Silt 3.0: Looking back at 2005

If you want to see how next year will play out without the hassle of having to live through it, check it out here. Absurd yet plausible. Inevitable even.

Meanwhile, on the home front....

(This items works a lot better if you can whistle the theme from the Andry Griffith show while you read it.)

From the police blotter section of the local daily:

Family Disturbance. A woman on the first block of Center Drive came home form work around 4:30 p.m. Wednesday and found her son napping on the couch. He had left the socks on the floor so she called 911 because she wanted him out of her house.

Kinda puts that Sue-nummy thing in perspective, eh?

Compassionate fellowship from the Westboro Baptist Church

I like to think myself as PoMo as the next guy -- able to spot even the most subtle satire. And there are some wonderfully subtle pseudo-God Squad websites out there, like the Landover Baptist site (I think). But I throw up my hands at this one -- www.godhatesfags.com, the website of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas. Among other strangeness therein:

WBC engages in daily peaceful sidewalk demonstrations opposing the homosexual lifestyle of soul-damning, nation-destroying filth. We display large, colorful signs containing Bible words and sentiments, including: GOD HATES FAGS, FAGS HATE GOD, AIDS CURES FAGS, THANK GOD FOR AIDS, FAGS BURN IN HELL, GOD IS NOT MOCKED, FAGS ARE NATURE FREAKS, GOD GAVE FAGS UP, NO SPECIAL LAWS FOR FAGS, FAGS DOOM NATIONS, etc.

The headline on the press release the top link points to: "Thank God for Tsunami & 2000 dead Swedes!!!"

If this site represents somebody's idea of humor, I would love to see a mainstream church or three express a little old-fashioned outrage. If it represents serious and heartfelt beliefs, it is the most vile and outrageous thing I have seen on the vile and outrageous Internet, and we should do all we can to publicize it. The first step in upending the absolutist claims of the fundamentalists is to set them against each other. And putting this kind of insanity on the front page will force the slightly less wacky religious right to disavow it, and thus admit that thumping the Bible does not guarantee righteousness or virtue.

Yuck.

Update: As it turns out, so far the rest of the religious right isn't just ignoring this obscenity, they are even ignoring the tragedy in Asia itself.

DU - Republicans claim Iraq and Osama weren't worth it

A few choice quotes:

This brash act by a brash child-man is a direct threat to the security of every citizen inside our own borders for the people against whom he acted are non-forgiving and have no fear of death

Given the present set of facts, there is no Constitutional predicate on the basis of which Congress has the authority to initiate war, even with a declaration of war.

In war, there is no substitute for victory. Victory, as commonly understood, with respect to an assault on Iraq, has not been defined, let alone declared to be the objective of any such attack.

The strategic position of the United States in the world may be diminished, rather than enhanced, by an attack on Iraq. Many regimes friendly to the United States will be placed at severe risk if they are seen to assist, or even favor, the U.S. attack.

If we "succeed", what have we gained? If we don't begin a war, what have we lost?

Yes, all from conservatives. The punchline, of course, is that these comments were made during the Clinton Administration. For folks who claim the world is governed by absolutes, these cons show an impressive relativistic skill -- what was terrible idea when Bill Clinton offered it became a great one when proposed by the new "child-man."

Iraqi poll workers resign en masse

Three militant groups warned Iraqis against voting in Jan. 30 elections, saying Thursday that people participating in the "dirty farce" risked attack. All 700 employees of the electoral commission in Mosul reportedly resigned after being threatened.

The warning came a day after insurgents in Mosul, which has seen increased violence in recent weeks, launched a highly coordinated assault on a U.S. military outpost. The United States said 25 insurgents were believed slain and one American soldier was killed in the battle, which involved strafing runs by U.S. warplanes.

The United States, which has said the vote must go forward, has repeatedly sought to portray recent attacks that have killed dozens of people as the acts of a reeling insurgency, not the work of a force that is gathering strength.

The radical Ansar al-Sunnah Army and two other insurgent groups issued a statement Thursday warning that democracy was un-Islamic. Democracy could lead to passing un-Islamic laws, such as permitting homosexual marriage, if the majority or people agreed to it, the statement said.

Two observations:

(1) Stories like this bring into stark relief the absurdity of trying to hold an election under these circumstances, and make clear that the insistence on the current timetable is about the interests of the US, not of Iraq.

(2) They know they can not say it out loud (yet), but the Bush cabal obviously shares the Islamic fundamentalist hostility to democracy, and at least some of the reasons for it.

FEMA: Disaster Aid To Floridians Approaching $3.3 Billion

Since President George W. Bush declared Floridians eligible for disaster aid beginning with Hurricane Charley on Aug.13 and continuing through to Hurricane Jeanne on Sept. 26, 2004, assistance totaling $3.28 billion has been approved for a variety of programs. To date, 1.19 million storm victims have applied for federal and state assistance.

Death toll from the 2004 Florida hurricanes: 117

Death toll from the tsunami is estimated at 114,000. The Bush Administration has pledged $35M.

U.S. Businesses Overseas Threatened by Rising Anti-Americanism

The Bush administration's foreign policy may be costing U.S. corporations business overseas--according to a new survey of 8,000 international consumers released this week by the Seattle-based Global Market Insite (GMI) Inc.

Brands closely identified with the U.S., such as Marlboro cigarettes, America Online (AOL), McDonald's, American Airlines, and Exxon-Mobil are particularly at risk. GMI, an independent market research company, conducted the survey in eight countries December 10-12 with consumers over the internet.

One third of all consumers in Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, and the United Kingdom said that U.S. foreign policy, particularly the "war on terror" and the occupation of Iraq (news - web sites), constituted their strongest impression of the United States.

Twenty percent of respondents in Europe and Canada said they consciously avoided buying U.S. products as a protest against those policies. That finding was consistent with a similar poll carried out by GMI three weeks after Bush's November election victory.

George Bush, like a bad sitcom, has been brought to you by these very corporate interests. And in the snakepit where the neocons, the Holy rollers and the corporate lobbying complex twist and turn, you know there has been a deal with the Devil, even if you can't quite decide which one is Beelzebub. Adam Smith's invisible hand brought them, and thus us, to this place -- a place where we are becoming an international pariah, the South Africa to the world. And when these countries and consumers wake up to their power and organize the kind of boycotts used so effectively against apartheid, perhaps they will achieve what we have not.

From Whiskey Bar: Praise the Lord and Pass the Thumbscrews

Insight into the ugly minds that reconcile God and torture.

Blumenthal on the Putsch

The transition to President Bush's second term, filled with backstage betrayals, plots and pathologies, would make for an excellent chapter of I, Claudius. To begin with, Bush has unceremoniously and without public acknowledgement dumped Brent Scowcroft, his father's closest associate and friend, as chairman of the foreign intelligence advisory board. The elder Bush's national security adviser was the last remnant of traditional Republican realism permitted to exist within the administration.
...
Bush has long resented his father's alter ego. Scowcroft privately rebuked him for his Iraq follies more than a year ago - an incident that has not previously been reported. Bush "did not receive it well", said a friend of Scowcroft.

In A World Transformed, the elder Bush's 1998 memoir, co-authored with Scowcroft, they explained why Baghdad was not seized in the first Gulf war: "Had we gone the invasion route, the US could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land." In the run-up to the Iraq war, Scowcroft again warned of the danger. Bush's conservative biographers Peter and Rachel Schweizer, quoted the president as responding: "Scowcroft has become a pain in the ass in his old age." And they wrote: "Although he never went public with them, the president's own father shared many of Scowcroft's concerns."

The rejection of Kanter is a compound rejection of Scowcroft and of James Baker - the tough, results-oriented operator who as White House chief of staff saved the Reagan presidency from its ideologues, managed the elder Bush's campaign in 1988, and was summoned in 2000 to rescue Junior in Florida. In his 1995 memoir, Baker observed that the administration's "overriding strategic concern in the [first] Gulf war was to avoid what we often referred to as the Lebanonisation of Iraq, which we believed would create a geopolitical nightmare."

In private, Baker is scathing about the current occupant of the White House. Now the one indispensable creator of the Bush family political fortunes is repudiated.

Republican elders who warned of endless war are purged. Those who advised Bush that Saddam was building nuclear weapons, that with a light military force the operation would be a "cakewalk", and that capturing Baghdad was "mission accomplished", are rewarded.

At least one of these spurned thinkers had better be working on the mother of all kiss and tell books.

Warm & fuzzy feedback from the right: Editor & Publisher.com

On the Thursday before Christmas, Al Neuharth, former Gannett bigwig and founder of USA Today, suggested in his weekly column for that newspaper that the U.S. should start bringing home our troops from Iraq “sooner rather than later.”
...[O]ur brief article about the Neuharth column (which did not endorse his position) got linked at numerous other Web sites, and drew more letters than virtually any story we have ever posted
...
Frank Butash, West Hartford, CT.: “Apparently it's easier to run with jackals than to stand up for your country when it needs support.”

Kenneth Genest: “They had two of these in World War 2. One was called Tokyo Rose and the other Axis Sally. Their job was to discourage the American soldiers. I see they have one now at USA Today.”

Dan Clawson, Fresno,m CA.: "A disgrace to the men and women who serve. USA Today supporting the terrorist cause."

Jerry Martin, San Francisco, CA.: “Yet another self-defeating fool with a large bank account shoots himself in the foot. Their dissent equals treason. The terrorists got him just like all the other rich liberals who side against our victory. They forget that wars end, and then the country takes stock of who was where. I encourage the fool to keep mouthing against our victory over the Muslim jihad, he'll pay the social price in the end.”

