging hotly debated right now. Of course, we have to acknowledge that these efforts are coming from republicans. I wonder if they would attack those of us who were oppressed in college by the flaming conservative economist? Or attacked in class because we did not conform to slavish faith in the economic determinism of capitalism.

One has to wonder how soon they will begin burning the books. We all know that "tha tinking is bad." Besides unless you are reading from the "accepted" list, you are introducing yourself up to new ideas and experiences and only the heartless secular humanist does that.

But don't take my word for it:

Marion Sen. Larry A. Mumpers "academic bill of rights for higher education" would prohibit instructors at public or private universities from "persistently" discussing controversial issues in class or from using their classes to push political, ideological, religious or anti-religious views.

Senate Bill 24 also would prohibit professors from discriminating
against students based on their beliefs and keep universities from
hiring, firing, promoting or giving tenure to instructors based on their beliefs.

Mumper, a Republican, said many professors undermine the values of their students because "80 percent or so of them (professors) are Democrats, liberals or socialists or card-carrying Communists" who attempt to indoctrinate students.

"These are young minds that havent had a chance to form their own
opinions," Mumper said. "Our colleges and universities are still filled with some of the 60s and 70s profs that were the anti-American group. Theyve gotten control of how to give people tenure and so the colleges continue to move in this direction."

Joan McLean, a political-science professor at Ohio Wesleyan University, said Mumpers legislation is misguided and would have a chilling effect on the free-flowing debate that is a hallmark of democracy.

"This is not the kind of democracy we think were spreading when we hear President Bushs words. What were celebrating is our ability to not control information."

Besides, McLean said, who would define what issues could not be discussed?

The language of Mumpers bill comes from a 2003 booklet by conservative commentator David Horowitz that lays out how students can persuade universities to adopt the "bill of rights." The booklet says it is "dedicated to restoring academic freedom and educational values to Americas institutions of higher learning."

The issue has gone national.

Horowitz created Students for Academic Freedom, a group based in
Washington that has chapters on 135 campuses, to promote his views.

On the other side, the American Association of University Professors, which has thousands of members at hundreds of campuses, argues that eliminating controversial issues from courses waters down academic freedoms.

Mumper said hes been investigating the issue for months and has heard of an Ohio student who said she was discriminated against because she supported Bush for president.

"I think the bill asks that colleges and universities be fair in their approach to their education of students," Mumper said. "They need to have their rights defended and need to be respected by faculty and administrators."

In a Kenyon College publication, President S. Georgia Nugent called Horowitzs thinking "a severe threat" to academic freedom.

"I see this so-called bill of rights, the platform that he has
constructed, as one that would explicitly introduce into college and university appointments a kind of political litmus test," she said.

Mumper said he will "push this all the way" so that its approved by either the legislature or by individual universities.

When a similar proposal was considered in the Colorado legislature last year, it was withdrawn after state universities agreed to some of its principles. The issue also has been debated in Indiana and considered in Congress.

Joe? Joe McCarthy? Hell, I thought that you were dead. Oh.

Dems getting some backbone?

Where was this when Kerry and the dems were running for election? While I applaud (imagine clapping) Kennedy's attack on a fruitless meaningless war, where was this during the campaign? Where was this moral outrage? Do the words "Too little, too late" mean anything for anyone else?

No matter how many times the Administration denies it, there is no question they misled the nation and led us into a quagmire in Iraq. President Bush rushed to war on the basis of trumped up intelligence and a reckless argument that Iraq was a critical arena in the global war on terror, that somehow it was more important to start a war with Iraq than to finish the war in Afghanistan and capture Osama bin Laden, and that somehow the danger was so urgent that the U.N. weapons inspectors could not be allowed time to complete their search for weapons of mass destruction.

And, of course, it is getting worse in Iraq.

How long until all of the democrats not only finally grow some back bone but also attack the republicans every single day for this folly and that they have led the country down not a primrose path but into the pits of hell.

Several allied countries, many of them eastern European, that were part of the original "New Europe" group backing the Iraqi war have said they will either completely withdraw or substantially reduce their forces in Iraq after the January 30 elections.

The largest reduction is expected to come from Ukraine, which currently has some 1,600 troops in Iraq, making it the sixth-largest contingent. Earlier this month, outgoing President Leonid Kuchma ordered the defence ministry to draw up plans to begin a complete withdrawal by the middle of the year, after eight Ukrainian soldiers were killed in an explosion.

How long before Poland leaves the coalition of the paid?

The move follows a decision by Poland, one of the US's closest allies in the Iraq war and with the fifth-largest contingent of 2,400 troops, to reduce its presence by nearly a third, to 1,700, by the end of next month. The Polish government has faced intense political pressure domestically, where its participation is increasingly unpopular, and the reduction may be followed by a complete withdrawal by the end of the year.

