Brownie: "Bite Me"

While we're busy linking to Raw Story (happens now and then), here's a heads-up on the Playboy interview with Michael Brown. Now we're no fan of Brownie, but we're under the impression that Brownie was the least of the severe problems last August. In light of our previous post about Normie's dad, we can't think of any reason to buy Playboy other than to "read" the Brownie interview, but if you're "moved" to purchase the magazine (available in an expanded online edition!) you'll get to read this memorable line, which took Brownie only one full year to come up with:

Dealing with horses' asses taught me how to deal with the federal government

Oh, yeah, and some other shit happened today, somewhere southeast of Europe. I think some people over there are killing each other or something. Nothing our "federal government" should bother with, though.

Coleman Disturbed by Automotive Shenanigans

In other news, White House shill Norm Coleman's father, was caught screwing in a car near a pizzeria. Coleman did not "condone" his father's behavior and was "deeply disturbed" by what he had "learned." We don't know what kind of crap his father fed the Congresscritter while he was being reared, but I have a slightly different take on the matter: Give pappy a big fat cigar! Pour him some brandy and pat him on the back. Why? Well, first of all, sex is natural, sex is fun. But more than that: The elder Coleman is (ahem) 81! And his automotive partner? 38! How cool is that? Christ, when I'm 81, I hope I'm caught in a car with a filly half my age. That's friggin' inspiring.

NOTE TO COLEMAN'S FATHER: While we applaud your conquest, you might've tried to get a room in the nearby hotel or maybe opted for a parking spot off the beaten path. Ask a local teenager for directions (and maybe some new techniques--and a condom).

Iran: the Next War Is Closer Than You Think (Reprise)

Joshua Kurlantzick called it last April, after Seymour Hersh revealed Rummy's monkey business in Iran. Recently, Raw Story followed up on Hersh and Kurlantzick's revelations about the MEK and covert operations in Iran. Now, Rolling Stone, which along with Mother Jones, GQ, Harper's, Talking Points Memo and Raw Story, routinely shames the national MSM by doing the job most major papers refuse to do, has yet another revelatory report on our war plans for Iran--the next target in a long line of oil-rich targets. (Via Raw Story.)

N.B.: The story isn't just by anybody, it's by James Bamford, the highly connected polymath who revealed the inner workings of the NSA. His last piece for Rolling Stone focused on The Rendon Group, the DC PR outfit contracted to sell you the Iraq War. In living color.

UPDATE: Powerline's "I donated my brain to science but they wouldn't take it" Scott presents Michael Ledeen's rebuttal of James Bamford's article. Never mind that all Ledeen ever does is lie, but he's still covering for his neocon proteges vis-a-vis Joseph Wilson. Note: if you're a Republican and think Joe Wilson lied, just cut your own head off and save the Islamofascists the trouble.

Is It Fascism Yet?

While John Dean's busy warning Americans about the rise of Authoritarianism and creeping fascism, the GOP faithful are busy humming patriotic tunes with their fingers in their ears. Not that they'll pay attention to this (or to anything else resembling reality or fact), but for their benefit, here's a list of 14 indicators of fascism. Guess what? It ain't lookin' good, folks.

UPDATE: Another take on the same theme. The author doesn't think we're "on the verge of becoming a fascist state" but argues it could happen with the right amount of putsch push. (This heat-sensitive frog feels water a bit warmer than that but our tendency to adjust to changing circumstances means there's no telling where, exactly, the boiling point is.)

Huckabuck

And, you know, while we're busy not blogging about politics or New Orleans, we thought it about time to give a local venture a little press (we stress "little," because we get as much traffic as the local antique store on a Monday). There's a kewl new search engine in town--literally--called Huckabuck. Why should you care? What's the skinny? According to its promoter, Paige, whose PR experience we question (see above), asked real nice for us to write about it. (I even offered her a chance to post about it, but she preferred that I do it--and no, they're not paying me or giving me a gift basket or anything.) Huckabuck is so non-non-non-non-non-egregious because it lets you "tune" your search with a cool little equalizer thingee. Meaning that you can emphasize (or de-emphasize) results from six different search engines, including Google and Technorati. So it's a blogger's dream. Can't find what you're looking for? Just re-tune your search. Meta-search-engines have been around for years, but this is the first one that lets you do this. Tres cool.

Kewl Tewl

Here at realitique™, our hard-working volunteer staff likes to take a break now and then from the hustle and bustle of commenting on commentary and reporting the news that other people are reporting to showcase a nifty short film, a funny post or anything else that keeps newsheads sane by distracting them from the evils they witness daily. In that regard, we present a neato new blogging tool that even Red Blogistanis can comprehend. (Sorry, but it's almost impossible to get through an entire one-paragraph post without insulting American righties or their Beloved Leader.) So anyway, here you go: the pop-up politician.

An Explanation

Longtime (sometime) reader PDS commented on the previous post as follows:

Rob: I am most curious as to what swayed you to believe 9/11 was perpetrated by our executive branch and intelligence services, per your post a few days ago. I ask this literally, not rhetorically.

