A Reporter on Gannon (Gate)

On Friday, I read a CNS News editorial about the Jeff Gannon flap. Amid the claptrap, I found an interesting point: "As a former television news reporter and producer in the nation's number seven market, I can tell you with first-hand experience that many of the 'journalists' you see on television or hear on the radio use different names while conducting their work."

Wondering to what extent that might be true, I asked a few reports I know. The responses I've gotten so far were not just to the question but to the entire CNS News editorial. CNS's Thibault asks if "the Left [was] more enraged by Gannon's lack of journalistic credentials and purported political bias, or because...he would have betrayed the liberal cause with conservative-slanted writing. There are other reasons about which one can argue that Gannon had no business working at the White House, but they fall flat when one considers the past and present practices of what we today loosely refer to as 'journalists.'" Thibault then makes the following three points:

1) Gannon's lack of journalistic experience: How many times have we seen entertainers with no past journalism experience plopped in the television or radio anchor chair to pontificate on the issues of the day and ask questions of guests?...

2) Gannon's use of a pseudonym: As a former television news reporter and producer in the nation's number seven market, I
can tell you with first-hand experience that many of the "journalists" you see on television or hear on the radio use
different names while conducting their work. 'Taylor' is easier to pronounce than 'Tetreault' for instance...

3) Gannon's use of loaded or softball questions at presidential news conferences: This is the most laughable excuse for the Left going loony over Gannon. How many times did Bill Clinton get softball questions from the adoring White House press corps, 90 percent of whom admitted to voting for him? Are we to believe that the David Brock-led Media Matters for America and his allies on the Left flipped out because one person asked President Bush conservative slanted questions in a forum that usually produces many more of the insulting and accusatory variety? I don't think so.

The first response I received:

Oh, boy. Well, first of all, on the minor point, yes, I've encountered some local TV news anchors and reporters who've gone by pseudonyms, sometimes for very good reason: There was an anchor at WLOX-TV in Biloxi when I was there who went by the name Steve Lawson. His real name was Steve Fondle. I don't doubt that radio people use pseudonyms, too. It's unheard of in print. I don't know about online sources.

The CNS News (pfffffht) guy is fucked on a number of points. First of all, yes, we've all seen non-journalists conducting
interviews or playing journalist from time to time. The difference here is that, say, Leonardo DiCaprio didn't pawn himself off as "Washington Bureau Chief, Titanic News Service" when he interviewed Clinton a few years back (something the wingnuts did go apeshit over at the time, incidentally).

Second, I couldn't care less whether he went by "Jeff Gannon" or "Steve Fondle" or "Abe Vigoda" or what, and I also don't particularly care whether he is or is not gay or was or was not tied to gay porn (although I do confess to finding that mildly gratifying). I care that, regardless of whether he used his real name, he obtained a White House press pass as a fake journalist for a fake news site that exists for the sole purpose of disseminating right-wing propaganda--period.

And that's what separates it from his last "point," the whole "well, the mainstream press is all a bunch of Democratic operatives who sucked Clinton's dick for four years, so what's the big deal?" The big deal is that, again, they're fucked: The press corps, whatever their failings, didn't belong to "The Mao Gazette" or the "Che Times." You can debate the Clinton dick-sucking all you want, but you can't deny the distinction between a reporter for NBC News and one for (insert Wingnut Online Publication here). "Gannon" (or whatever his name is) had one function only: Throw a monkey wrench into the journalistic process by greasing Bush's palm. That was why he was there.

And I think it rankles, too, since we've found out about all these commentators getting paid to shill for the Administration. "President buys favorable coverage"--that'd tend to make actual journalists rather antsy, wouldn't you think?

And I'm on an even higher level of annoyance than usual because my employer has informed me and my colleagues that
one of our goals for this coming year is to represent more conservative voices in the paper. Apparently some people
have complained to our editor about .... 'liberal bias.' And we're about to lube ourselves up and bend over. And I'm
about to get the fuck outta Dodge.

Comments, especially from journalists, are welcome.

UPDATE: Guckert used the pseudonym "Jeff" at least as early as 1999, when he was working on gay porn sites. Obviously, it's because "Jeff" is so much easier to pronounce than "James."

The Eberle Brothers

If Gannon's a top, how's he liked being a bottom for the last couple of weeks? John Byrne of Raw Story is on top of the Gannon affair, poundin' away. Here's the latest look at possible connections between Eberle's GOPUSA and the actual GOP (Virginia, is there a Santa Claus?). (HT: Guess.)

P.S. Anybody started a betting pool on this story yet?

Gannon in Editor and Publisher

Here's the Editor and Publisher interview with Gannon. Two paragraphs that deal with getting into the White House briefing room:

"I requested clearance each day via an e-mail to the White House Press office the night before. I gave them my professional name, my legal name, my social security number, my address and phone number, and the news service where I worked," he said. "I assumed that there was some kind of cursory check that they do, but did not know what. They never asked me for more information." He said he usually went to press briefings there “at least once a week," or more.

On those days, he said, "I would go to the guard gate and show my driver's license with my legal name, and they looked me up on the computer and let me in." He said he would receive a day pass, which has no name -- Gannon or Guckert -- on it. He said he sought the permanent "hard pass" when he first wanted to cover the White House, but after finding out he needed a congressional press pass -- which he’d been denied -- to get that far, he utilized only the day passes. “I made several attempts to get a congressional pass, and each time they said 'no.' They were concerned with the Talon News business model,” he said. “They didn't feel that we fit the criteria."

That's encouraging. But anyway, it's unclear whether Editor and Publisher double-checked his assertion about day passes. They google-checked the websites for which he claimed to've written op-ed pieces and found nothing. It would be interesting to find out if day passes do not indeed have names on them. So how did Scott McClellan know to call him Jeff? This isn't an answer, but it's at least interesting that Gannon was invited to White House Christmas parties.

Gannon Smoke Break: the Anti-Christo

There's a story in the New York Times today about "Hargo's" parody of Christo's Gates in Somerville, Mass. You can view the full installation here. Read the Times story here. Best line: "The Somerville Gates" has now become, Mr. Hargadon said, "the anti-Christo."

Day Tripper

Yesterday, Americablog linked to a diatribe from uber-GOP-connected CNS News that mentioned that pseudonyms were common among TV and radio journalists. The three journalists I've asked (an admittedly small sample) said that while it is common among radio and TV journalists, it's unheard of among print journalists.

Now while that issue may be a red herring, I do think it's worth scrutinizing because we need and deserve to know whether someone used a fake name to gain entrance to the White House briefing room. Not only are there post-9/11 security concerns but also GOP propaganda concerns.

A few questions: What level of scrutiny are prospective briefing-attendees subjected to? Did Gannon provide the Secret Service with a fake name (Gannon)? If so, why aren't the Secret Service and FBI (and White House) worried that somebody snuck in? If Gannon gave them his real name, Guckert, how did Scott McClellan know to call him Jeff? This is a "reporter" who showed up repeatedly with a day pass, which, if his real name was on it, aroused no suspicon when he was called by another name? Ever?

Today, DailyKos points to an Augusta Free Press editorial that claims getting a White House day pass ain't so easy. They write:

One point on the controversy involving now-deposed Talon News and GOPUSA politics writer Jeff Gannon got our attention.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan has said that Gannon, actually James Dale Guckert, 47, was given access to presidential briefings and a Jan. 26 news conference with President Bush on a day-by-day basis - and that this practice is basically a routine one that many journalists go through.

It sounds convincing on first hearing. Doesn't it?

Forget that Talon News and GOPUSA are partisan outfits that are friendly to the president, McClellan was telling us.

Doesn't matter.

Nor does it matter that a number of White House correspondents are saying that they saw Gannon with what appeared to be a permanent White House press pass.

And that the pass featured his picture and name - his fake name, mind you.

Never mind that the White House day passes that we have in our scrapbook don't have anybody's picture and name on them.

Yes, we have been through the process for obtaining White House day passes.

And let us just say that it is not at all an easy process to get through.

Needless to say that it is difficult to think that it could have been done using a fake name - the Secret Service needs your real name so it can do a background check on you before letting you inside the gate.

Several phone calls placed over the course of a two-week period were needed to get us inside.

And that was for a one-shot deal.

To think that Gannon or Guckert or whatever we should call him now did this on a regular basis makes us wonder when he had time to do any writing.

Which is why we applaud his gumption - if not his choice of afterhours business ventures.

By the way, in light of all this, the CBS Rove editorial listed in last night's post is looking better by the minute.

And Curioser...