T. Conway: “Mr. Neuharth has made a serious business mistake. Watch the circulation drop over the next year. The Los Angeles Times experienced the same drop after they attacked Gov. Schwarzenegger...some never learn. P.S. What side did Mr. Neuharth fight for in WW II?”

Peter Kessler: “And as for the good war, WW II, the lefties were four-square for that one. Yes sir, they were saving the USSR, Stalin and Communism. It's sad we didn't join Hitler until he wiped out the USSR. Alger Hiss and the Uptown Daily Worker (The New York Times) be damned. I see you've joined the club. Well, you're probably a founding member.”

Joe McBride, Fort Dodge, Iowa: “Mr. Neuharth, thanks to you and your ignorance the terrorists are probably booking their flights to the U.S. now! If we pull out of Iraq with the job unfinished the terrorists will be bombing McDonalds, and blowing up malls and schools here, killing our innocent men, women and children.”

Craig Wood, Waianae, Hawaii: “Today's press undermines our troops and supports our enemies. They convince parents that supporting your President is dangerous. They concentrate their ire on any fight that involves the United States and ignore all others. Like the sex scandal in the Congo with United Nations forces…. But, let some Army private put panties on an Iraqi's head and all hell brakes loose.”

Duggan Flanakin, Austin, Texas: “Neuharth should be tried for treason along with a lot of other blowhards who should be spending their energies condemning the barbarism of our enemies, the same people who destroyed the Twin Towers.“

Yeesh. What furies will be loosened if any of those folks wander into this turnip patch?

Elvis water

So you threw down the 28 large for the Virgin Mary on grilled cheese, or perhaps acquired the Jesus on a fish stick. So what does the discerning host serve with such sophisticated culinary fare? Why Elvis water, of course. Owing, I guess, to the lack of references to Elvis in either New or Old Testament, the holy water went for a mere $455. But all together, definitely a meal fit for the King.

I am a bit disappointed that no one has seen fit to follow up on my call for the Ten Commandments in a bowl of Alpha Bits.

Ron Suskind pyschoanalyzes the Cabinet appointments

Whatever the roots of Mr. Bush's overriding devotion to loyalty, it partly stems from his disdain for the concerns of old-style meritocrats, the kind of people who wince when the president places his confidence in someone like Mr. Kerik. Mr. Bush has never been comfortable in America's so-called meritocracy. Undistinguished in college, business school and in the private sector, he spent nearly 30 years sitting in seminar rooms and corporate suites while experts and high achievers held forth.Now it appears that he's having his revenge - speaking loudly in his wave of second-term cabinet nominations for a kind of anti-meritocracy: the idea that anyone, properly encouraged and supported, can do a thoroughly adequate job, even better than adequate, in almost any endeavor.It's an empowering, populist idea - especially for those who, for whatever reason, have felt wrongly excluded or disrespected - that is embodied in the story of Mr. Bush himself: a man with virtually no experience in foreign affairs or national domestic policy who has been a uniquely forceful innovator in both realms.History will judge whether his actions are visionary or reckless. In the meantime, he is applying his intensely personal method for judging merit to pick a group of largely no-name cabinet officials for his triumphal second term.

This seems spot-on to me. And, sadly, Bush was, at least in one sense correct. It took a whiz kind like Robert McNamara to give us the first Vietnam, but Bush's crew of mediocrites managed to give us the second without working up a sweat.

Asleep at the switch again

Juan Cole points out how Bush's callous indifference to the tsunami tragedy also represents a telling failure from the standpoint of US self-interest:

US President George W. Bush has missed an important opportunity to reach out to the Muslims of Indonesia. The Bush administration at first pledged a paltry $15 million, a mysteriously chintzy response to what was obviously an enormous calamity. Bush himself remained on vacation, and now has reluctantly agreed to a meeting of the National Security Council by video conference. If Bush were a statesman, he would have flown to Jakarta and announced his solidarity with the Muslims of Indonesia (which has suffered at least 40,000 dead and rising).

Indeed, the worst-hit area of Indonesia is Aceh, the center of a Muslim separatist movement, and a gesture to Aceh from the US at this moment might have meant a lot in US-Muslim public relations. Bin Laden and Zawahiri sniffed around Aceh in hopes of recruiting operatives there, being experts in fishing in troubled waters. Doesn't the US want to outflank al-Qaeda? As it is, the president of the United States is invisible and on vacation (unlike several European heads of state), and could think of nothing better to do than announce a paltry pledge. As Harris and Wright rightly say, the rest of the world treated the US much better than this after September 11.

But all's right with the world, because even if a vacation takes precedence over a disaster at least 30 times larger than September 11, there is alsways time for Clinton-bashing.

New take on old Vatican anti-semetism

The bitter, long-running controversy over the attitude of Pope Pius XII to the Holocaust has taken a new turn with the publication of diaries that prove he opposed the return of Jewish children to their parents after the Nazis' defeat.

The diaries were kept by Angelo Roncalli, the future Pope John XXIII, from 1945 to 1948 when Pius XII was on the Vatican throne and Cardinal Roncalli was papal nuncio to Paris.

The diaries document the efforts by Cardinal Roncalli to reunite Jewish families torn apart by the war and whose children had been taken under the wing of the Catholic Church. The future pope's role in helping Jews escape from Nazi persecution has long been acknowledged. But the diaries show Pius XII was hostile to such efforts.

In 1946, Rabbi Herzog of Istanbul came to see Roncalli in Paris to ask that Jewish children rescued during the war and taken care of in Catholic convents should be returned to the Jewish community. Cardinal Roncalli was happy to oblige: he wrote authorising him "to use his authority with the relevant institutions, so ... these children may be returned to their original environment."

But Pius XII, who has frequently been accused of anti-semitism, sent a message via the Vatican's Holy Office ordering that Jewish children who had been baptised as Christians after being separated from their parents should not be returned unless they could be guaranteed a Christian upbringing. Children "who no longer have parents" were not to be handed over. If the parents eventually showed up, only those children who had not been baptised should be restored, the Pope proclaimed.

From Pope Pius's perspective, I'm sure this made perfect sense.The Jews would all go to Hell, so why not try to save a few? And along the way, give them the benefits of education in the Catholic approach to things like... buggery.

Almost as if they had their own Dept. of Homeland Security

The many ironies of the Novak affair

A journalism professor gets to the essence of the Plame outing:

how is (press) independence advanced when reporters insist that they are constitutionally entitled to serve as protected instruments of state calumny against private citizens?

Court Backs Firing of Waitress Without Makeup

A female bartender who refused to wear makeup at a Reno, Nevada, casino was not unfairly dismissed from her job, a U.S. federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday.
Darlene Jespersen, who had worked for nearly 20 years at a Harrah's Entertainment Inc casino bar in Reno, Nevada, objected to the company's revised policy that required female bartenders, but not men, to wear makeup.

A previously much-praised employee, Jespersen was fired in 2000 after the firm instituted a "Beverage Department Image Transformation" program and she sued, alleging sex discrimination.

In a 2-1 decision, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling in favor of Harrah's. All three judges are males appointed by Democratic presidents.

This from the 9th Circuit... you know, the one the Bushies want to break up for being too liberal. Reminds me a little of the "Switch in time that saved the Nine" back in the 1930s when Franklin Roosevelt thretened to expand the number of seats on the Supreme Court to try to stop the Court from invalidating the New Deal. Intimidation worked then, too.

Ex-official tells of Homeland Security failures

The government agency responsible for protecting the nation against terrorist attack is a dysfunctional, poorly managed bureaucracy that has failed to plug serious holes in the nation's safety net, the Department of Homeland Security's former internal watchdog warns.

Clark Kent Ervin, who served as the department's inspector general until earlier this month, said in an interview last week that airport security isn't tight enough and that little has been done to safeguard other forms of mass transit. Ervin said ports remain vulnerable to terrorists trying to smuggle weapons into the country. He added that immigration and customs investigators are hampered in their efforts to track down illegal immigrants because they often lack gas money for their cars.
...
Ervin lost his job this month in mysterious fashion. Appointed by President Bush in December 2003 when Congress was out of session, Ervin was never confirmed by the Senate. Nor was he renominated by the White House this month when his "recess appointment" - which lasted until the congressional session ended - expired Dec. 8.

A key senator won't say why. Elissa Davidson, spokeswoman for the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, wouldn't comment on why Chairman Susan Collins, R-Maine, never held confirmation hearings for Ervin. "The decision not to renominate Clark Kent Ervin was purely a White House decision," she said.


See how bad the government is? The solution is to... invade Iraq.... no, wait (sound of cue cards being shuffled)... privatize Social Security!

Hill Staffer Arrested for Alleged Theft of Plasma TV From Rayburn Room

The House Small Business Committee’s chief economist was charged by Capitol Police with the attempted theft of a plasma television Thursday night.

Well, fencing stolen goods IS a small business....

US Tsunami aid in context

via Eschaton: We pledged $15M. Budget for the Boy King's coronation: $30-40M (excluding security costs, which believe you me will be huge -- gotta make sure Michael Moore can't get any shots of folks throwing eggs like last time).

David Dreier: Blacks die sooner, so should favor SS privatization

So says republican David Dreier onTV's Late Edition, in his promotion of President Bush's so-called Social Security reform.

That's just so special, David. But while you're at it, why not let folks in on what a great deal it is for you, since you and your fellow ho-mo-sexuals will get an even better deal, seeing as you all drop in your 40s. As a 52 year-old gay Republican, I guess you are living on borrowed time in more ways than one...