Polish military officers, who command the multinational division in south-central Iraq, have said their reduced numbers combined with a Ukrainian withdrawal could force them to cut the number of provinces they patrol - a decision that may force the US to fill the gaps.

Oh, I guess Poland knows when to cut losses and pull out; too bad for the soldiers and the country that Bush doesn't. It is way past time for the democrats to attack this mess every single day and to remind Bush, the ignorami around him, and the 'Merican public who is responsible for this mess.

The New Racists

As this review makes clear it appears that the old racists have become the new racists. What do you all think? Comments are encouraged.

If you're going to call a book "The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History," readers will expect some serious carrying on about race, and Thomas Woods Jr. does not disappoint. He fulminates against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, best known for forcing restaurants and bus stations in the Jim Crow South to integrate, and against Brown v. Board of Education. And he offers up some curious views on the Civil War - or "the War of Northern Aggression," a name he calls "much more accurate."

The introduction bills the book as an effort to "set the record straight," but it is actually an attempt to push the record far to the right. More than a history, it is a checklist of arch-conservative talking points. The New Deal public works programs that helped millions survive the Depression were a "disaster," and Social Security "damaged the economy." The Marshall Plan, which lifted up devastated European nations after World War II, was a "failed giveaway program." And the long-discredited theory of "nullification," which held that states could suspend federal laws, "isn't as crazy as it sounds."

It is tempting to dismiss the book as fringe scholarship, not worth worrying about, but the numbers say otherwise. It is being snapped up on college campuses and, helped along by plugs from Fox News and other conservative media, it recently soared to No. 8 on the New York Times paperback nonfiction best-seller list. It is part of a boomlet in far-right attacks on mainstream history that includes books like Jim Powell's "FDR's Folly," which argues that Franklin Roosevelt made the Depression worse, and Michelle Malkin's "In Defense of Internment," a warm look back on the mass internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

Handwriting Analysts?

P.S. If you see my stocking cap around let me know.

Our Question of the Week

Continuing on the theme of Rising Hegemon community interaction (that Attaturk has added to with his new weekly feature) we ask our question of the week.

I didn't see it but now wish I had; John Burns on Topic A with Tina Brown. Highlights from two places. First, Juan Cole.

It is 2005, and the US has been running Iraq for nearly two years. Now the question is, how does the situation in Iraq compare to the Philippines, or India, or Turkey. Answer: It sucks. There is little security, people are killed daily, there is a massive crime wave, and elections are being held in which most of the candidates cannot be identified for fear of their lives. So the conclusion is that the Bush administration has done a worse job in Iraq than the Congress Party does in India, or the AK Party does in Turkey. That's the standard of comparison once Saddam was gone. And, by the way, veteran NYT journalist John Burns, who is nobody's fool, told Tina Brown last Friday that he was taken aback when an Iraqi told him recently that he wished Saddam were back. This was an Iraqi who really had been delighted at the American invasion. So Bush should drop the cute sound bite about being better than Saddam.

The second, Gawker.

Thankfully, we were spared the inauguration fashion wrap, which was marginalized by a satellite interview with wild-haired New York Times Baghdad Bureau Chief John Burns. Tina asked, "How much can the average Iraqi take before it's safer to collaborate with the insurgents?" Burns replied it's already happened and citizens are now missing the stability of Saddam Hussein. He said that "there is virtually no safe hide-away for any American or foreigner," even in the fortified Green Zone.

Burns predicted low turnout for the election (which is only for a transitional government) and fears a civil war "over who rules Iraq in the long term." He said the military has learned from their mistakes, and though "this is very much touch-and-go," he is impressed by their actions.

Our question: How imminent is civil war and what will be America's reaction?

Cloud Nine

Life is better with a supportive boyfriend.

Quick Caption

From the Wapo but alerted to us via uber blogger Atrios:

Cheney stood out in a sea of black-coated world leaders because he was wearing an olive drab parka with a fur-trimmed hood. It is embroidered with his name. It reminded one of the way in which children's clothes are inscribed with their names before they are sent away to camp. And indeed, the vice president looked like an awkward boy amid the well-dressed adults.

Crashcart goes to Poland and makes an American Joke!



What an ass, I wonder if his shirt matched his brown pants?

Friday Miscellaneous Lifeform Blogging

Another symbolic animal near and dear to the Base of our Chimperor, an animal famed in myth and legend for being deceptive.