When Rathergate broke last year, a lot of people probably asked themselves (as I did) why someone would do such a shoddy job of forging documents for a prominent national news organization? The now-forgotten Magestic-12 forgeries, for example, were pretty good. Done on, you know, a typewriter. They at least looked old. You'd have to be an idiot, think the staff at CBS was really sloppy (oh, wait...) or...make the forgeries bad on purpose and cross your fingers that CBS would run the story. Well, maybe the latter is what happened. Or maybe the CBS documents weren't forgeries and Rove engineered a way to undermine them. Maybe aliens were involved. Here is an attempt to tie Jeff Gannon to the CBS forgeries and the White House. It's based in part on this article by John Byrne. For the CBS reacharound to Karl Rove, there's this. Ooo, la la. Mama, I don' know what you cookin' in dat kitchen, but boy, it smells good. Now none of this may pan out. But then again, it might. And if it does, 48% of America will be in fucking heaven.

Gannon: Curioser and Curioser

Americablog has an update on the Gannon story. Gannon seems to've had access to "golden" information--curious for a small news outlet. Hopefully, this will lead somewhere interesting so we can have a good feeding frenzy.

Limbaugh: "We never lie and make things up on this program"

Rush Limbaugh must be joining the staff of the Daily Show. Or maybe he's just shooting smack. Media Matters for America (which as you know is an anti-American, Osama-loving, Communist propaganda organ) had this to say about the paragon of objectivity:

On February 15, the same day that FOX News host Bill O'Reilly claimed that "[n]o lies have been told about anyone" on his show, nationally syndicated radio host Rush Limbaugh boasted: "We don't retract anything we do here because we never lie and make things up on this program." Limbaugh also defended the accuracy of FOX News, stating: "You know, at FOX News, I have to tell you this, they haven't had to retract one story, major story that I can recall since they've been on the air."

Media Matters for America has documented frequent instances of smears, falsehoods and distortions from FOX News' "hard news" reporters and commentators.

What? from FOX?

Boy Meets World

I normally don't reply to comments in separate posts, but this is worth a post in itself--not because of the comment so much as the questions it raises. The comment was in response to an old post, "Everything Happens for a Reason." The comment, from regular visitor PDS, goes like this:

Rob: my point was going to be that you are being unfair [to God] because your post (implicitly) expects God to create a perfect world. Once He rids us of tsunamis, does it not logically follow that He must (in order to be a "loving God") rid us of all tornadoes, flooding, droughts, etc. This argument against God knows no logical bounds, until a perfect world is created. This is a point taken up and addressed much better than I can by Robert Nozick in his book The Examined Life.

An excellent point, but that’s why I included the caveat, "You can’t give God credit for doing good while giving him a pass on doing evil. Unless your god is limited (or limits the scope of his actions) and nature runs its course independent of him." (italics mine) I don't see how, with that caveat, I've implicitly been unfair to god: I gave him an out.

I wouldn't, for example, argue that god doesn't exist because the world isn't perfect. The world is perfect, as Leibnitz argued and Voltaire misunderstood. Unfortunately, it's not perfect in any meaningful human sense. Our notion of perfection is an anthropomorphic projection of our desires onto flinty "reality," which consistently frustrates those desires. Outside of extreme technological intervention which is not available and may never be, a "perfect" human existence is impossible (it's almost as abstract as "being"). Thus "perfection" is by definition perpetually beyond our grasp and, for that reason, simultaneously the most alluring and galling concept of all.

My use of the word "perfect" to describe the state of the world was nothing more than poetic license. The world is "perfect" in that it lacks nothing; it is a self-perpetuating whole responsible solely to itself, a whole of which we are a part.

I would not argue that god doesn't exist because the world is fraught with suffering. I would argue that god doesn't exist because there is no evidence that she does.

I could go on, but I'll leave further points for a later post, when I finally get around to discussing Intelligent Design.

Gannon Outs Himself

Never mind the previous post on Gannon Guckert. He's come clean: He loves New Wave films. So I was right, he is a drama queen. You can find his Amazon Nouvelle Vague wishlist here. But why did Gannon come clean?

The reason I decided to come clean is simple: John Aravosis and his "friends"€at America Blog. They're clearly on a witch-hunt against people who aren't really Jeff Gannon. They're clearly BONKERS.

Yesterday morning I woke up to this delightful email from John.

Gannon,

I've got invoices, baby. I'm going to tease it to my readers for 48 hours and then you're TOAST Gannon. Toast.

PS Just so you know, several of my friends already have copies of my files. I'm just saying...

John A.

I have to admit I was nervous. Aravosis is clearly a madman. So I did what I always do when I need to calm down and think straight: I squeezed out a few rounds from my 7.2 Inch Mini Cougar.

After shooting off the last of my ammo I realized what I had to do: Pre-empt that fucker. So here are the invoices. (Invoices pictured are for the purchases of Breathless, The 400 Blows, Jules and Jim, Contempt, and Hiroshima Mon Amour.)

Mini Cougar? But I thought he was 8+ inches and cut! Anyway, for the firearm ignorati, this is a Mini Cougar. Would be nice to have some details about where he fires his, um, gun. I mean, is it indoors? Doesn't he live in the city? Clearly, John Aravosis, not Guckert, is a madman. Given Guckert's secret love of French cinema, does he secretly wish Kerry had won? See, here's the difference between Gannonquiddick and Easongate: Gannonquiddick is fun.

P.S. All of the Gannon-blog shit is probably a brilliant joke. But if you find out it's not, please let me know.

Support Our Troops

Ever since the first "support our troops" stickers appeared on the backs of cars, I've wondered what was the point of putting them there. I assumed they must be there to make the drivers feel empowered, just as "united we stand" and flag stickers proliferated right after 9/11 to buck us up with righteous anger and ward off our demoniac fears.

That slogan turned stale after a couple of weeks, and the new one didn't stay fresh much longer. The former statement was a declaration of defiance—unfortunately to the choir. The latter was an imperative lacking a mode of action. How were we supposed to support our troops? Most of them were (and still are) overseas. Give us a charity to give money to or an address to send care packages to (and tell us what to put in them: socks? porn? humvee armor?). Don't just tell us to "support" our troops. (Note: Stars and Stripes has a few suggestions—by way of Gnomon.)

But now I'm not so sure the slogan is innocent. Until recently, I assumed it was an entreaty. Now I wonder if it's not an order: "Keep your mouth shut." And even if it doesn't mean that (assuming there's a way to gauge its meaning), enough sloganeers are saying as much. Saying that talk of all the bombings and consequent civilian and military deaths in Iraq undermines the "war effort."

But I don’t see it. Do we imagine that Iraqi "insurgents," in a country with rampant power shortages where phones often do not work, spend their time tuned to CNN and not, say, trying to kill other Iraqis or Americans? If they do watch it—after wading through news about the social security and tort-reform debates in the US—is it the news of violence in Iraq that lifts their downtrodden spirits? Or is it that they can walk outside and see the rampant devastation and fear first hand? The effectiveness of their terrorist attacks is probably clearer to them in person than on TV.

Then again, maybe it's not the terrorists that criticism affects. Maybe military personnel see criticism of their laudatory efforts and wonder why they're in Iraq. Maybe they were troubled by the pictures from Abu Ghraib, or that question posed to Rumsfeld about lack of armor, or the piling-up of evidence that we were suckered into conflict, or the news that we had no post-war plans and not nearly enough troops to keep the peace. Or. Or. Or. But I suspect that just being in Iraq, with all the bombings and shortages and frustrated civilians (not to mention sand flies, sleep deprivation and Kafkaesque rescinding of orders home) does the trick.

What should we do? Shut up for a few years and keep our fingers crossed, standing by our man and presenting a "united front," no matter what happens in the war? How will that help our troops?

It won't. And no, I don't know what will, except giving them whatever they need to finish the crucial and dirty job they have to do. But that should not include silent obeisance to the White House. The irony would be stark indeed: Invading a country in order to "liberate" its people—and I'm not saying we didn't to some extent succeed—while at home calling those who question the invasion "anti-American" and telling them to shut up and present a "united front."

As a neighbor of the notorious California Pearcy family said, "I'm outraged. We have our men and women in uniform that are dying to protect our rights and I think it's a disgrace that somebody would be allowed to hang a U.S. soldier in effigy in front of their house." Evidently, she hasn't been listening to the President. Doesn't she know that the terrorists hate "our freedoms —our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other"?

While some self-styled "conservatives" rage at the anti-Americanism of Barbara Boxer and Ted Kennedy and the bias of the "MSM," our own Porter Goss testified yesterday before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that

The Iraq conflict, while not a cause of extremism, has become a cause for extremists.... Those jihadists who survive will leave Iraq experienced in and focused on acts of urban terrorism. They represent a potential pool of contacts to build transnational terrorist cells, groups and networks in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other countries.