Funny, but I assumed that Dreier was on his way to political purgatory after being outed by BlogActive, Raw Story and Hustler Magazine. I guess gay-baiting is just red meat for the red state rubes. Walking the walk really doesn't matter-- just ask Ken Mehlman. Maybe Dreier can get a guest spot on red state favorite Will & Grace.

From middle class to food stamps

Since 2000, ... more than 6 million ... Americans have joined the ranks of the millions of American families who find it increasingly difficult to perform a most basic function - to put food on their tables.

The economic indicators are numerous.

Following a seven-year decline, the number of Americans on food stamps has shot up 39 percent since 2000, according to federal statistics. Every state, except Hawaii, has felt the impact. In Arizona, food stamp rolls have increased 104 percent, in Nevada, 97 percent; Oregon, 79 percent; South Carolina, 68 percent; Missouri, 65 percent.

Texas has added nearly 1 million people to its food stamp rolls in only four years.

Part of that increase was fueled by states' increased efforts to enroll a greater portion of people eligible for food stamps and the placement of people back onto the rolls who had been initially knocked off during welfare reform. Most of it, however, social workers say, is the growing number of Americans unable to feed themselves without help.

"Clearly, most of this is because of increased need," said Carol Adams, head of the Illinois Department of Social Services. Illinois has seen a 31 percent increase in the number of people on food stamps since 2000.

The issues the blogosphere whines and bitches about pale, of course, in light of the massive natural disaster around the Indian Ocean. There is nothing we can do to prevent a tsunami, though a warning system could help lower the toll. But the economic polarization of the US is a man-made, avoidable injustice, made all the worse by its intentionality. An earthquake is amoral; our government is immoral.

Group releases video of Mosul attack

A group in Iraq released a videotape that describes the Dec. 21 attack on the U.S. army base in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.

The group posted the video on its Web site on Sunday. The video showed what appeared to be the blast inside the dinning facility at a U.S. military camp in Mosul.

Another shot, apparently taken from a vehicle driving outside the base after the explosion, showed a fireball rising up and the torn tent that housed the hall.
...
In Sunday's video, dated Dec. 20, three rebels dressed in black and carrying AK-47 automatic rifles described their planned attack.

The vidoe showed a map of the camp with the dining hall clearly marked, as a member of the group was pointing to many other areas with an army knife.

It also showed a masked rebel, wearing an explosives-laden vest, hugging other group members before leaving to the U.S. base. He was identified as Abu Omar Al Museli, suggesting that he was from Mosul.

The men said that that Al Museli would break into the base through the perimeter fence.

"He will take advantage of the change of guards. We have been observing their schedule for a long time. This lion will then proceed to his target and we will take advantage of lunch time. He will storm the dining room where the crusaders and their (Iraqi) allies are gathered," one of the men said.

"Let Bush, Blair and Allawi know that we are coming and that we will chase them all away." He added.

I can't imagine a more horribly graphic demonstration of the hopelessness of our occupation of Iraq than this. Our troops will not be able to handle the strain of fighting a war in which they cannot even find a safe haven in their own base camps. There is a saying to the effect that if you can't tell the enemy from the folks you are trying to defend, you are fighting the wrong war. Is there anyone left who can deny that fact now?

Apparent assassinations kill 5 Iraqi officials

Gunmen killed five Iraqi officials in what appeared to be three separate assassination attacks, sources said Sunday.

Iraqi police officials and Ministry of Interior sources said one of those killed was Col. Yassin Ibrahim Jawad, a high ranking police officer.

Masked men attacked Jawad's vehicle in a drive-by shooting on Sunday while he was traveling to work in the southern Baghdad neighborhood of Baya.

The gunmen also wounded two of Jawad's bodyguards, one of them critically.

On Saturday, in the northern Baghdad neighborhood of Khadmiye, unknown gunmen killed two local council members in a drive-by shooting, Baghdad police officials said.

In Taji, about 13 miles (20 kilometers) north of Baghdad, a third shooting killed a local council member and a relative.

Where does the line form to run for Iraqi office?

Inauguration Day schedule

CourtesyJesus' General

Jesus Christ Action Figure TV Commecial

Going straight to hell, these folks are....

Not sure about these folks, though idolatry IS idolatry...(Check out the very fashion-forward Jean-Paul Gaultier/Fifth Element outfit on Goliath...)

Colin Powell chosen to drop ball in Times Square New Year's Eve

Mayor Michael Bloomberg cited Powell extensive experience with ball-dropping, including his WMD speech before the UN, the war in Iraq, and his complete failure to rein in the neocon children running US foreign policy.

A Kobe-Shaq Christmas

The long-anticipated showdown came today. And a Merry Christmas was had by all. Kobe Bryant got what he wanted most -- 42 points and enough highlights for a month's worth of ESPN shows. Shaq got a team that plays like a team and a 104-102 overtime win despite fouling out late in the 4th -- their 11th in a row.

Falluja returnees angry, "city unfit for animals"

Iraqis reacted with anger, frustration and resentment on Friday after many returned to Falluja to discover their homes in rubble and their livelihoods ruined following last month's U.S. offensive.

"I saw the city and al-Andalus destroyed," said Ali Mahmood, 35, referring to the district of the city he returned to briefly on Thursday but now plans to leave after seeing the mess.

"My house is completely destroyed. There is nothing left for me to stay for," the teacher said, adding that he would rather live in the tented camp outside Falluja that has been his family's home for the past two months....
An Iraqi Health Ministry official said his greatest concern was the resentment Falluja's people were likely to feel when they saw how much damage had been done to their homes.

That was certainly the case on Friday. While those who fled were at pains to say they had nothing to do with the rebels who made Falluja their stronghold, many of them have since become angry and militant as a result of the offensive.

"Would Allah want us to return to a city that animals can't live in?" said Yasser Satar as he saw his destroyed home.

"Even animals who have no human sense and feelings can not live here," he said, crying.

"What do they want from Falluja? This is the crime of the century. They want to destroy Islam and Muslims. But our anger and resistance will increase."

In order to save the village...

Insurgents operate at will in Mosul

Insurgents have been able to "operate at will" in Mosul, where 22 people died in a bomb attack this week, because the US forces and the Iraqi authorities have failed to tackle them, an intelligence assessment by senior US officials in northern Iraq concludes.
The report, seen by the Guardian yesterday, was drafted before this week's suicide attack on the mess tent at Camp Merez.

It was made after the uprising last month, when most of Mosul's police force either deserted or defected and parts of the city fell, albeit briefly, to the insurgents.

It does not specifically mention threats to US bases, but it catalogues a series of errors and missed opportunities in intelligence gathering, recruitment to the Iraqi security forces, and operational issues.

Its assessments and recommendations reflect many of the concerns expressed in briefings of the Guardian recently by General Carter Ham, the US commanding officer in Mosul, and senior Iraqi officials in the city.

Tuesday's explosion was the worst single attack on the US forces since the invasion in March last year, and has thrown Pentagon officials and the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, on to the defensive, on account of their apparent failure to protect the US troops in Iraq adequately.

If you start from the assumption that the insurgents are not crazy about our election plans for Iraq, I think you have to look at stories like this one as mere dry runs for what is coming in the days leading up to the election. And that day is likely to be marked by so much bloodshed that even our government will have to take notice.

How many points is the spread in dog years?

A few decades ago, the expertise of so-called Wall Street wizards was effectively debunked by the "random walk" theory, which proved that over the long haul, the so-called experts were no better than chance, and that a portfolio based on throwing darts at the stock listings would perform as well as one picked by a bunch of expensive analysts.

My local newspaper has applied this theory to the sports pages, with predictable results. Every week, its four sports columnists make public their picks for the coming NFL games. They match wits against a dog. Two of the humans have identical winning percentages of 51.8%. One is at 46.4%. The laggard comes in at 42.7%. The dog? Comes in 3rd out of the five at 48.2%.

Do you choose to conclude that here, as on the Street, expertise is meaningless? OK. That once the appropriate spread is factored in, sports betting becomes purely random? Fine. That dogs might make good sports writers? No objections here.

'Seinfeld' Festivus display vies with Nativity

More Christmas-haters....

When a Florida church group put a Nativity scene on public property, officials warned it might open the door to other religious -- and not-so-religious -- displays. They were right.

Since the Nativity was erected in Polk County, displays have gone up honoring Zoroastrianism and the fake holiday Festivus, featured on the TV sitcom "Seinfeld."

The Polk County Commission voted 4-1 Wednesday to permit the Nativity scene to remain across the street from the courthouse, as well as to make that area a "public forum" open to any type of display.

But the commission insisted that unless someone claims a particular display and submits a written request asking it remain, it would be removed. By Wednesday evening, no one had claimed the Festivus display, and the commission said it would come down; a woman claimed the Zoroastrianism display, which was to stay.

The debate began December 15 when a handmade creche with the figures of Joseph, Mary and baby Jesus was erected by a Bible study group from the First Baptist Church of Bartow.

"The real spirit of Christmas is the birth of Christ," said Marvin Pittman, a retired law enforcement officer and member of the congregation. "We felt it needs to be in the public eye, so we did it."

Other displays are fine, too, he said, adding, "If somebody wants to do that, it's their right."

And true to form, the site almost immediately sprouted alternative displays, including a simple sign that reads: "Festivus for the Rest of Us -- Donated to Polk County by the Seinfeld Fan Club."

We can't make this stuff up, folks. Well, OK, we could. But we didn't.