However, its reality is more appropriate for today, for its method of handling large prey indicative of how Bush's domestic and foreign policy is affecting the nation's health in the long-term. For surely, over time his policies will choke the life out of us, should we not stand up and put a stop to them. Think November 2006 as the breaking point, with lots of internecine battles in between.

I give you...


The Boa Constrictor

Oh, and by the way, people who for some reason have these as pets. Can we try calling them something besides MONTY?

And for you others, with pet Tarantulas, something besides BORIS?

Thanks, just a personal request.

I mean, I have a dog, I don't call it Lassie, or White Fang, or Ol' Yeller.

Once again Lies about Social Security

Krugman again exposes that the right-wing constantly plays upon stereotypes in regard to African-Americans.

And they wonder why they cannot get the African American vote in substantial numbers.

But the claim that blacks get a bad deal from Social Security is false. And Mr. Bush's use of that false argument is doubly shameful, because he's exploiting the tragedy of high black mortality for political gain instead of treating it as a problem we should solve.

Let's start with the facts. Mr. Bush's argument goes back at least seven years, to a report issued by the Heritage Foundation - a report so badly misleading that the deputy chief actuary (now the chief actuary) of the Social Security Administration wrote a memo pointing out "major errors in the methodology." That's actuary-speak for "damned lies."

In fact, the actuary said, "careful research reflecting actual work histories for workers by race indicate that the nonwhite population actually enjoys the same or better expected rates of return from Social Security" as whites.

Here's why. First, Mr. Bush's remarks on African-Americans perpetuate a crude misunderstanding about what life expectancy means. It's true that the current life expectancy for black males at birth is only 68.8 years - but that doesn't mean that a black man who has worked all his life can expect to die after collecting only a few years' worth of Social Security benefits. Blacks' low life expectancy is largely due to high death rates in childhood and young adulthood. African-American men who make it to age 65 can expect to live, and collect benefits, for an additional 14.6 years - not that far short of the 16.6-year figure for white men.

Once again, in addition to its pathetic nature, the main problem with Bush's argument is that instead of saying "hey let's look at why African American men don't live as long as others, but let's just accept that and move on to a sloppy political argument."

It's disgusting, not as disgusting as starting an unnecessary war and then pretty much losing it and killing tens of thousands in the process, but pretty damned disgusting.

Bush's Freedom Flag

"I firmly planted the flag of liberty for all to see"

Yes you did...though many of us are not allowed to see the planting...


Flag apparently planted via 500 pound bomb.


Flag unavailable for wrapping as it was being planted via F-16.


This girl tripped and fell over a roadside bomb, but that's what happens during the march of freedom.


Either your with us or with the terrorists, let your broken skull be your guide.


Bush stated on Wednesday he is "freeing people in the name of peace." Here's a liberated child right now? Look how peaceful they are.


Boy, how cool will all those new planted flags look on top of those graves.


Three more celebrants!

I wonder why the American media isn't spreading more of these joyous images of Bush's Liberty Flags being planted?

Speaking of that Liberal Media

Ah, speaking of Nightline, this Diary at Daily Kos says a lot about a few things, in addition to having Richard Perle on it...

From there, it started becoming clear that the pro-war people were going to be given more time to speak than people who dissented. The next comment came from a woman who also lost her husband (actually in the same unit as the other wife) and she gave a patriotic speech about how poud she was that he had died for his country etc and that we needed to finish the job of bring freedom to Iraq.

So, it went on this way, with the pro-war side taking precedence.

Then, during the third commercial break Rabbi Waskau stood up and loudly said, "I was invited hear to speak, but then was told I could you would not allow anyone from the religious community to sit in the front row and that I would be allowed to make a comment later if I would take a seat in back. But now I have been told that I will not be allowed to speak at all." (upon hearing that, I realized that nobody had spoken from a religious/faith based perspective, and wondered if that was indeed intentional).

Antother outburst happened toward the last half hour when a tall older African American gentleman went up to a mic without permission and siad, "ask Richard Perle about the PNAC... that's all I've got to say... I'm outa here!"

Then, it went on and during the last break their was a similar occurence as to the rabbi's, when an Iraqi spoke loudly saying, there are many Iraqi's here sitting in the back, and we were told we could speak, but have been denied."

Before it went further, Ted Koppel said they would be given a chance to speak in the last seven minute segment.

However, when the show started again, one man was brought to the microphone from another section... not from where the first Iraqi said he and others were sitting. That one man said he was an Iraqi and represented the majority of Iraqi's and he supproted the U.S. freedom fighters, and only a small percentage of Sunni's were angered by the U.S. presence in Iraq. that was all.

Apparently Chris Vlasto was working last night's show.

Liberal Media?