Do we wish the committee had interviewed Goss in secret?

Persona Non Blogga

The non-existent Jeff Gannon doesn't have a blog here. And no, you can't contact him here. (From Wonkette.) During a recent non-interview with Not Wolf Blitzer, Not Gannon remarked that "French New Wave films make me sick and I bet John Kerry would have been the first president to enjoy French New Wave films." If so, it would've been long overdue.

Gannon's Guckert's questionable taste aside, that's a pretty strong statement. Even Armageddon didn't make me sick. Even Con Air didn't, though it came close. In fact, I'm hard-pressed to come up with any movie that made me sick. Then again, Gannon may just be a drama queen.

(If you missed the Daily Show tonight, catch the rerun tomorrow: Gannon was a prime target.)

Congratulations, Luke Thomas

Luke Thomas is going to have a radio show in DC, starting in 6-8 weeks. According to his newsletter,

...it's going to be a political comedy radio show, very
similar to The Daily Show, political work in The Onion, Dennis
Miller's old HBO show, and Bill Maher's Realtime. I'm not planning on
reinventing the wheel, but it will have a distinct flavor since the
medium is radio, not television.

He'll be doing the show with a funny conservative (an oxymoron?) and he thinks we non-DC residents will be able to listen to the show on the Internet. Hopefully, it'll be a hit. The guy deserves more exposure. And with his love of profanity and porn, with any luck people will complain to the FCC and give him a ton of free publicity.

New Blog Showcase Extravaganza No 1

We at Realitique headquarters are shocked to discover that we're #6 on the New Blog Showcase Extravaganza No 1 list at Simon World: East Meets Westerner. Frankly, we are titillated. There's some excellent reading there. You might even consider reading posts from other blogs.

Maya Marcel-Keyes: Illusory Heterosexual

Well, what should wingnut Alan Keyes have expected from a daughter named “Maya”? You've probably heard that she exited the closet yesterday, to her parents' chagrin and her own obvious relief, calling herself a “liberal queer.” (To beautifully confuse matters, she's anti-abortion.) But have you heard she has a blog? Anyway, to exit the closet takes chutzpah; if your dad's Alan Keyes, it takes some big-ass, uh, balls. Incidentally, am I the only person who strongly suspects that her father secretly wants to join the Log Cabin Republicans? (Hat tip: Joseph Farah Aydiid's WND.)

Stumping Bush (as if)

On Thursday, the Bush SS Victory Tour stopped off in Raleigh, North Carolina. Bush gave a long speech and then took questions from the (filtered) audience. Below are some salient paragraphs from the middle of the speech interspersed with helpful comments by yours truly. I've deleted some of the text, but have been careful to retain all relevant context. If you’re a masochist, you can read the super-long original transcript here.

President Discusses Strengthening Social Security in North Carolina
BTI Center For The Performing Arts
Raleigh, North Carolina
11:12 A.M. EST

...So when you think about it, when you add up the equation, you've got more people living longer, receiving greater benefits, being supported by fewer people. And to me, that says, we got a problem. And as a matter of fact, the numbers say that. There is a chart over here that says "Cost of Inaction," because in 2018, the system goes red. That means there's more money going out of the system than coming into the system. The leading edge of baby boomers are retiring; they're living longer; benefit structures are bigger; fewer people paying in — the system goes negative.

Now, some of you probably think there is a kind of — a bank, a Social Security trust bank. But that's not what's happened over time. Every dollar that goes into Social Security has been paid out, either to retirees or government programs. It is a pay-as-you-go system; it is a flow-through system. There is no kind of — there are empty promises, but there's no pile of money that you thought was there when you retired. That's not the way the system works.

So…the 80’s Greenspan commission was an “empty promise”? The surplus paid into the system now doesn’t go to buy US Treasury bonds? Granted, bonds are promissory notes, but according to the Constitution (Am.XIV, Section 4), “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.” Josh Marshall, who deserves a medal of freedom from some other president for investigating this, has pointed out that Bush’s personal fortune is mostly comprised of bonds. The president is saying that the government is going to default on paying the bonds in the Social Security Trust. Is the government also going to default on the bonds that he holds?

To make matters worse, as more baby boomers retire, as people live longer, as more benefits kick in, the cash deficit increases. So, for example, in 2027, the government is going to have to come up [with] $200 billion more to meet the promises that we've made, above and beyond payroll taxes. Every year from 2018 to when the system goes broke in 2042, the cash deficits required to meet promises increase. That says to me we've got a problem.

1. “Promises” as in “Treasury bonds”?

2. Repeat after me: The system will not go broke. Ever. Unless everyone under 65 is wiped out in a cataclysm. Social Security cannot go broke. It can, however, run in the red. And in 2042 it probably will. The system will be short of funds by one third or less. But unless Bush is speaking a different English language than I do (and the campaign made me question that), running a deficit is a far cry from “broke.” If it’s not, then the US government has been broke for ages, except for a couple of Clinton-era years. That is why the national debt is so enormous.

Now, I know 13 years doesn't sound like a lot — 2018 — it may seem like a lot to people whose perspective is maybe two years. But as I told you, I think we've got to anticipate problems, particularly on this issue, because the longer we wait, the more difficult the solutions become. That's just a fact.

You mean, more difficult to trick the public into buying your snake oil? Because, mathematically speaking, your so-called solution of forming “private accounts” requires spending even more money—deepening the debt—than would be required to fix the problem.

And so step one of my strategy is to continue saying to the American people, we have got a serious problem. In other words, sometimes they say, is it serious, is it a crisis—look, whatever you want to call it, just look at the chart and you come up with the conclusions. It is serious because if Congress says no to the President, we're not going the move forward on this, imagine what the solutions will be when the $200 billion hits, or the $210 billion a year, or the $300 billion. I mean, you're looking at either major tax increases, major cuts in benefits, major cuts in other government programs or massive debt. And so now is the time to move. And that's what I'm saying to the Congress.

Yes, all the more reason to address the problem instead of jeopardizing it. As for the “massive debt” option, may I point out that we already have massive debt—and it’s making our creditors uneasy. It’s not a good thing when the rest of the world starts eyeing Euros as a more stable default currency. If you really cared about massive debt, you would’ve sent the Congress slimmer budgets for the past four years. Are you going to default on any of that debt?

The second—second goal of mine is to make sure our people who have retired, our senior citizens, and people who were born before 1950 know that nothing changes…. You might remember those campaigns around…. They said, old George W. gets in, you're not going to get your check. Fortunately, they got their check after I got in, so they kind of rung hollow in 2004.

Translation: Get off my back, AARP and the state of Florida.

…The system when we talk about insolvency, the insolvency issue doesn't relate to you. It relates to your grandchildren. And that's the issue we're confronted with: What do we do about the retirees' grandchildren? As I said in my State of the Union, we have an obligation to do what others have done for my generation and that's to leave a—leave a better world behind.

A more polluted, indebted world. He cares enough about your grandchildren to pass on to them massive debt to China, Japan, Germany, etc. He cares enough to make their retirement even less secure (Social Security doesn’t pay much).

And that's why I was willing to dedicate as many words as I did in the State of the Union to what used to be the third rail of American politics, Social Security.

Now, it's one thing to define the problem; it's another thing to be a part of the solution. And I have an obligation as the President not just to define the problem, but to encourage dialogue by putting out some ideas of my own.

Which someone else came up with long before he was president. It’s not like his dad didn’t assert that Social Security would be broke by the nineties. This funny business is nothing new.

I stood up in front of the Congress and said, in order to truly fix it, in order to have a permanent solution, all options are on the table, except for running up payroll taxes.

Because that might solve the problem (not that anyone would go for it). And remember: I don’t really want to solve the problem; I want to exacerbate it. Whatever you do, do not compare this to an earlier situation in which I asserted over and over again that a situation was dire, even when the best information available said that it wasn’t, just so I could do what my advisers had dreamed for years of doing, fantasizing about as they lay in bed, touching themselves at the thought of using that big, big, powerful military. Also, do not ask yourself why, if I really want a diplomatic solution to the Iran crisis problem, I won’t join the EU in talks with them, when I know that the EU’s efforts will fail if the US doesn’t join in. And do not ask yourself why Dr. Rice said the military option wasn’t on the table at this time.

And that means a lot of different things. Democrats…had some really constructive ideas as to how to address the root cause of a—of the problems with Social Security…. [The] ideas range from raising the retirement age, to delaying benefits, to calculating benefits not based upon wage increase, but price increase. A little esoteric here, but, in other words, there's some serious ideas on the table to how to permanently fix Social Security.