Juxtaposition

Two headlines on the front page at Yahoo:

Bush to Renominate Controversial Court Picks

Scientists discover world's biggest cockroach

Josh Marshall nails it

from Talking Points Memo, re: the eroding support for Iraquagmire:

During the election, I always thought that the dynamics of the campaign were providing what we might call an artificial floor for support for the war -- both at the level of its management and the whole idea of going to war in the first place.

Here's what I mean -- it comes down to an issue of cognitive dissonance.

The dead-even political polarization of America remains the defining fact of our politics. Close to 50% of Americans were dead set on voting for President Bush almost no matter what. Or they were dead set on voting against John Kerry. For our purposes, it's the same difference.

I think that many Bush supporters simply couldn't take stock of the full measure of the screw-up in Iraq during the election because doing so would have conflicted their support for President Bush. Iraq and the war on terror so defined this election that support for the war and the president who led us into it simply couldn't be pried apart.

Perhaps it wasn't so internalized. During the slugfest of the campaign supporting Bush just meant supporting the war and this is what people told pollsters when they were asked, because one question was almost a proxy for the other.

You can even do a thought experiment by imagining how many conservatives during election season would have been so staunch in their support for the war if it were being fought under a President Gore or a President Clinton. The question all but answers itself.

In any case, I think what has happened is that the end of the campaign season has departisanized the war -- at least to a measurable extent -- and folks who were emotionally and intellectually committed to reelecting the president (just as there were people on the other side with similar commitments) are now freer to see the situation in Iraq a bit more on its own terms.

Now all we have to do is deal with the 59M loonies who operated inside this box.

The tangled web

I started with this headline over on Yahoo:
Teen Sues Over Confederate Flag Dress .

A teenager is suing her school district for barring her from the prom last spring because she was wearing a dress styled as a large Confederate battle flag.
...
She said she worked on the design for the dress for four years, though she acknowledged that some might find the Confederate flag offensive.

"Everyone has their own opinion. But that's not mine," she told reporters outside the courthouse. "I'm proud of where I came from and my background."
...
The Sons of Confederate Veterans has promised to help pay some of her legal expenses.


The civil libertarian in me sees her as another Nazi marching in Skokie -- I support her right to be as racist, ignorant and just plain stupid as she wants to be.

Then I wandered over to the website of the Sons of Confederate Veterans website. What a fascinating bunch of fellows.

I learned that The citizen-soldiers who fought for the Confederacy personified the best qualities of America. The preservation of liberty and freedom was the motivating factor in the South's decision to fight the Second American Revolution. The tenacity with which Confederate soldiers fought underscored their belief in the rights guaranteed by the Constitution. These attributes are the underpinning of our democratic society and represent the foundation on which this nation was built.

And lest we get the wrong idea about the SCV, they make it clear that The SCV rejects any group whose actions tarnish or distort the image of the Confederate soldier or his reasons for fighting.

If you are interested in perpetuating the ideals that motivated your Confederate ancestor, the SCV needs you. The memory and reputation of the Confederate soldier, as well as the motives for his suffering and sacrifice, are being consciously distorted by some in an attempt to alter history. Unless the descendants of Southern soldiers resist those efforts, a unique part of our nations' cultural heritage will cease to exist.

According to their Chief of Heritage Defense, this group stands 35,000 strong. And strong they are urged to be, for the battle goes on.

Heritage Defense in the SCV is a constant struggle against more numerous, better funded opponents who are entrenched in the media. Our membership numbers 30-odd thousand men, many of whom, unfortunately, are members only because they appreciate history or are involved in the mushrooming hobby that is genealogy. They have no desire or intent to confront those who would be most happy to deny public acknowledgement of the heritage we seek to preserve, and would make us feel shame rather than pride in our ancestry. This observation is made without any intent to denigrate those members I might describe, but only to make this point -- we are not fighting with our full strength.

I should also note that not all media is antagonistic. We all know members of the media who are sympathetic to our mission. Unfortunately, even those who seek to treat us fairly are usually forced by editorial policy or corporate fiat to acknowledge our opponent’s point of view, and therefore help them perpetuate their hateful propaganda. You know the line, which goes something like this: “… the Confederate Battle Flag, which some see as a painful reminder of (insert some injustice which the opponent likely never endured here).”

Anyone care to take a guess at the fill-in-the-blank "injustice"? After spending some time wandering throught their site, I have come to the conclusion that it couldn't possibly be slavery, because that word appears exactly once on the entire site, in the following context in a seven-year old press release:

Peter W. Orlebeke, Commander-in-Chief of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, stated " The Derby School should teach truth rather than run from it. It is incomprehensible that a so-called educational institution is unaware that the War Between the States was fought over issues such as the rights of individual states to set their own tariffs, establish their own governments, and receive full profit from their agricultural production. They should know that the question of slavery was brought into the war by Lincoln in late 1862 as an emotional one to bolster the sagging Northern war effort and that emancipation was not just a Northern concept, but a Southern one as well, championed by the likes of Gen. Robert E. Lee."


When we shake our heads at the way the Irish, the former Yugoslavians and damn near everyone in the Middle East is still fighting hundred or thousand-year old battles, we should understand that there are folks in the good old USA still doing the same.

Daily Kos :: How We Lost Two Clinton-Clinton-Gore Voters

My parents always vote, and neither of them has ever voted for a losing Presidential candidate. (Gore does not count, because he, in fact, did win.) In fact, I don't believe my father has ever voted for any candidate--even city council--who did not win the election; he's like an oracle.

They were both teachers. My mother was in the peace corp. My father is an education reformer. Both of them are well-educated and watch the news. They are pro-choice. They believe in separation of church and state. They support gun control. They understand that insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies are crooks. And they don't like outsourcing.

They both voted for Clinton--and though they were outraged by his affair with Monica, they didn't take it out on Al Gore. They voted for Gore and neither of them like Bush.

And so, my sister and I remain humiliated and angry that we could not convince them to vote for Kerry. We would send them articles, we'd rant, we'd rave, we'd explain until we were blue in the face, and the responses we would get back were baffling.

I love my parents, and I will always love them, but this election put a wedge between us. It brought out some ugly things in them, but I believe those ugly things are a reflection of the electorate--and that we have to understand them in order to win.

My parents are part of the 11% of Gore voters that we lost to Bush this year. We would have won if we held onto that 11%. We need to understand people like them and how to bring the best out of them, and counteract their worst instincts.



This kind of thing just tears me up strategy-wise. This dKos contributor talks in very blunt terms about how her middle-of-the road parents went to the dark side, and what we need to do to get them back.

I want to win, but I just can't see myself wanting to go to the stupid irrational places these folks would ask us to go in order to win back their (empty) minds.

'Tiz a puzzlement.

the road to surfdom

Chasing blogs around often leads you to snippets of wisdom in unexpected places. This from a comment on a posting about the growing irrelevance of the U.S. in the view of the powers that be in India:

To say that the war in Iraq is 'insane' (which of course it is, from the sentimental standpoint where things like human rights, democracy, or global public opinion are of any consequence) is like saying that the War On Drugs is insane -- a completely naïve analysis that assumes our wars are undertaken for their publicly defined goals. I think most people in Latin America, as well as most blacks in the USA, could inform you about the real goals of the War On Drugs. It's meeting those real goals quite nicely, or else the policy would change.

Why should we imagine that Iraq is any different? Someone, I assure you, is benefitting, and that someone was certainly too smart to believe his own masterful PR onslaught about how quick 'n easy it would be and how few troops and civilians would die. That someone will continue to benefit no matter how far the US standard of living erodes, and no matter which nation or economy or currency is in the ascendancy -- it's a globalised world, remember? Do you think this guy is holding T-bills?? The US federal government, with all its three branches, is just his PR wing. You'd better not believe he depends on it to be his guarantor.

So, indeed, the US is in a sad decline. But just as Reagan's rising tide didn't actually lift all boats, the ebbing tide is pretty much irrelevant to the people who've been calling the shots. It's funny that in this era when everything is privatized and deregulated, and multilateral bodies call more and more of the shots, people still have this weird voodoo faith in national governments. Noticed the rise of 'private security contractors,' aka mercenaries?

More Christmas-hater News

Menorah vandalized again

From Nyack, NY: Hours after residents, local officials and clergy gathered at Veteran's Park to attend a rally against the recent vandalism to a Hanukkah menorah, the menorah was vandalized again.

Eight of the nine bulbs were ripped out of the menorah, which sits next to a Christmas tree and a nativity scene, and one was left hanging out of its socket, said Orangetown Police Sgt. Jim Brown.
...
Ehrenreich, who replaced the bulbs after the first attack, said the menorah was kept up for the rally even though Hanukkah ended last Wednesday. He said the menorah was to be taken down today.

Mayor John Shields, who organized the rally with the Nyack Clergy Association, said he was "horrified."

"I am speechless," he said. "Now, I'm wondering if people are just trying to gain attention."

Along with other recent incidents, the vandalism has caused concern in the town.

Two Orangetown men have been charged with hate crimes in connection with vandalism at four homes — three were painted with swastikas.

Swastikas also were found at Pearl River schools this year, and anti-Semitic pamphlets were distributed in Orangetown. A menorah in Pearl River was heavily damaged last year.

...

Eve Dworkin of New City said when she saw the menorah damaged the first time, it "felt like a slap in the face."

As she drove to work yesterday she was upset to see the menorah once again vandalized.

"Nyack is so multicultured," she said. "You'd think having a menorah and a Christmas tree next to each other would be fine in Nyack. But I guess not."

Tell me again about the embattled holiday here?