Perhaps someone can correct me but I think this compare & contrast is accurate:

Since being falsely accused of stealing documents from the National Archives I have not seen Sandy Berger on television.

However, on Nightline last evening, despite a myriad of accusations of financial dealings that are illegal and advocating in everyway possible the Iraqi War, after being wrong time after time after time, after the deaths of tens of thousands of people due in no small part to his cheerleading.

...Richard Perle was on Nightline.

What liberal media indeed.

New Feature

Here at Rising Hegemon we like to reach out to those who have different beliefs and ideas on politics, in other words conservatives, be they famous or not, no matter how vile their condition (it's par for the course).

I know that on a daily basis we pummel you right-wing knuckleheads, but that doesn't mean we don't care. For, like Bing Crosby might say, we abuse because we love. Wait a minute that doesn't sound quite right...

Anyhoo, if you feel you need Dr. Atta J. Turk to provide you with some advice, whether you're George W. Bush or Noell Bush, feel free to email him your problems and see if he can provide you with answers, or in the alternative let you progressives think of what these individuals might want to know and I will see if I can assist. Questions and Answers will appear every Saturday.

So Vishnu bless and write me at attaturk2004@yahoo.com

Phony Terrorist Threats shake public confidence

In what progressives, liberals, and free thinkers everywhere can only see as a complete surprise, word comes that faux terror threats may affect people's trust in government terrorist announcements. Can this be true?

When should government officials alert the public to terrorism threats supported by flimsy evidence? That is the question being asked after a phony tip last week that a terror attack was planned in Boston. "Every day there comes to the various agencies within the U.S. government hundreds - thousands - of reports of everything from Martians having landed in Nevada to someone who just had a conversation with Elvis to terrorists coming with a nuclear bomb to Boston," Graham Allison of Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government and a former assistant defense secretary, told the Associated Press. "It's one of those situations where you're kind of damned if you do and damned if you don't."

Last week's tip, phoned to the California Highway Patrol, claimed that four Chinese nationals and two Iraqi nationals entered the U.S. from Mexico and were awaiting a shipment of nuclear material that would follow them to Boston. Matthew Evangelista, a professor of international relations at Cornell University, said warning the public about a threat before it is thoroughly investigated can cause undue panic and may even cause people to be desensitized about the threat of terrorism. "I think it breeds a kind of cynicism on the part of the public," he said. "People become maybe less willing to believe the threats when they are actually real."

No, really, people do not like to be lied to. Naw, come on now, don't hold back on me. Hey, has anyone told Bush about this? Could be bad for him, don't you think?

What thee religious right needs now...

Now at long last I finally understand the religious crazies... according to Michael Ventre, the religious extreme right are really Crackpots.

That explains a lot. Really. Who are the televangelists and Dobson's of the world? Crackpots. What do we call Fred Phelps? Uber-crackpot. It helps but yet it lacks the full nutty flavor, doesn't it?

Somehow the notion of crackpot does not cover the extent of the nut-wing's love-hate relationship with fact, truth, and reason. That is, they hate all those things and only love their ability to oppress others who think differently than they do. And Spongebob may be many things but he certainly is different.

And we all know, difference is bad.

... not all Christians are alike. Many, if not most, Christians understand the true message of Jesus. But there is a frightening number of so-called Christians who can be best described as creepy, rigid, arrogant, cruel, know-it-all, pompous, obnoxious and treacherous — better known by the acronym C.R.A.C.K.P.O.T.

These CRACKPOT Christians are nothing new. Throughout history there have been dangerous fools of all persuasions who have perverted religious text for their own selfish purposes. What they like to do, in essence, is force-feed their twisted beliefs on others while hiding behind a respectable label, thereby conning folks into thinking that their mean-spirited behavior is really born out of kindness and generosity.

So, what is next, Davey and Goliath making an unnatural video?


Oh wait, too late.

File this one under weird

I cannot quite explain this practice my friends. What do you make of it? I wonder if the religious nut-wing are supporters of this odd practice? No, they are too busy attacking Spongebob for being gay and Pooh bear for missing his pants.

Apparently Ann Coulter's Been Busy

So respectful, we have been at GITMO, but it sounds like, in addition to writing prose of such quality that it doesn't quite earn the compliment of being called drivel Annie was also torturing prisoners.

Female interrogators tried to break Muslim detainees at the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay by sexual touching, wearing a miniskirt and thong underwear and in one case smearing a Saudi man's face with fake menstrual blood, according to an insider's written account

.

...

One female civilian contractor used a special outfit that included a miniskirt, thong underwear and a bra during late-night interrogations with prisoners, mostly Muslim men who consider it taboo to have close contact with women who aren't their wives.

Beginning in April 2003, "there hung a short skirt and thong