Yes, those are genuine proposals for solving the problem. Unlike yours, which is as insincere as nearly everything that comes out of your mouth. Incidentally, under no circumstances should we ask ourselves why Karl Rove, after his 3% victory, has been given even more titles and has relocated his office to mere steps from the Oval Office.

And that's why I said to the Congress, all ideas are on the table, and if you got a good idea, bring it forward. Now is the time for people from both sides of the aisle to address the problem. And I'm willing to listen to anybody's idea. And I'm looking forward to a good, constructive dialogue about how to seriously address the problem, making sure that those who've retired have nothing to worry about and, at the same time, making sure there's a Social Security system for younger people coming up.

So you’re willing to address the problem and ditch the idea of private accounts? I suspect that’s bullshit.

I put out some ideas and I want to talk about one of them that I hope you find interesting…. And that is as a way to allow younger workers to…come closer to the promises that have been made, but can't be fulfilled,

Because we’re going to default on the debt—an unconstitutional act.

we should allow younger workers to take some of their own money—their own payroll taxes—and set it aside as a personal retirement account. This is a novel idea for Social Security. But it's not…a novel idea for federal employees. There is such a thing that's called a thrift savings plan, which allows federal employees to take some of their own money and invest it in stocks and bonds, so as to increase their retirement benefits.

Well, er, yes and no. Yes, it’s true that there’s a thrift savings plan, and that federal employees can take some of their own money and invest it. But that’s in addition to Social Security. Bush™, however, has expressed no interest in add-on private accounts styled after 401Ks; instead, he wants to divert a healthy percentage of payroll taxes into private accounts. Add-on private accounts would be a no-brainer, and no problem. But they wouldn’t fix Social Security. For a Cato Institute analysis of state and local employees who opted out of Social Security in favor of private investment plans, go here.

Whew

Since I take too long to compose real posts, I keep posting references to others. Well, here's a rant well worth reading for anybody who has no patience for the "love it or leave it" mentality, no matter their political disposition. (The blog itself is a hoot, too.)

Leadership of That Nature

While kissing Old-European ass at a NATO meeting today, Rumsfeld took time out to comment on North Korea's admission of nuclear capability:

Given they're a dictatorial regime and the repression of their own people [sic], one has to worry about weapons of that power in the hands of leadership of that nature. I don't think anyone would characterize the leadership in that country as being, uh, restrained.

Granted, the US is no dictatorship, but the rest of the quote fits Bush™ quite nicely.

Luke Thomas

A friend of mine sent me this priceless post. Hysterical and (unfortunately) true. Sample paragraph (and it's not the best one, either):

How about the vote for the authorization of force for the Iraq war? Who voted against it? Most vocally for the Democrats was West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd. Now there's someone you want on your side. When this lunatic, grizzly mountain man isn't sitting on his front porch in flannel shirts and overalls playing "Cotton Eye Joe" on his XXX moonshine bottle, he's out promoting race relations by cutting eye holes in his white bed sheets.

Herrrooo...

He's baaack.... And he's nuclear. Or at least he says he is.

Notice how Kimmy always throws a tantrum when the US pays too much attention to his competition in the Axis of (Some) Evil? The worst was when the US kept fussing over Iraq. Now, it seems, it's Iran.

And speaking of the Asian Elvis, the Team America DVD is slated for release on April 5. Woohoo!

Deep Throat Illin?

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Did Bush I Give Woodward Head?

Throw names like Woodward and Bush together and you have the start of a successful porn enterprise. Add Deep Throat and you have a runaway hit. Adrian Havill, in an email to Romanesko, suggests that Elder Bush may have been the mysterious informant of All the President's Men.

U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote, Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite Vietcong Terror

If you're like me, you're a little behind. In case you missed the 1967 NYT article that's been floating around, here's a reprint.

Orlando Bosch Bush

Here's an interesting connection between the Bush family and an anti-Castro terrorist. What's it mean? Got me. (Thanks, Charone.)

Bubble Tea Fusion?

Remember that wacky experiment where scientists claimed incredible energy was released from collapsing really tiny bubbles? Well, apparently, the results have been "replicated and extended." Read about it here. With the sexy title of Additional Evidence of Nuclear Emissions During Acoustic Cavitation, it's bound to be a big seller. (Link from A Boy and His Computer.)

Social Insecurity III

See if the following makes sense to you. Bush™ says there’s a Social Security crisis: eventually, the system’s going into the red because of the high aging population of the baby boomers. They propose to address this crisis by subsidizing the creation of private personal accounts with ginormous amounts of cash borrowed from other sources (China and Japan?). The gov’t will have to borrow the money to cover the costs of current retirees. Bush™ says this will put money directly into the hands of future retirees, letting them invest in stocks and bonds. Gov't regulated ones, of course: “There will be a prescribed mix of conservative stocks and bonds into which you can invest, similar to the employee thrift plan at the federal government level.”

What’s so strange about this is that it doesn’t address the crisis at all. It might even deepen it. Does the Bush Administration really want to foster “personal responsibility” over retirement funds (as if many people don’t already have these)? Do they want to create an Ownership Society®? If they did, they could start by cutting payroll taxes, the source of current SS benefits. If they took less of our money, we’d have more of it—and we’d have to take responsibility for it and not “go to the race track. (Applause.) Or take it to the lottery.” Unfortunately, the gov't would have to borrow money to cover the benefits of current retirees.

It's probably going to end up borrowing money anyway, just to pay for the Treasury bonds (“full faith and credit of the United States,” etc.) that make up the surplus in the SS trust fund--an ironic name if there ever was one. But Bush™’s plan would require borrowing even more, to cover the percentage diverted into stocks and bonds. Never mind that the rest of the world is already concerned about the third-world amount of debt we're accruing and the anemia of the dollar.

What’s the real agenda here? It may be, as Bill Kristol has said, to “create Republicans” by making us common folk investors through letting us sock away a measly amount of cash per annum that won’t add up to any more than what retirees get now. (Even if it did, it wouldn’t add up to much more, unless the stock market was irrationally exuberant for decades.) But I suspect something else is on the administration’s mind. Maybe they want to divert money into capital markets. Or maybe they want to phase out Social Security itself by forcing the gov't into a fiscal crisis years down the road.

Discuss.

UPDATE: Josh Marshall, who's been tracking congressional support and dissent on the SS mess, has an extensive review of the President's plan here.

Monkey Porn

While you're taking a break from politics, in anticipation of the rich feast awaiting you this evening, why not read about monkey porn:

A new study found that male monkeys will give up their juice rewards in order to ogle pictures of female monkey's [sic] bottoms. The way the experiment was set up, the act is akin to paying for the images, the researchers say.

Lessee, male monkey looking at pictures of female monkeys' backsides.... Sounds kinda like...porn, doesn't it? But the author doesn't make the connection. Instead, he writes:

Would you pay to see a monkey's backside? I hope not. Monkeys will, and I guess that's okay, though it sounds awfully close to the sort of thing that lands guys in jail here in the human realm.

What is he talking about? Does he live in Iran? Utah? Did the experiment involve underage female monkeys? No: adult rhesus macaques. Read the article here.

And Now for Something Completely Different

Sick of politics? Why not cook some Brazilian food? Here's an excellent site full of authentic Brazilian recipes--at least according to this Brazilian (what do I know?).

He's Sooo Biiig

This year is the anniversary of Oral Roberts' 900-foot Jesus. Iconoclast has an amusing post about it here.

Guantanamo Detainees Have Right to Due Process

U.S. District Judge Joyce Hens Green has ruled that the detainees at Guantanamo have rights under US law. Read the Reuters story here. Key paragraph:

Although this nation unquestionably must take strong action under the leadership of the commander in chief to protect itself against enormous and unprecedented threats, that necessity cannot negate the existence of the most basic fundamental rights for which the people of this country have fought and died for well over two hundred years.

Class Warfare

In the Bush Administration™'s continuing attempt to recast class warfare as the Ownership Society®, the latest object of "reform" is health care. The pinko LA Times has the scoop here.

More on this later.

Kim Jong Illin'

North Korea on verge of collapse? Say it isn't so....

Shroud of Fictional Savior Is Really, Really Old

We're never going to hear the end of it. The Shroud of Turin may be much older than previously thought. The BBC reports that tests run on the "Holland cloth" portion of the shroud--the portion C-14 dated to the 13th century--confirm that it was added to the rest of the shroud. Since the chemical... Oh, just read it for yourself.

The problem isn't vindication of the shroud-worshippers. It's that now we're going to hear about this new, pro-shroud evidence over and over and over again. It's the Michael Jackson story of the jesusphere. Of course, what we won't hear is that, even if the shroud came from a cave in Palestine from the era of the early Empire, it's still just a piece of cloth with an image on it. Fascinating, yes, but evidence for the truth of Christianity? No.