Erosion of value of Bush's "capital"

Fifty-two percent of respondents to a new poll think Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld should resign amid recent criticism in Congress over his handling of the war in Iraq.
...
As for Bush, 49 percent of respondents said they approved of the job the president is doing. That number is down from his November approval rating of 55 percent. Bush is the first incumbent president to have an approval rating below 50 percent one month after winning re-election.

Maybe it is the result of grade inflation, what with all those mail-order Medals of Freedom in circulation.

mid-week diversion

L.A. Kobes dropped one last night to the always-tough Memphis Griz. Kobes captain Bryant went 2 for 16, and oh-for six behind the arc. You da man. Perhaps coach Kobe should have a talk with Director of Operations Kobe about finding more Kobes to play for captain Kobe.

...satire, on the other hand, is alive and well.

Irony is a lost art...

Maverick U.S. States Prove Popular at Climate Talks

Not all Americans are unpopular at this week's U.N. conference on climate change.

Negotiators and green groups have embraced maverick U.S. states and companies moving ahead on emissions control, although the Bush administration has few friends at the conference after bowing out of the Kyoto agreement on fighting global warming.

"Making concessions to bring this administration into the process at this time is futile. Engagements should be with California and other states and private business," said Steve Sawyer, a climate expert for Greenpeace in Amsterdam.
...
"When designing our energy policy, Germany will always look to California because it's the best example," said Barbel Hohn, environment minister in Germany's largest state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Young tourists, take note: when backpacking through Europe, a Golden Bear flag on your backpack might be just as effective as a Maple Leaf.

Poll: For First Time, Most Say Iraq War Was a Mistake

via (washingtonpost.com):

President Bush heads into his second term amid deep and growing public skepticism about the Iraq war, with a solid majority saying for the first time that the war was a mistake and most people believing that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld should lose his job, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

While a slight majority believe the Iraq war contributed to the long-term security of the United States, 70 percent of Americans think these gains have come at an "unacceptable" cost in military casualties. This led 56 percent to conclude that, given the cost, the conflict there was "not worth fighting" -- an eight-point increase from when the same question was asked this summer, and the first time a decisive majority of people have reached this conclusion.

There is an old definition of a liberal: someone who is right about most things, but too soon.

This story also casts Shrub's "I've earned some capital -- now I'm going to spend it" in a new light. I originally was struck by what a bizarre way that is for a Harvard B-School grad to speak (one does not generally "spend" capital -- unless, that is, one is a trust fund baby), but I now see that he had best spend it fast, because he may not have it much longer.

American Civil Liberties Union : Presidential Order Authorizing Inhumane Interrogation Techniques

American Civil Liberties Union : FBI E-Mail Refers to Presidential Order Authorizing Inhumane Interrogation Techniques

A document released for the first time today by the American Civil Liberties Union suggests that President Bush issued an Executive Order authorizing the use of inhumane interrogation methods against detainees in Iraq. Also released by the ACLU today are a slew of other records including a December 2003 FBI e-mail that characterizes methods used by the Defense Department as "torture" and a June 2004 "Urgent Report" to the Director of the FBI that raises concerns that abuse of detainees is being covered up.

"These documents raise grave questions about where the blame for widespread detainee abuse ultimately rests," said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero. "Top government officials can no longer hide from public scrutiny by pointing the finger at a few low-ranking soldiers."

The documents were obtained after the ACLU and other public interest organizations filed a lawsuit against the government for failing to respond to a Freedom of Information Act request.

The two-page e-mail that references an Executive Order states that the President directly authorized interrogation techniques including sleep deprivation, stress positions, the use of military dogs, and "sensory deprivation through the use of hoods, etc." The ACLU is urging the White House to confirm or deny the existence of such an order and immediately to release the order if it exists. The FBI e-mail, which was sent in May 2004 from "On Scene Commander--Baghdad" to a handful of senior FBI officials, notes that the FBI has prohibited its agents from employing the techniques that the President is said to have authorized.

Another e-mail, dated December 2003, describes an incident in which Defense Department interrogators at Guantánamo Bay impersonated FBI agents while using "torture techniques" against a detainee. The e-mail concludes "If this detainee is ever released or his story made public in any way, DOD interrogators will not be held accountable because these torture techniques were done [sic] the ‘FBI’ interrogators. The FBI will [sic] left holding the bag before the public."

As horrible as this is, the real outrage is the collective yawn these stunning revelations will bring from the lapdog press and the same public that wants to restrict the civil liberties of all Muslims while trumpeting its superior "moral values."

Theocracy R Us

Yahoo! News - Ten Commandments Judge May Run for Gov.

Ousted Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore said Friday he is considering running for governor in 2006.

"I'll be praying about it and considering it," told reporters.

Moore was ousted in November 2003 for defying a federal judge's order to remove his 5,280-pound Ten Commandments monument from public display in the state judicial building. He appealed his ouster to the U.S. Supreme Court (news - web sites), but lost.

If Moore were to run as a Republican, he could face a GOP primary battle with Gov. Bob Riley, who has not yet said whether he will seek a second term.

Moore and Riley stood together on the Ten Commandments issue last year until Moore refused to abide by the federal judge's order. Riley said a public official must respect a court order. The monument was removed.

There you go. A grudging admission that the rule of law -- for a judge empowered by the state government -- trumps religion is enough to make a red state Republican governor vulnerable on the right.

SSA institutes novel way to avoid discriminating against gay marriages

The Social Security Administration is rejecting marriage documents issued for heterosexual couples in four communities that performed weddings for gay couples earlier this year.

The agency is rejecting all marriage certificates issued in New Paltz, N.Y., after Feb. 27, when the town's mayor began marrying gay couples, according to town officials.

Certificates issued during the brief periods when Asbury Park, N.J., Multnomah County, Ore., and Sandoval County, N.M., recognized gay marriages are also being rejected.

Susie Kilpatrick, 30, of New Paltz, said the local Social Security office told her that no marriage documents issued after Feb. 27 could be used to establish identity because of the gay marriages that took place there earlier this year. About 125 heterosexual couples have been married since then.

Kilpatrick said her marriage certificate was rejected when she went to get a new card earlier this month so she could take her husband's name.

As ridiculous as this sounds to the people of the Blue, this policy actually quite consistent with Red state logic. As noted below, they want to quarantine US citizens simply by virtue of the fact they worship Allah. Why then would they lose any sleep over tarring straight New Paltzers with a pink brush? Being the party of "personal responsibility" means never having to make such subtle distinctions.

Rumsfeld doing "Spectacular" Job

Secretary Rumsfeld is doing a spectacular job," the president's chief of staff, Andrew Card, told ABC's "This Week."

"The president has provided good direction for our military, and Secretary Rumsfeld is transforming our military to meet the threats of the 21st century," Card said.

While security remains a concern in Iraq, Card said the growing economy and the establishment of the educational and electrical systems in the country were positive developments, Card said.

"There are no guarantees, but we'll work hard to provide security," for the elections, Card said. "It'll be a wonderful success story."

Mr. Card, it would appear, is not a member of the reality-based community.

Nearly Half in U.S. Say Restrict Muslims

Nearly half of all Americans believe the U.S. government should restrict the civil liberties of Muslim Americans, according to a nationwide poll.

The survey conducted by Cornell University also found that Republicans and people who described themselves as highly religious were more apt to support curtailing Muslims' civil liberties than Democrats or people who are less religious.

Researchers also found that respondents who paid more attention to television news were more likely to fear terrorist attacks and support limiting the rights of Muslim Americans.

We have come a long way since the Japanese Internment, haven't we? Back then, we wanted to stigmatize and restrict the freedoms of American citizens over racial/ethnic characteristics. Now we have moved up to religious beliefs.

Will those restricted American Muslims hate themselves for their freedom, or their lack of it?

Don't ask, don't extend my tour of duty

Two lawsuits were filed last week against the United States military. In one, eight soldiers are challenging an Army policy that extended their tours of duty in the Middle East. They are suing to get out of military service. In the other suit, 12 gay and lesbian veterans are challenging the decade-old "don't ask, don't tell" policy that bars known gays from serving in the armed forces. They are suing to get back into the military.

The connection between the two suits may be more than coincidental. An analysis of Pentagon data reveals that the military is losing gay troops in the occupational areas where shortfalls are most dire. In addition to the "stop loss" orders that prompted last week's lawsuit, the Pentagon has recalled thousands of former troops from civilian life to fill these gaps.

Many of these recalls would have been unnecessary if the military had not fired so many gay service members. This year the Pentagon approved the recall of 72 veterans in communication and navigation, but it has expelled 115 gay troops in that category since 1998; it recalled 33 in operational intelligence but has expelled 50 gays; in combat operations control, it recalled 33 but expelled 106.

Overall, the military has announced the recall of 5,674 veterans since June, but has discharged 6,416 soldiers under its "don't ask, don't tell" policy since 1998, including 1,655 since the wars in the Middle East began. The discharges covered people in 161 occupational specialties, including linguists; intelligence personnel; nuclear, biological and chemical warfare experts; artillery specialists; and missile guidance and control operators.

Nothing new here. The Germans might have fared far better in WWII if they had not insisted on gassing large segments of the labor pool.

Makes you wonder about the guys like him who had themselves shot rather than go back to Iraq. Dude, your ticket home was a switch-hit away -- and you could even lie about it. And it ain't like being gay is a problem in the Republican Party -- right Ken?

Weekend Reversion

Kobe Bryant scored another triple double last night -- 36 points, 14 assists and 10 rebounds.

Oh, the team lost, to the Wizards, for the first time in LA since the Magic Johnson era, if such things matter to you.

Hey, Mr. Preznit-- Wanna Neutralize Osama?

It doesn't seem like you especially give a shit, but if you really want to make sure bin Laden never has an effect on Americans again -- appoint him head of the EPA.

Bush Vows Not to Ignore Economic Problems

President Bush, looking to build momentum in Congress for his second-term economic agenda, pledged Saturday not to ignore challenges to the nation's financial health and "leave them to another day."

"We have a duty to the American people to act on these issues, and we will get results," Bush said in his weekly radio address.

If there is one thing we can count on from our President, we can count on results. Whether it is the worst loss of life on US soil in history, or the worst job creation record since the Great Depression, or the chaos in Iraq, he gets results. So you'd best prepare for some serious results here, folks.

Inhofe says Clinton's cuts made Iraq mess

U.S. Sen. James M. Inhofe said Thursday that cutbacks during the Clinton administration resulted in the lack of armor and other material faced by U.S. troops in Iraq.

"Eight years of Bill Clinton decimated the military to almost half of what it was in 1990," he said during a stop in Muskogee.

The Oklahoma Republican, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said that in 1991, U.S. armed forces were armed with "a Reagan military," and had more funding and ordinance.

However under Clinton, projects were cut and "modernization stopped."

The Army and the Pentagon have come under sharp attack for the lack of armor on many of the Humvees, trucks and other vehicles U.S. troops use in Iraq. Insurgents using roadside bombs and rocket-propelled grenades have regularly targeted military vehicles, killing numerous U.S. troops.

Criticism intensified last week after a U.S. soldier complained publicly to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in Kuwait that troops had to scrounge in landfills for scrap metal to protect their vehicles.

Frankly, I am amazed it took this long for the Repugs to pin this one on Clinton. It seems we will have Slick Willie to kick around for another 4 years. Never let it be said that the Bush team doesn't understand cause and effect. If the effect is bad, it was caused by Clinton; if it is good, it was caused by Bush. Any questions?

Deconstructing the deconstruction

I have been thinking about the Administration's assault on Social Security -- not the merits, which are of course non-existent, or even so much the drawbacks, which are manifold. I have pondering the "why." Paul Krugman has pointed out that the Bushies hate SS not because it is broken, but because it is so successful -- the last New Deal program standing.

What is interesting about this jihad is that SS is, in real terms, a pretty sweet deal for Richie Rich -- one of the most regressive taxes there is, because (a) it is a tax on wages, not returns from capital (which means that Warren Buffett could cut his SS payments to zero by doing without a salary without noticeably affecting his income) and (b) the wage limit on contributions means even if Buffett pays himself $100M in salary, he pays the same in SS as a low-level computer programmer in Silicon Valley.

So the objection is not concrete -- it is another philosophical windmill to them. Like a Japanese anti-Semite, they hate something they have little or no direct experinece with, just because. And like Quixote, they see such overwhelming evil in that windmill that they will do great damage to see it destroyed.

European and Pacific Stars & Stripes

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld will begin personally signing condolence letters sent to families of troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, after receiving criticism over his use of mechanical signatures.

In a statement provided to Stars and Stripes on Thursday, Rumsfeld tacitly admitted that in the past he has not personally signed the letters, but said he was responsible for writing and approving each of the 1,000-plus messages sent to the fallen soldiers’ families.

“I have directed that in the future I sign each letter,” he said in the statement.

“I am deeply grateful for the many letters I have received from the families of those who have been killed in the service of our country, and I recognize and honor their personal loss.”

In a separate statement, Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said, “In the interest of ensuring timely contact with grieving family members, he has not individually signed each letter.”


What classic Rumsfeld. "I have directed that I sign" -- ! Perhaps he could direct that he buy a vowel, because he so obviously has no clue what the puzzle says.

At least they have finally admitted the shameful truth: that he was sending out the same kind of cheap form letters that usually accompany solicitations to buy life insurance and Congressmen. And the explanation is priceless -- it was done "in the interest of ensuring timely contact." Which really means, "Well, see, the Secretary doesn't really give a rat's ass about the body count, and so the unsigned letters used to drift to the bottom of his in-box and sit for weeks. And besides, just like the big boss, he prefers not to see anything unpleasant, like the orders transferring that Spc. Wilson kid to the Gitmo undercover prisoner torture investigation team. So we just handled the letters in the propagand -- I mean, the Information office."

Our Stoopid Preznit (or his Advizors)

Gotta love this one.


The White House went all out to showcase the advantages of President Bush's ambitious financial agenda this week, but in the end the "challenges" proved too much.

The word "challenges" -- a main theme of a two-day White House economic conference that ended on Thursday -- was misspelled on a large television monitor that stood in front of Bush during a panel discussion.

"Financial Challanges for Today and Tomorrow," the message proclaimed in dark blue capital letters against a bright yellow background.

The conference, which critics derided as a public relations event devoid of serious discussion, spotlighted a second-term Bush agenda that would reform Social Security and the tax code while making tax cuts permanent and cutting the deficit in half.

"Like we told that reporter from the New York Times, we make our own reality now," said an unnamed source within the White house. We spell things however we want, like when we spelled 'Kerry' K-e-n-n-e-d-y, and spelled 'incompetence' M-e-d-a-l o-f F-re-e-d-o-m."

CIA Agent Says Bosses Ordered Him To Falsify WMD Reports

An undercover intelligence officer, who is suing the CIA, says his managers asked him to falsify his reporting on weapons of mass destruction and retaliated against him when he refused.

When Dubya's dogs chase after those pesky trial lawyers, what do they really mean to stop? Here you go.

Ex-military lawyers will oppose Gonzales

Several former high-ranking military lawyers say they are discussing ways to oppose President Bush's nomination of Alberto Gonzales to be attorney general, asserting that Gonzales' supervision of legal memorandums that appeared to sanction harsh treatment of detainees, even torture, showed unsound legal judgment.

Hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the nomination are expected to begin next month. While Gonzales is expected to be confirmed, objections from former generals and admirals would be a setback and an embarrassment for him and the White House.

John Hutson, a retired rear admiral who served as the Navy's judge advocate general from 1997 to 2000, said that while Gonzales may be a lawyer of some stature, "I think the role that he played in the one thing that I am familiar with is tremendously shortsighted."

Gonzales, as White House counsel, oversaw the drafting of several confidential legal memorandums that critics said sanctioned the torture of terrorism suspects in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and opened the door to abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

A memorandum prepared under Gonzales' supervision by a legal task force concluded that Bush was not bound either by an international treaty prohibiting torture or by a federal anti-torture law because he had the authority as commander in chief to approve any technique needed to protect the nation.

The memorandum also said that executive branch officials, including those in the military, could be immune from domestic and international prohibitions against torture for a variety of reasons, including a belief by interrogators that they were acting on orders from superiors "except where the conduct goes so far as to be patently unlawful." Another memorandum said the Geneva Conventions did not apply to the conflict in Afghanistan.

Hutson, dean and president of the Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord, N.H., said that Gonzales "was not thinking about the impact of his behavior on U.S. troops in this war and others to come. He was not thinking about the United States' history in abiding by international law, especially in the wartime context. For that reason, some of us think he is a poor choice to be attorney general."

Hutson said talks with other retired senior military officials had not yet produced a decision on how to oppose the selection, though testifying at the hearings was a possibility.

James Cullen, a retired Army brigadier general, said yesterday that he believed that in supervising the memorandums, Gonzales had purposely ignored the advice of lawyers whose views were not in accord with the conclusions he sought, which was that there was some legal justification for illegal behavior.

Cullen said the group of former military lawyers hoped to decide soon what specific action to take.

No Medal of Freedom for you guys.

Baghdad Burning

Baghdad Burning is an important blog for many reasons, only one of which is that it is written from inside the maelstrom in Iraq. That gives its often insightful work considerable added credence. To wit:

People are wondering how America and gang (i.e. Iyad Allawi, etc.) are going to implement democracy in all of this chaos when they can't seem to get the gasoline flowing in a country that virtually swims in oil. There's a rumor that this gasoline crisis has been concocted on purpose in order to keep a minimum of cars on the streets. Others claim that this whole situation is a form of collective punishment because things are really out of control in so many areas in Baghdad- especially the suburbs. The third theory is that this being done purposely so that the Iraq government can amazingly bring the electricity, gasoline, kerosene and cooking gas back in January before the elections and make themselves look like heroes.

We're also watching the election lists closely. Most people I've talked to aren't going to go to elections. It's simply too dangerous and there's a sense that nothing is going to be achieved anyway. The lists are more or less composed of people affiliated with the very same political parties whose leaders rode in on American tanks. Then you have a handful of tribal sheikhs. Yes- tribal sheikhs. Our country is going to be led by members of religious parties and tribal sheikhs- can anyone say Afghanistan? What's even more irritating is that election lists have to be checked and confirmed by none other than Sistani!! Sistani- the Iranian religious cleric. So basically, this war helped us make a transition from a secular country being run by a dictator to a chaotic country being run by a group of religious clerics. Now, can anyone say 'theocracy in sheeps clothing'?

The great blue north

The leader of the country does not believe the U.S. ballistic missile shield will work. The leader of the country wants to protect those who conscienciously object to the war in Iraq. The leader of the country supports same-sex marriage.

The America we have been trying to create exists, mostly. It is called Canada, and the biggest problem for weather wimps like me is the weather. Wouldn't it be a kick if our Kyoto-busting, coal-burning global warming fixes the remaining problems?