US in Contact with Baathist Insurgents?

Intriguing: According to UPI, US military commanders appear to've been in contact with former-regime insurgents for over a month in a special arrangement that precludes dialogue. If true, the most interesting aspect of the story (for my money) is the Baathists' eagerness to distance themselves from Al Qaeda and Zarqawi. The full story is here.

They Both Wore Black

Good god. Friday night at a World Economic Forum dinner in Davos, Switzerland, Iranian fundamentalist Muslims broke bread with secular Europeans and other Western types without anyone, apparently, approving the menu. The results were not good. Best paragraph:

Biden finally arrived an hour and 20 minutes late, having gone to the wrong hotel. His wife's figure-hugging leather pants and a top that left her arms bare from the shoulders were in stark contrast to Vice-President Masoumeh Ebtekar's all-enveloping chador, although both wore black.

Unfuckingbelievable.

A New Argument for a Presidential Mandate?

On NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday, the host, Scott Simon, was discussing the upcoming battle over the domestic budget with Robert Greenstein, executive director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and Bill Beech, senior fellow in economics at the Heritage Foundation.

Simon asked Beech, "Was the vote the President received, and for that matter the increase in seats the Republican Party got, due to their domestic proposals?"

"I'm not one who says the President can't claim a mandate on these issues," Beech replied, "Because I don't think mandates are ever certified until the Congress convenes and you see how successful the President's agenda is in moving from committee to a floor vote. And if it's successful, then he obviously has a mandate."

Come again? In the US, all words are subjected to the gale-force winds of marketing and misuse, and since the election the term "mandate" has taken a beating. If the President has a mandate on the basis of a 2-3% victory, then the word means nothing.

Forget that Simon didn't use the word "mandate," which raises questions about its unsolicited use in Beech's reply (Karl, is that you?). Beech deserves credit for skipping the popular vote altogether. According to his logic—and I'm being charitable here—a narrow electoral victory, which he retroactively terms a "mandate," is "certified" (or not) by the not-so-simple act of moving legislation from the committee to a floor vote. Never mind the vote itself, just moving the legislation certifies it.

Even if he meant that the legislation's passage certifies the mandate, it makes no difference: There was nothing to "certify" in the first place. The mere movement of legislation from committee (or stomach) to floor vote (or colon), let alone its movement beyond the legislative body onto the Capitol steps in solid form, says more about the ability and will of various Congressional factions to compromise or, as has been more popular since Bush took office, of the dominant faction to force a bill through, than it does about any popular support for the legislation itself.

This is a curious view. At bottom, it implies that the chaos of desires and rationales which politicians like to call "the will of the people" is perfectly expressed through the equally chaotic legislative process. This implies that there is no mediation between the collective vote for President and the legislation that he signs into law. How absurd. If anything, "the will of the people" is often FUBAR by the very same process. Mandate? Nigga, please. A mandate begins and ends with the popular vote. No certification required. And in this case, there is no mandate. Continually saying there is doesn't make it so.

Just Add Water

A must-read from Riverbend in Baghdad. The water's back. BTW, according to this currency converter, 1 dollar roughly equals 1,500 dinars.

Pan Islamism?

An intriguing overview of the Middle East in the last hundred years and where it might be headed (Power and Interest News Report). Two key paragraphs:

The US current administration's drive to spread democracy in the Middle East does not envisage the melting away of boundaries and decades-long political sovereignty - rather, Washington seeks to preserve the existing states as they are by bringing democratically oriented governments to power. This policy is driven by a premise that democratic states would not pose a danger to one another, would respect one another's sovereignty within the existing borders and would not easily launch war on their neighbors for a religious, political or ethnic purpose. The collection of pacific but independent Muslim states would allow for unobstructed access to the world's oil resources and would preclude the emergence of a regional hegemon capable of upsetting the existing balance of power.

That is precisely what Iran and al-Qaeda want to avoid. The melting away of artificial Middle Eastern and North African boundaries that were imposed by now-defunct governments of Western Europe would create a massive state with the majority-Muslim population in the hundreds of millions and in control of the crucial oil and natural-gas reserves. Such an outcome would in effect create another superpower in the world arena. There are indications that Muslim states are seeking to move closer to such a reality.

PINR's most recent report, on how a nuclear Iran would affect Turkey and Saudi Arabia, is here.

Clueless

I live in a house that's been converted into apartments, and the outer door is down the hall. Earlier today, my doorbell rang. Peeking out my doorway, I could see a young, tall black man framed in the glass of the door, a pencil behind his ear. Since I work at home, I'm often not presentable; today was no different. While I was trading clothes for my robe, my girlfriend remarked that somebody was outside, apparently calling out to see if anyone was home.

When I got outside, no one was there. So I went around the side of the house. The man was there, in a velour jumpsuit, talking with a grad student at the back of the driveway (my upstairs neighbor is a professor and students appear now and then). He had one of those faces whose age is hard to judge. His height made me think he was older than his acne told me he was.

I asked him if he'd rung the doorbell. He said he had, then paused, as if I'd interrupted him and needed to state my business. I asked him what he wanted. He shrugged, then started walking past me and said that he didn't understand why everybody around here talked to him like he was a kid. He said I looked like an "older" man, old enough to be his dad.

Not knowing where he was headed with that observation, I said, "I don’t know about that. But okay."

Silence.

I pointed out that he’d rung my doorbell, so it was natural for me to wonder what he wanted. "What are you doing?" I asked.

"I'm working," he said, "instead of standing on the street corner, selling drugs, gang-bangin'."

"Okay," I said.

"I'm selling magazines."

"Well, I'm broke," I said, not mentioning that I never buy magazine subscriptions, especially from incompetent assholes.

He walked off. As I was going back inside, he called out over his shoulder that he'd "check back later."

"Don't bother," I said.

Unfortunately, our friendship did not end there. Back inside, I told my girlfriend what had happened and she headed out the door, to see if he was still out there. After a few girlfriendless minutes, I went outside to find her. She was half a block away, talking with him.

When she came back, she told me that he’d claimed that "everybody in this neighborhood's got twenty-thirty dollars to help me out." She'd told him that she was poor. (Never mind the difference between begging and selling.) He was sick of white people pulling away when they saw a black man at the door, he'd said. She'd replied that he was the one who rang the doorbell and was rude to her boyfriend; race had nothing to do with it. He'd said that he was off the street now, working, but could still "get on the phone" and call somebody to "take care of the problem."

Nothing quite like appealing to someone's sympathy and then threatening them.

Since the young model citizen didn't provide the story with a climax, my girlfriend and I manufactured our own. I told her that I didn't want her to do anything like that again—going after a hotheaded stranger. Uh, whoops. Before I could elaborate or rephrase anything, she started sobbing, grabbed her keys and headed out the door, for class. She wouldn't tell me what was wrong.

Later, she did. She said she was upset about what the guy had said to her and about what he'd said to me and about me fussing at her for confronting a hotheaded stranger. It was an upsetting afternoon for all concerned.

Another Failed Social Security Privatization Experiment

Not that anyone outside of The American Prospect is talking about Britain's failed Social Security privatization experiment, but the NYT has a piece today on a similar failure in Chile under Pinochet. The last two paragraphs are telling:

...There is now even an Association of People With Pension Damage, 157,000 members and growing, that consists of Chileans, mostly former government employees, who find that their pensions, based on contributions to the private system, are significantly less than if they had remained in the old system.

"They come to us in desperation," said Yasmir Fariña, the group's president, "because those who stayed in the government system are often retiring with monthly pensions twice as large as everyone else's."

(Link from Joshua Marshall.)

Iraqi Elections: an NYT Interactive Thingee

Here's a terrific interactive presentation on the impending Iraqi elections, including expected voter turnout, death threats, and recent killings (click on the link in the right-hand column, below the map of Iraq). Since the voters have to walk to the polling stations (and who knows how far), they should be easy to pick off. Let's hope that doesn't happen. If you want to see raw courage, look at the people who show up at the polls. And remember, in Baghdad, they haven't had running water for a week.

Condi's Confirmation

"Ms. Rice should make an ideal Secretary of State. She's already proved to the U.S. that she can evade questions in front of a Congressional panel."
--The Onion

Feith without Works

Douglas Feith, the Pentagon's undersecretary for policy, is leaving the DoD. While my immediate response is huahhh! woohoo!, that's premature. Who knows who'll replace him. But it's hard to believe his replacement could be worse. After all, this is the ideologue who was partly responsible for the trifecta of 1) the stovepiping of unvetted CIA intelligence, 2) taking Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress at their word (contrary to cautions from the CIA), 3) ignoring detailed State Dept. post-war Iraq plans and dismissing expert opinion on nation-building for fear it might undermine the cause for war, and 4) arguing in the '80's that terrorists shouldn't be treated in accordance with the Geneva Convention. As Gen. Franks remarked about Feith in Woodward's Plan of Attack (p. 281), "I have to deal with the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth almost every day."