Iraqi Official: Iran Is 'Number One Enemy'

Now this is a welcome development.

Iraq's defense minister on Wednesday accused neighboring Iran and Syria of supporting terrorists in his war-ravaged country.

The 1980-88 Iraq-Iran war was more or less a stand-off (in large part because we propped up Saddam, but who wants to go over that old ground, right?).

So now we are doing a bang-up job of creating an ungoverned, ungovernable Iraq with no effective military. And we are shocked, shocked to learn that it is shark bait for one of the most fundamentist regimes in the region (excluding our good buddies in Saudi Arabia, but again, wouldn't be prudent to go there...)

Remember Bambi vs. Godzilla? If Dubya tries to go down the path I think he was planning to head down -- hold a meaningless, violence-studded election, declare mission REALLY accomplished, and get the hell out of Dodge, The Islamic fundies are going to move in so fast that they can wave bye-bye to the last chopper-loads of American soldiers and civilians (kinda like Saigon 1975, but let's not bring up unpleasant memories).

On the other hand, it does provide a perfect excuse to invade Iran....

Happy Anniversary, Part II

A year ago a bedraggled Saddam Hussein was dragged from a hole in the ground to a chorus of self-congratulatory remarks from United States officials claiming that his capture marked a turning point in the war in Iraq.

"In the history of Iraq a dark and painful era is over," declared President George W. Bush. "All Iraqis can now come together and build a new Iraq."

The self-deceiving optimism of US military commanders was extraordinary.

Major General Ray Odierno, whose 4th Infantry Division was credited with arresting Saddam, declared a month later that the insurgency was "on its knees" and only "a sporadic threat."

Odierno went on to assure the press corps in Washington that "I believe that in six months you are going to see some normalcy". Other US generals echoed his words.

A year later American casualties showed how little the war was affected by the imprisonment of Saddam. Of the 1283 US soldiers who have died in Iraq since the invasion in March 2003, no fewer than 821 have died since his capture.

Six months after Odierno spoke, the US only fully controlled islands of territory. All the main roads out of Baghdad were unsafe. The resistance felt strong enough to openly establish its checkpoints around the capital.

Why did Saddam's capture accomplish so little compared to the expectations of the White House and US military? They appear to have believed much of their own propaganda about the resistance being orchestrated by remnants of Saddam's regime - Donald Rumsfeld's notorious "dead-enders."

Not news, of course. But "an essential part of the rear-guard action the truth must wage against the propaganda of power is to preserve the old lies so that they can be held up against the new." (Bluememe, 2004)

Missile defence shield test fails

The first test in almost two years of the planned multi-billion dollar US anti-missile shield has failed.

The Pentagon said an interceptor missile did not take off and was automatically shut down on its launch pad in the central Pacific.

A target missile carrying a mock warhead had been fired 16 minutes earlier from Kodiak Island in Alaska.

The Pentagon is spending $10bn a year on the missile system, which was meant to be in operation by the end of 2004.

The Missile Defence Agency said an "unknown anomaly" was to blame for the system shutting down.

Actually, transferring billions of dollars to well-connected defense contractors for ineffective nonsense while soldiers die because they do not have basic low-tech tools like armor is a pretty well-understood anomaly.

Documents Show String of Iraq Abuse Claims

Newly released U.S. Navy documents portray a series of abuse cases stretching beyond Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison where photos surfaced this year of U.S. troops forcing prisoners — often naked — to pose in humiliating positions.

The files released Tuesday document a crush of abuse allegations, most from the early months of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, including U.S. Marines forcing Iraqi juveniles to kneel while troops discharge a weapon in a mock execution and the use of an electric shock on a prisoner.

The approximately 10,000 files include investigation reports from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and witness interviews.

All names have been blacked out in the documents, which were released after a federal court ordered the government to comply with a Freedom of Information Act petition filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Constitutional Rights and other organizations.

"This kind of widespread abuse could not have taken place without a leadership failure of the highest order," said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero.

The Pentagon says cases of abuse are taken seriously and investigated.

"The fact that these cases have been investigated underscores the point that we've been making, which is when we have credible allegations of abuse we take them seriously and investigate them," said Maj. Michael Shavers, a Pentagon spokesman.

Some of the documents include the alleged executions of Iraqis. The Navy found the allegations to be "unsubstantiated" and closed the investigation. It remains unclear whether any other military branches are investigating.

In one of the reports, a Marine said he and two others were ordered to kill three Iraqis.

"The executions allegedly took place in early April 2003 while the unit was temporarily based at an abandoned Iraqi pharmaceutical factory south of Baghdad," according to the NCIS document, dated June 26, 2003.

The Marine said he was threatened with death if he did not carry out the order. The bodies of the dead Iraqis were allegedly dumped in a hole, the document said.

After the incident was reported, the Marines were interviewed. One, who was interviewed and advised of his rights, retracted his previous statements, saying the executions never took place.


I'm running out of things to say in response to these outrages. It seems our Preznit can escape all scrutiny just by repeating his "freedom is on the march" mantra. Maybe Mark Geragos should have tried that line in the Scott Peterson trial...

Much more troubling LA Times article on the subject here.

Deforming Social Security: Talking Points Memo

Two excellent pieces here and here on the cabal's incoherent, disingenuous and just plain stupid Social Security scam. The first is from Michael Kinsley and is a simple logical refuation; the second from Josh Marshall addresses the politics of the situation.

This issue is an excellent opportunity for the Democrats to start working George Lakoff's theories and bust their butts in reframing the issues. I have a feeling there are just enough moderate Republicans who retain a whiff of common sense and decency to derail this thing if we can derail the "we are saving SS from disaster" meme Bush has been using without challenge.

ACLU files lawsuit over 'intelligent design' mandate

Two civil liberties groups representing 11 parents on Tuesday sued a school district that is requiring students to learn about alternatives to the theory of evolution.

The ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State said the lawsuit is the first in the nation to challenge whether public schools should teach "intelligent design," which holds that the universe is so complex that it must have been created by some higher power.

The Dover Area School District was believed to be the first in the nation to mandate the instruction of intelligent design when it voted 6-3 on Oct. 18 in favor of including the concept in the science curriculum.

The ACLU contends intelligent design is a more secular form of creationism, a biblical-based view that credits the origin of species to God, and may violate the constitutional separation of church and state.

"Intelligent design is a Trojan horse for bringing religious creationism back into the public science classroom," Witold Walczak, legal director for the state ACLU chapter, said during a news conference.


Intelligent Design is a crock, of course. You can see a condensed dismantling of it here. Religion offers something of value to many people. But it becomes self-parody when it tries to be science.

Nevertheless, I am worried about where this one is going. I think we are about due for another Scopes Trial, and I doubt that we can expect the Supremes to do the right thing at this point. Ignorance is likely to soon graduate from political expedience to offical governmental policy.

Fallujah to become concentration camp

The US military is discussing plans to turn the Iraqi city of Fallujah into a giant concentration camp. Most of the city's 300,000 residents were driven out by a massive US bombing campaign in the week prior to an invasion by 10,000 US marine and army troops on November 8.

The December 5 Boston Globe reported that US commanders plan to turn Fallujah into a “model city” : “Under the plans, {US} troops would funnel Fallujans to so-called citizen processing centers on the outskirts of the city to compile a database of their identities through DNA testing and retina scans. Residents would receive badges displaying their home addresses that they must wear at all times. Buses would ferry them into the city, where cars, the deadliest tool of suicide bombers, would be banned.”

The plans call for “all men to work, for pay, in military-style battalions”, the Globe reported, adding that: “To accomplish those goals, [US commanders] think they will have to use coercive measures allowed under martial law imposed last month by [puppet Iraqi] Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.”


I think we ought to rename Fallujah while we are at it. "Manzanar" has a nice ring to it. "Theresienstadt" might work, though it does not roll off American tongues as easily. And there's always "My Lai."

Ford to Kill Mammoth Excursion

Ford Motor Co. will kill off the Ford Excursion, its largest sport utility vehicle and a lightning rod for criticism from environmental groups, next year, a source familiar with the plan said on Monday.

The mammoth vehicle will stop rolling off the assembly line in September, as Ford moves to free up production capacity for the refreshed Super Duty pickup truck, said the source, on condition of anonymity.
...
U.S. sales of the Excursion, which was launched in 1999, are down 25 percent so far this year. The Sierra Club (news - web sites), which dubbed the Excursion the "Ford Valdez" after the infamous Alaskan oil spill, called it an environmental disaster because of its poor fuel economy rating.

Official gas mileage figures are not available from Ford or the Environmental Protection Agency (news - web sites), but a review on Kelly Blue Book's Web site says the Excursion gets about 14 miles per gallon on the highway and 10 miles per gallon in the city.

The reason official figures are not available for the Valdez is that the EPA, in its wisdon, does not publish numbers for vehicles larger than the average Manhattan 2-bedroom apartment. Also exempt is the equally ludicrous Hummer.

Mr. Bluememe has been known to foam at the mouth when discussing the insane American obsession with slow, evil-handling, unsafe, lumbering behemoths like these. The world would be no worse off if owners of these badges of profligacy had bought Volvos instead and punched 1/8" holes in their gas tanks.

Bernard Kerik: The gift that keeps on giving

New York City: Kerik kept first wife a secret

First there was "The Lost Son." Now comes the lost wife.

Investigators conducting a background check of Bernard Kerik last week as part of his confirmation hearing uncovered that the then-Secretary of Homeland Security nominee was married to a woman he has apparently kept a secret for the past 20 years.