Good riddance.

You can find a thorough trashing of the guy here and Feith's response here.

UPDATE: Juan Cole's view of the Feith resignation: What you won't hear on, say, the nightly news.

Side by Side

Here's a disturbing juxtaposition of quotes from the President's inaugural address with quotes detailing the torture of detainees. It's not easy to read. I still have trouble fathoming the Mengele level of cruelty that soldiers reached based on somewhat less imaginative techniques that Alberto Gonzales, Rumsfeld and their boss greenlighted. (Link from Andrew Sullivan.)

Porn Again

Last night was the Krewe du Vieux, the first parade worth going to for Mardi Gras this year. It's in the French Quarter and is always a bawdy parade. The theme last night was the revised commandments. The first float was "Porn Again," complete with giant phallus and a man dressed up as God, all in white. Phallic crosses adorned the necks of men dressed as monks. This city's a blue (well, purplish) oasis in an otherwise blood-red state.

Giant humanoid will fire flames

Who doesn't doubt that if the DoD had some of these, recruitment would soar?

Homeland Insecurity

Not long after the ABC hidden-camera report on the Dept. of Homeland Security's Hawaiian convention bash comes the (oops) cryptome.org publication of a slew of classified Homeland Security daily morning briefs. Bet Tom Ridge is happy he already announced his resignation...

Myrmidonia

What better way to say celebrate Bush’s second inauguration than with this appropriately altered Delacroix?



To hear the accompanying music, click one of the links below:

• Real Player
• Windows Audio
• Quicktime

Keep Saying "Yes"!

Happy Inauguration Day, fellow travelers! As you go out to celebrate the victory of our beloved leader, remember that we are at war and keep our boys (and girls) overseas in your prayers.

I know some of you are squeamish about the way the war has been conducted, but because of the seriousness of this conflict, it's imperative that we stand united against the enemy, the 49% of "Americans" who voted the wrong way. That's why we all need to hold our heads high and, as we mingle with other "Americans," keep the following in mind:

• Don't criticize the conduct of the war. Remember: There've been some rough spots, but we're on the right track and we're looking forward to Iraqi elections on Jan. 30th. Freedom is on the march.


• Don't express doubts about whether the war should've been waged. If you catch yourself thinking this, ask yourself whether America and the world would be better off with Saddam Hussein in power. If someone expresses doubts to you, ask them the same question.


• Don't say that we "tortured" anyone. Remember: If enhanced interrogation techniques will prevent just one beheading by evildoers, it's worth beating any number of Arabs, subjecting them to dog bites, forcing them to perform simulated fellatio or form naked-man pyramids. Cheerleaders form pyramids, too, and there's nothing wrong with a little hazing—it's a form of male bonding, if you think about it.


• Don't say that the war in Iraq might have been off-target for the War on Terror (and never say what it might've been on-target for). Remember: Vice President Cheney said repeatedly, along with Secretary Rumsfeld, that there were links between al-Qaeda and Saddam's regime.


• Don't say we didn't find any Weapons of Mass Destruction. Remember: the CIA led us to believe that Iraq possessed such weapons. And even if Iraq didn't have them, they still had the intent and capability to produce them. If someone mentions that other nations also had that intent and capability, ask them pointedly if they think America and the world would be better off with Saddam Hussein in power. And insist that Saddam's regime was a danger to the world and to the region.

Remember: we said "yes" to Bush on November 2nd. It's more important than ever that we keep saying "yes" now.

GOP House Party II: We've Got Big Balls

You know how much money is being lavished on Bush's second inauguration. You've seen the news shows on all the pomp. You've read the events calendar and long to see Earth, Wind & Fire play the ball and Kelsey Grammer emcee. But, alas, you just couldn't afford to go. What do you do?

Have a party at home!

I'm ever upper class high society
God's gift to ballroom notoriety
I always fill my ballroom
The event is never small
The social pages say I've got
The biggest balls of all

Iraqi (Meta) Blog

For those interested in first-person accounts of Iraq as it nears election day, here's an excellent blog devoted to (what else) Iraqi blogs.

Dissent in North Korea?

This is quite a turn: possible dissent in a factory in North Korea, complete with graffiti. Hopefully, the story's true.

Baghdad Burning

Here's a blog worth reading. It's a first-person account from Baghdad. Too bad she doesn't post more often, but when she does she has Something to Say. Here are a few sample paragraphs from a 15 Jan. post:

I hope Americans feel good about taking their war on terror to foreign soil. For bringing the terrorists to Iraq- Chalabi, Allawi, Zarqawi, the Hakeems… How is our current situation going to secure America? How is a complete generation that is growing up in fear and chaos going to view Americans ten years from now? Does anyone ask that? After September 11, because of what a few fanatics did, Americans decided to become infected with a collective case of xenophobia… Yet after all Iraqis have been through under the occupation, we're expected to be tolerant and grateful. Why? Because we get more wheat in our diets?

Terror isn't just worrying about a plane hitting a skyscraper…terrorism is being caught in traffic and hearing the crack of an AK-47 a few meters away because the National Guard want to let an American humvee or Iraqi official through. Terror is watching your house being raided and knowing that the silliest thing might get you dragged away to Abu Ghraib where soldiers can torture, beat and kill. Terror is that first moment after a series of machine-gun shots, when you lift your head frantically to make sure your loved ones are still in one piece. Terror is trying to pick the shards of glass resulting from a nearby explosion out of the living-room couch and trying not to imagine what would have happened if a person had been sitting there.

The weapons never existed. It's like having a loved one sentenced to death for a crime they didn't commit- having your country burned and bombed beyond recognition, almost. Then, after two years of grieving for the lost people, and mourning the lost sovereignty, we're told we were innocent of harboring those weapons. We were never a threat to America...

Congratulations Bush- we are a threat now.

WaPo

I've answered my own question. A 12 Jan. article in The Washington Post says:

Patrick Butler, vice president of The Washington Post Co., said the company, which is the parent of this newspaper, agreed to donate to be sure that it has enough tickets to the Inaugural Ball to cover its major corporate advertisers, which The Post fetes at the event every four years.

InaugurAid

If you're bored or just curious, here's a list of donors to the 2005 Inauguration motorcade pageant fête. Two thoughts:

1. Is it usual for donations of this nature to come in amounts divisible by $25,000?
2. Is it, say, questionable for a media company--not just an owner of lots of stations, like Clear Channel, but a single-outlet newspaper--to give money for an inauguration? The Washington Post gave $100,000. If you look at the rest of the list, they stand out a bit. Maybe, since they're a Washington-based paper, they donate every four years, regardless of who's in power. Anybody know?

Opiate of the Masses?

I'm speechless. (Thank you, anonymous Savant reader.)

Social Insecurity II

While we're on the subject of Social Security, this article in The American Prospect is well worth reading. In 1984 Britain did something similar to what Bush is proposing to do. It failed. Maybe the article's spot on, maybe it's not, but I'd like to see more work on the same subject.

Social Insecurity

I'm repeatedly amazed at the current administration's ability to push the envelope. This is just sick.

New Blackberry

A friend of mine just got a new Blackberry. Amazing what those things are outfitted with nowadays:

Contract with America

At the start of the 109th Congress, some Republicans are reevaluating the last 10 years of their Congressional rulership, which began with the Contract for America. Where have they succeeded? Where have they failed? Here's the real thing, for your perusal.

The High Cost of Inauguration

Those who aren't professional event coordinators might gasp at the sticker price of a second Bush inauguration: $40 million (in private donations). A new Salon article puts the matter in context.

As Bull Moose noted, "It is obscene to hold a lavishly funded official ho-down in the nation's capital while our troops go into harms way thousands of miles away from home. Only a few miles away from the waltzing, brave young men and women will be struggling to walk again at Walter Reed and Bethesda Naval."

Bush ~ Bismarck

This quote from Andrew Sullivan is too on-the-money not to post: "Bush has never understood classical liberalism. He is a conservative, religious statist, who sees himself as the personal guardian of the country. He's Bismarck with a penchant for massive government debt." If only he were as shrewd as Bismarck...

Tsunami Blog

Here's a terrific, all-encompassing tsunami blog.

A Journalist on Fineman on Rathergate

Earlier today, I asked a journalist friend of mine what he thought of the Fineman MSNBC piece that's being punditized all over Blogoland. Though the following email exchange was not an interview, I've presented it in that fashion for context and ease of reading (and no, the irony of a non-journalist seemingly doing "journalism" has not been lost on me):

Me: "Have you read Fineman's piece on the MSNBC site?"

J: "Nah, hadn't, but that seems a touch contrived to me. That process has been churning along for years, way before this CBS thing. Actually, I think the moment the national media (talking specifically about the big networks and national political correspondents, who Fineman's talking about but which actually constitute a pretty slim, albeit prominent, segment of the media) jumped the shark in '87 with the Gary Hart story. I think that's the moment when the national media began concentrating more on scandal-sheet shit than substance, and I don't think it's recovered since.

"And besides, not that CBS is innocent, but given the amount of disinformation and outright bullshit that passes for 'news' on FOX and MSNBC on a daily and nightly fucking basis, this 'Rathergate' nonsense is, at most, a low-grade felony. Of course, it seems a propitious time for the clever pundits to chuck clods of dirt on the Mainstream Media. But personally, I think the failure of the networks and correspondents to hold the administration's feet to the fire on the justification for war (especially given that today, the White House has finally conceded that, no, they never found any WMD in Iraq) is the REAL gobsmacking fuckup that should make all of us hang our heads in shame. I suspect that may explain, too, some of the glee with which everyone's dumping on Rather.

"'Course, that's just me. I didn't mean to vent so. I guess it just needed to come out. Believe me, on balance, I'm just as cynical about the media as anyone."

Me: "No, the venting's appreciated. My biggest beef is what Fox viewers seemed blind (or inured) to: holding the Administration's feet to the fire. They pretty much failed with Clinton, too. What I want to see much more of--and what I saw late in the presidential race--is fact-checking. Not taking the Administration's word for anything. I wish there was more of that across the board. I'm talking about national, not local, news, but I don't see what [sic] the same principle wouldn't apply there too."

J: "But here's another problem, even though I appreciated the post-debate fact-checking by the networks: They were missing perspective. There's a James Carville line in The War Room that sums it up: He's on the phone with some reporter, and he's complaining about that very thing, saying something like, "We call $1 million $1.2 million, they call $1 million $78 trillion, and you guys say, 'Well, they're both fudging numbers!' Sorry, it ain't even close. The fact-checking I saw compared, say, Kerry's claim of $200 billion (or whatever the figure is) spent in Iraq -- when that's only a projection of what might eventually be spent -- to massive Bush whopper after massive Bush whopper as if they were equivalent. That's just as misleading in its own way.

"Also, at this point, with God only knows how many FOX-watching Americans believing that propaganda designed to reinforce their own prejudices is what constitutes 'news' -- how can actual news compete? And that applies to left and right, although for my money it's way worse on the right ..."

Intent and Capability

You've no doubt heard that the White House has officially called off the search for WMD in Iraq, saying that Saddam "retained the intent and capability to produce" such weapons. Like Iran, North Korea and Pakistan? As Cartman would say, "Weak."

America: the No-Longer-Banned Book

As you probably heard, the Mississippi Jackson-George [counties] Library System’s board of trustees banned America: the Book. After a barrage of criticism, they reversed the ban. I discovered this, unfortunately, after spending half an hour searching the Jackson-George Regional Library System’s collection for non-banned offensive material. Yes, now it’s moot, but here’s what I found:

• Anaïs nin: a Biography
• Delta of Venus
• The Diary of Anaïs Nin
• Henry and June: From The Unexpurgated Diary Of Anaïs Nin
• Sade: a Biography (no de Sade, though)
• Collected Writings / Thomas Paine
• Pryor Convictions, and Other Life Sentences / Richard Pryor with Todd Gold
• Rock With Barney [Videorecording] Protect Our Earth (clearly the most offensive item in the collection)
• Rock This! / Chris Rock

Water for Life

Beleaguered NGO officials often mention in weary tones that whatever problem they’re tackling claims as many lives over time as a disaster does all at once. The lack of fresh water is one of those problems. On NPR’s Day to Day yesterday, a representative of the NGO Water for Life dramatized the situation this way: If you crashed 20 jumbo jets full of children into a mountainside each day, that would be how many children die daily from diseases resulting from a lack of fresh water. Now I don’t have a soft spot for children, but the majority of Americans seem to, so I figure it’s good marketing. If you’re itching for a good cause, this qualifies (I hear they help adults, too).

Sodomy is Destiny

Since we're (I'm) on the subject of liturgy, here's a possible liturgical object given to my girlfriend and me by a lesbian friend of ours to celebrate our living in sin:



When open, the egg looks like this:



For those who, like me, have lost their glasses, the pink paper inside the egg says, "Sodomy is destiny."

For comparison purposes, see the Ramey memo.

A New Liturgy

This comment’s put me in a liturgical mood. Luckily, my girlfriend got a yen for Ben and Jerry’s; when she brought some New York Super Fudge Chunk home from the store and tasted it, she held the pint aloft and intoned: “Fuck me now, hard and sideways, from the back and up the ass.” (For the hard up, let me clarify: it's an expression of joy, not a directive or an imperative.) I think we could base a liturgy on that. Any ideas for other verses, let me know.

Darwin Beneath the Cedars

Believe it or not, somebody actually commented on one of the posts below. Too bad they commented at Irate Savant instead of here, but who am I to complain?

Scott Ritter on Zarqawi

The contention that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is a myth isn't new. But former weapons inspector Scott Ritter has an interesting take on it, complete with alleged contacts. Yes, the publisher is Al Jazeera, but it's still a piece by Scott Ritter; given his experience in Iraq, he's worth hearing out.

True to form, the same issue contains an argument that Saddam never gassed the Kurds. Yeah, right. Maybe Pravda will cover that next: the Kurds disappeared into the Hollow Earth.

Senate List

If you have a hankerin' to tell your senator or senatrix that you don't (or, god forbid, do) want Alberto Gonzales to be confirmed, here's a contact list.

Pravda Gone Wild

And speaking of Pravda: I’ve never been an avid reader, but would someone mind telling me what’s going on? I was under the impression that while Pravda used to be an organ of state propaganda, it at least used to focus on (albeit heavily spun) news. Now Pravda’s more like a combination of the Fox News Channel and The Weekly World News. For sheer wackiness (with high entertainment value), check out the following stories:

• Stigmata
• Time is Reversible
• Atlantis
• and Earth Hollow: Aliens Live Underground

At least one story helps explain how pro-Western voters in Ukraine could've won the recent election. According to Yuri Malin, a former KGB officer, "Americans have reportedly created radiators of modulated signals, which control people's behavior. One should say that the control can be conducted thousands of kilometers from afar. It is not ruled out that such technologies were used during the presidential election in Ukraine."

Now, as before, "Truth" really equals fiction.

Next: Bat Boy....

Ukraine: Yanukovych resigns

More good news from Ukraine: Kuchma dismisses cabinet and accepts Yanukovych’s resignation. Even Pravda’s forced to report it.

A Tortured Reading of the Geneva Convention

In honor of the start of confirmation hearings for the Bush butt puppet who formulated the "forward leaning" policies that led to the systematic use of torture in our Middle East outposts, here are some "quaint" Geneva Convention texts.

Gonzales disagrees, of course. As the BBC reports, "The Texan judge defended a robust US policy on terror suspects, but denied that it was responsible for the Abu Ghraib scandal, which he said was 'simply people who were morally bankrupt having fun, and I condemn that totally.'" What a relief. I'm sure all those America-hating Muslims are eating their words now. Ironic: We're trying to look good (and yes, we are doing good) by helping tsunami survivors in SE Asia while implicitly affirming our egregious treatment of (mostly innocent) Muslim prisoners. But that's no surprise. Bush made it clear he wants Rummy to stick around, and besides, the US has its decades-long practice of mind-bending self-contradiction to uphold.

Everything Happens for a Reason

Click here for more recent posts.

Like everyone, I'm stunned and horrified at the tragedy in Southeast Asia. For all those who would pray for the survivors, don't bother; give money instead (thanks for the link, Irate Savant). But if you can't be dissuaded, at least do us this favor:

Don't thank God for sparing the survivors. Don't thank God for sparing you or your friends or loved ones who were vacationing in Sri Lanka just before Christmas. Don't say what a blessing or miracle it is that the little sobbing orphan on TV survived, clinging to a plastic chair and keeping his head above water so he could breathe until rescuers found him. Please, please say none of that.

Not long ago, my father had surgery for esophageal cancer. He's doing well now. While I was home to see him in the hospital, my stepmother talked with the occasional cashier about what had happened to my father and how he was doing. The cashiers would all say the same thing: "That is such a blessing that they caught it early. Everything happens for a reason." My stepmother returned the sentiment.