Friends of his said they were not aware of the woman, and Kerik did not acknowledge the marriage in his best-selling autobiography, "The Lost Son: A Life in Pursuit of Justice."

Instead, he wrote about only two marriages, one to a New Jersey woman named Jacqueline, whom he married in 1983 when he was 28, and one to his current wife, Hala, whom he married in 1998.

But Kerik, who withdrew his name for consideration for the nation's top security post on Friday, was also married to the former Linda Hales in North Carolina.

Kerik and Hales, who has since remarried and changed her name to Priest, were married Aug. 10, 1978, when she was 27 and he was three weeks shy of 24, according to her lawyer, Ronnie Mitchell. They separated in 1982 and were officially divorced June 6, 1983, Mitchell told Newsday.

In Kerik's book, however, he wrote that he married Jacqueline in the winter of 1983, raising questions about whether his first and second marriages overlapped.

This certainly helps to explain why two-timer Rudy and Kerik got along so well. I just can't decide whether letting Kerik twist in the wind is a net benefit or not, given that it pushes Donald "Marie Antoinette" Rumsfeld and the ongoing bloodbath in Iraq out of the spotlight.

Vote for Edwards an electoral shock

Voting irregularities were few in Minnesota this year -- until it really counted.

Defeated Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry likely is going to get one less electoral vote nationally than he should have -- 251 instead of 252 -- because of an apparent mistake Monday by one of Minnesota's 10 DFL electors.

One of the 10 handwritten ballots cast for president carried the name of vice presidential candidate John Edwards (actually spelled "Ewards" on the ballot) rather than Kerry.

"I was shocked ... this will go in the history books," said Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer, who presided over a ceremony that normally is uneventful.

Kiffmeyer said she was unaware of any other such apparent mistake in Minnesota, although there have been cases in other states of "faithless electors" casting ballots for candidates other than those to which they were committed.

There was stunned silence after the announcement that Edwards had gotten a vote for president, but none of the 10 electors volunteered that they voted for Edwards as a protest, nor did anyone step forward to admit an error.

"It was perhaps a senior moment," said elector Michael Meuers, 60, a Bemidji marketing consultant for a health care firm, the second-youngest member of the Minnesota delegation to the Electoral College.

I guess it is worth a brief respite from railing at Republican fraud, theft and dirty tricks to point out a little old-fashioned Democratic stupidity.

Happy Anniversary

An al-Qaida-linked suicide bomber blew up his vehicle Monday near cars waiting to enter the Green Zone, home to the U.S. Embassy and Iraq's interim government, killing 13 Iraqis on the anniversary of Saddam Hussein's capture.
...
After last month's campaign, U.S. commanders claimed they had broken the insurgency's back in the mainly Sunni Muslim areas of western Iraq, and that they would start phasing in Iraqi security forces to take over. But fighting has persisted.

On Sunday, American jets dropped 10 precision-guided missiles on insurgent positions in Fallujah after insurgents fought running battles with coalition forces.

"We are still running into some of these die-hard insurgents that have either come back into the city or have been laying low," spokesman Lt. Lyle Gilbert said. "As we are bringing in contractors to help with the reconstruction of Fallujah, this (fighting) slows the process down."

Farther west in Ramadi, 10 explosions were heard early Monday. No details were immediately available on what caused them or if there were casualties. The blasts came a day after insurgents and Marines traded artillery fire that killed one woman.

In the northern city of Mosul, a car bomb blast struck a U.S. Stryker brigade patrol Monday, wounding two American soldiers. U.S. troops and gunmen fought gun battles after the blast.

In Tarmiyah, on Baghdad's northern outskirts, three more U.S. troops were wounded in a car bombing that wrecked two Humvees, pieces of which were raised into the air by jubilant Iraqi men who danced around their charred hulks and a large crater blown into the road.

Is there REALLY a Nanny?

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall

TPM raises a question that occurred to me, though in slightly different form.

Who's the nanny? Or, rather, is there really a nanny?

Let me be clear. I don't think there's any reason to reveal this woman's identity, if she exists. And I'm certainly not trying to.

On balance, I figure it's probably more likely than not that she does exist. But as near as I can tell, no specific details about this woman's identity or what she did for Kerik's family have ever been published. Nor have I seen any reports in which a given journalist writes as though he or she was privy to such details, even if he or she chose not to publish them to protect the woman's privacy.

And I don't think I can remember any "nanny" story in which such details have remained so secret. Given the fact that we now know there were a few dozen revelations (and counting) that would have sunk Kerik's nomination, you have to wonder. To paraphrase the old saw, if this nanny hadn't existed, the White House or Kerik might have been awfully tempted to invent her. And perhaps they did.

What I had been thinking about is that when somebody realized what a piss-poor job Alberto "Anything Goes" Gonzales did vetting Kerik, I am sure there was discussion of which sword Kerik should be told to fall on. Most of Kerik's problems are of the same crony capitalism genus as, say, Dick Cheney's or Jim Baker's, though of a coarser species. So blaming Kerik's flame-out on doin' what comes naturally to his bosses would be problematic, to say the least. Inventing a Nannygate escape hatch throws the dogs off the conflict-of-interest scent, and preserves the ability of repug hit squads to take down the next Zoe Baird.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this, if it turns out that the nanny thing was a fabrication, is that an administration drowning in fuck-ups felt the need to create yet another as a way of deflecting attention from the main dogpile. It is almost as if they had no clue how to do anything other than fuck up.

Update Or, it could be Kerik's slippery zipper.

Weekend Diversion, Part Tres

ESPN.com - NBA - Bad pass: Kobe-Karl rift over Vanessa Bryant

The Kobe Bryant-Karl Malone feud has turned personal, with Bryant accusing Malone of making a pass at his wife at a game.
...
Malone's agent, Dwight Manley, said then that Malone was furious at Bryant, and also said private, personal attacks were involved, but would not elaborate.

Bryant elaborated plenty on Sunday.

He said he had phoned Malone, who has a home near Bryant's in Newport Beach, after Vanessa Bryant told her husband on Nov. 23 that Malone had made inappropriate comments to her that night at the game at Staples Center.

Bryant said he called Malone and told him, "Stay away from my wife. What's wrong with you? How could you?"

Malone was unavailable for comment Sunday. Manley did not immediately return a phone call from The Associated Press.

Manley, however, told the Los Angeles Times: "Karl wants to give you two messages. He never hit on Vanessa, nor would he. In fact, when he first heard (the accusations), he said, 'You have to be kidding me.' As for the comments he made to her that offended her personally, he told both her and Kobe that night that he apologized."

Lest anyone forget...

Bryant is the defendant in a civil lawsuit accusing him of rape. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages for pain, scorn and ridicule the woman says she has suffered since her encounter with Bryant at the Vail-area resort where she worked in June 2003.

You could call it a bit of delusional paranoia. Or, on the "takes one to know one" theory, perhaps his complaint has some credence.

Retired Army colonel, 70, sent to Afghanistan

This is what happens when the same folks who defined "mission accomplished" define "all volunteer Army."

Dr. John Caulfield thought it had to be a mistake when the Army asked him to return to active duty. After all, he's 70 years old and had already retired - twice. He left the Army in 1980 and private practice two years ago.

"My first reaction was disbelief," Caulfield said. "It never occurred to me that they would call a 70-year-old."

In fact, he was so sure it was an error that he ignored the postcards and telephone messages asking if he would be willing to volunteer for active duty to "backfill" somewhere on the East Coast, Europe or Hawaii. That would be OK, he thought. It would release active duty oral surgeons from those areas to go to combat zones in Iraq or Afghanistan.

But then the orders came for him to go to Afghanistan.
....
His wife of 47 years, Patricia, said she thought a cruise through the Panama Canal they took after he gave up his private practice would be the most adventurous experience they would have after retirement.

"I feel a lot more comfortable than when he was in Vietnam," she said. "This is a great way to finish his career."

On the one hand, I guess you have to honor his willingness to serve. On the other, I am reminded of the smart-ass definition of a jury.

Weekend Diversion, cont.

L.A. Kobes trounce the legendary L.A. CLippers, 89-87. Kobe-in-chief Bryant goes 13 for 32, only 2 other Kobes in double figures, and a big 5 assists for Bryant, who went 1-6 from behind the arc. You da man.

No truth to the rumor he has taken to signing the game ball BEFORE the game.

LiberalOasis: Ginned Rummy, part Deux

Everything you need to know about what a callous, incompetent conglomeration of slime Don Rumsfeld is (as if you needed any more "everything you need to know" encapsulations) is encapsulated in this piece about his fateful Q&A in Iraq last week.

Turns out the Donald got virtually the same question back in May. His sidekick, General Myers, gave the questioning grunt a hand job.

GEN. RICHARD MYERS: ...You do not have all the up-armored humvees you need...

...Production is ramping up this month...We're trying to get them to you as fast as we can...

...It's not a matter of resources, it's a matter of how fast can we build these things and get them over here.


And yet, when the same question came up last week, Rummy did his best imitiation of his bambi-in-the high-beams boss before telling our troops to take their shrapnel like men. Guess he felt he needed to give "cool, calm, collected, don't-give-a-fuck" a rest and went with "is this my butt or a hot rock? don't-give-a-fuck" for a change.

One of the most encouraging (OK, one of the FEW encouraging) things I have heard in recent weeks was the roar of approval from the other soldiers when Army Spc. Thomas Wilson spoke truth to power. I wonder if such things happened 18 months into Viet Nam.

Update: Make that 15 months ago when Rummy first stroked our boys in Iraq about armor. And here is along list of articles about the subject dating back to October of 2003