What I told her then and what this tragedy brings to mind now is this. If you're going to thank God for saving people—especially while saying that God saved them for a reason—you have to acknowledge that he killed everyone else for different reasons. You can't give God credit for doing good while giving him a pass on doing evil. Unless your god is limited (or limits the scope of his actions) and nature runs its course independent of him.

No, the survivors were just lucky. Just like my father and the little sobbing orphan and your friends or loved ones who were vacationing in Sri Lanka just before Christmas. Just like all of us who weren't in Southeast Asia for that tragic event.

Womberrific

This piece by MK Carroll is an, er, intriguing use of yarn. "Human anatomy is pretty amazing," she says, "but not always pretty. My interest in anatomy coupled with the Blythe dolls phenomenon somehow combined in my imagination to produce a cute, cuddly uterus doll." I can feel all sorts of knitting possibilities gestating...

Festivus Hath Come!

If you're a veritable Scrooge and prefer celebrating Festivus, here's a site for guidance: http://www.kwillis.com/festivus.html.

Happy Christmahanzakwanzakah to you!

Keep Saturn in Saturnalia

The same friend of mine who sent me the abysmal poem below also sent me an invitation to celebrate Baby Jesus' birthday this coming Saturday. Plastered across the top of the message was the entreaty: "LET'S NOT FORGET THE REAL MEANING OF CHRISTMAS!"

I couldn't agree more. But just what is "the real meaning of Christmas"?

It might have something to do with today, the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year. After this, the days get longer, until we hit the Summer Solstice and they start getting shorter again. We no longer celebrate the summer and winter solstices or the spring and fall equinoxes. But our ancestors did. For millenia, people used the apparent turning of objects in the sky as a calendar for marking times to reap and sow, even attributing personal characteristics to some of the objects that moved overhead. Two of the most popular were the moon and the sun, each of which describes its own cycle in relation to the earth and Milky Way.

Another popular one was the planet Saturn. In Roman mythology, Saturn was a great agricultural god related to or perhaps derived from the Semitic god Kronos. He used to have a holiday around this time of year, celebrated throughout the Mediterranean, called Saturnalia, which this year comes on Saturn-day. It involved all sorts of familiar fun activities: eating, drinking, gift-giving, fucking. Lots of parties. Slaves got to boss their masters around, and a fool, the Lord of Mis-rule, was appointed to run things for a week. At the same time, Mithraists would sacrifice a bull to appease the sun god Mithra (sacrificial animals were often identified with their respective gods, like the "Lamb of God," Mithra, or Jesus) and bring in the new year in the form of a new-born baby who came forth from a cave.

It's no shocker that the Catholic (read non-Gnostic, non-heretical) Christians moved the celebration of the sun's rebirth—or the rebirth, or birth, of the god Jesus—to the 25th of the year. But long before Santa arrived they forgot about the holiday's connection to the heavens. They'd misplaced Christ in Christmas.

Which is not to suggest that Christ ever had a place in Christmas or that Christmas ever meant anything in particular. Christ, the sun, is born every year at this time, which you can take literally or metaphorically. One thing we can agree on: While there may be no place for the "meaning" of Christmas, we can say that until recently it had little to do with either shopping or corporate banking credit. So very well, deride shopping if you like; few of us will quarrel with you. Most of us are sick of Bing's crooning from Halloween on. But remember that if the meaning of the holyday has anything to do with some New Testament nonsense—even if that's just a metaphorical promise of Spring—it's a recent addition. Keep Christ in Christmas? Nigga, please; Jesus is an interloper. I'd rather put Saturn back in Saturnalia.

We Put the Christ in Christmas

An old college friend of mine sent me this alleged parody of The Night Before Christmas approx. the length of Ted Bundy’s confession. Some highlights:

'T'was the night before Christmas
and all through the town
Not a sign of Baby Jesus
was anywhere to be found.

The people were all busy
with Christmastime chores
Like decorating, and baking,
and shopping in stores.

No one sang "Away in a manger,
no crib for a bed."
Instead, they sang of Santa
dressed-up in bright red.
…

And, as they made their way home
From their trip to the mall,
Did they think about Jesus?
Oh, no, not at all.
…

On Wal-mart! On K-mart!
On Target! On Penney's!
On Hallmark! On Zales!
A quick lunch at Denny's.
…

Christ's eyes... how they twinkle!
Christ's Spirit... how merry!
Christ's love... how enormous!
All our burdens... He'll carry!
…

So instead of being busy,
overworked, and uptight
Let's put Christ back in
Christmas and enjoy
some good nights!


More on this later...

Ukraine metablog

Here's a list of blogs covering what's going on in Ukraine.

Ukraine

If you want to understand what's going on in Ukraine, here's a blog from Kiev. Good background on the situation, too, that you don't get much of in the US. For pics, go here. Oh, and the Russians might be coming...

Election Suicide

Now here's someone who knows how to use suicide to make a statement. Pathetic, yes. Bombastic, yes. And it's a total waste. But it's still a kind of performance art.

Finally, a Nice Bed of Nails to Lie on

The dominatrix down the block moved to L.A. last week, to further her career in the pain-inflicting arts. The week before she moved, she started leaving decor and pieces of furniture on the sidewalk for us poor, misfortunate bastards to cart away. My girlfriend and I stopped by to check out the inventory. Although we were disappointed in the quality of the rugs she'd left, my girlfriend expressed a great deal of interest in the bed of nails resting by the front door. It was about 3'x3' and made of thick, rough plywood. A wide white cross had been spray-painted on it, with a pale red spot at the end of each arm of the cross. She thought it would look great on her wall. We toyed with the idea of calling or emailing the dominatrix about it, but in the end decided it would be more fun to steal it.

The night we did, my girlfriend's mother was in town and had just taken us to dinner. On the way back to my apartment, she pointed out the bed of nails to her (obviously cool) mother. She was amused. When we got inside, my girlfriend introduced her mother to the dog and the kittens while I went after the bed of nails. When I got to the dominatrix's house, I noticed that my girlfriend had followed me. She and I looked over the fresh loot the dominatrix had put on the sidewalk that evening. In addition to the worn rugs, there were two huge syringes and a wheelchair—a boon.

My girlfriend acting as lookout, I snuck around the side of the porch and lifted the bed of nails over the railing. It was surprisingly heavy. Once I got it back down to my level, near my face, I realized why she'd left it on the porch.

It reeked. Of piss.

But I wasn't about to put it back. So I ran home, my girlfriend running behind me, pushing the wheelchair. It's not easy running while carrying a large, heavy object that you don't want to let slip for fear of impaling yourself. But I managed. When we got home, we showed it to my girlfriend's mother and then put it flat on the porch, behind some plants, so it would neither attract attention nor stink up my living room.

If anyone's interested in purchasing a solid wheelchair at a good price, let me know....

Irate Savant

Irate Savant's blog is, shall we say, well off the beaten path. And since it got mentioned on Vodkapundit, it's seen a spike in traffic. What's surprising isn't the tortured genius that is Irate Savant but the amount of abuse some readers heap upon him...

Fun for foodies!

Now that Regime Change in America has failed, it's time for the fun to begin. I know you're thinking that only Republicans and their labotomized brethren are enjoying themselves right now--and you're right. But O Ye Bitter Partisans, relish the rich meal that is coming: a four (or more) course meal of richest scandal.

1. Soup. Yellowcake: You thought the pilot was good. Well, this season's episodes promise to be better. Coming soon: the continuing investigation into the Plame Affair (sorry, no sex), with the dogs sniffing at Cheney and Feith's doors for leaking to douchebag Novak that Joseph Wilson's wife was a CIA operative.

2. Appetizer. Just around the corner are revelations about the forged Niger documents. Remember those? Saddam? Niger uranium? Sixteen words? Who forged the documents and why? And who's that crazy Italian dude who keeps cropping up (see Talking Points Memo for details)?

3. Entree. From the bowels of Bruckheimer, it's Abu Ghraib II: Guantanamo. Now I'm pre-enraged that it happened at all, that we treated prisoners this way, even if some of them deserved it. But think how disheveled Our Beloved Leader will look after the tropical shitstorm hits. And now that OBL (Our Beloved Leader) has been elected (finally!), one wonders how he'll treat Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Feith. (Care to start a betting pool, anyone?)

4. Dessert. Report on the White House's use of prewar intelligence, witheld until after the election. A delicious variation on creme brulee. Tap the crust on top with your spoon to reach the creamy center.

So while you're fretting about the damage to the national interest, our interests abroad, the military, the environment, ethics, education, the justice system, and reality itself, remember to make reservations for this fine meal served for a short time only at The Second Term.