If your premise is true, do you not find it ironic to be making predictions about "Democrats" taking back the House, etc.? Do you really think a government responsible for 9/11 will simply resign itself to the viscissitudes of an election, or that merely electing a handful more Democrats will do the trick?

I really must add one last comment and suggestion, which I will make because (I am hoping) there must be some kind of blogging leeway accorded to the person who made the first comment ever on your blog: Since you began this project, I have seen you go from agnostic to atheist and now from a professed "independent" to enthuisiastic use of the word "we" in a number of recent posts, which I take to mean Democrats. I must say I am almost more startled by the latter change than the former.

If you having any interest in taking requests from long time readers, it would be interesting to see a post or two explaining your evolution along these lines some time.

PDS:

While I appreciate most comments, I appreciate thoughtful ones most. I'm not sure you were the first to comment on my blog--that may have been Lein or my ex-girlfriend Amanda (yes, ladies, I'm available)--but you were were one of the earliest, and like Gnat, you've always been cordial or at least reasonably polite. Maybe it's my Southern upbringing, but that means a lot to me and is why I've berated one or two (ahem) readers for bad manners.

1. What swayed me about 9/11? The evidence. I came out of the 9/11 closet near the beginning of the year--and posted about it. Since then, I've posted numerous times about the administration's complicity in 9/11. If you want the quick-and-dirty version, watch Loose Change, 2nd Edition, or Steven Jones' presentation on the use of high-explosives in the WTC. If you want the most damnable reportorial evidence, read The War on Truth (which I've mentioned a couple of times on the blog). If you're too busy with all that (which I wouldn't doubt, given your job and child), just tell me where I can find the Boeing in front of the Pentagon. That's all. Just show me physical evidence of a jetliner. Don't worry, the Pentagon has yet to produce a single frame of footage showing anything resembling that.

To spur your curiosity, let me offer a few topics for your investigation:

a. Pakistan's ISI (intelligence services) were more or less built by the CIA. The ISI, in turn, created the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Do you find it odd that the head of those services not only paid Mohammed Atta through a cutout (Omar Sayeed Sheik) but also met with Tenet, Powell, Armitage, Rice, Goss and others right before and after 9/11?

b. View the photographs from Shanksbury. Then show my any physical evidence of a crashed jetliner there. Debris was scattered for miles. According to my knowledge of fifth-grade physics, that's not possible unless the plane blew apart in midair--say, as the result of a missle strike.

c. Please explain how the first three steel-framed buildings in history to collapse from fire did so, all on the same day. Remember, all three buildings were structurally redundant, had survived intense fire before and were barely smoking right before they collapsed. Again, physics is not on the government's side here. You don't have to look to kooks for evidence; physicists, fire experts and demolitions experts say that too.

d. Please account for the report of French intelligence officials that a CIA Middle-East station chief met with Bin Laden in a Dubai hospital two months before 9/11. I think, but can't remember for sure, that this was the same station chief that granted visas (over objections) to most of the alleged hijackers.

e. Please explain why the Rowley memo as well as the warnings from Israeli and Russian intelligence regarding 9/11 were ignored.

f. Please explain why 5 separate military/police exercises, some of which involved hijacking planes, were being held the morning of 9/11.

g. Please explain why the remaining 8 fighters available on 9/11 to defend American airspace were sent away from the jetliners, whose locations were known.

h. Please explain why the entire war on terror precisely matches the plans for the second rendition of The Great Game as outlined in Zbigniew Brzezinski's book and as echoed by Wolfowitz in PNAC's defining document "Rebuilding America's Defenses."

i. Please explain why we used Al Qaeda to help destabilize Bosnia (after using them to do the same to Afghanistan, which according to conservatron "logic" makes Carter the winner of the Cold War) and paid, via Zawahiri, $50M to not attack our forces there, but did not make a similar deal for them not to attack us elsewhere.

j. Please explain why at Tora Bora we didn't surround Al Qaeda but instead left a wide opening for them to flee to Pakistan through.

k. Please explain why a highly irregular number of put options were put on United and American airlines shortly before 9/11. Also explain the coincidence that a high-ranking CIA official was a former head of the bank the options were bought through.

l. Please explain why president Bush waited for a while after Andrew Card told him that the U.S. was "under attack." Explain also why Bush was reading at a school after he was told that an airliner had hit the WTC.

m. Please explain the coincidence that WTC 7 was brought down, even though its fires were minimal, especially considering that one or two floors had been hardened for use by Giuliani's EOC. Explain also why the CIA and other gov't agencies were using the building. And explain what happened to the billions of dollars in gold stored beneath the WTC.

n. Explain why the Joint Chiefs of Staff cancelled flights the day before (or close to it) 9/11.

o. Explain why John Ashcroft stopped flying on commercial planes the summer before 9/11.

p. Explain why, under Bush, Reich Marshall Rumsfeld was designated as the sole arbiter of military flights intercepting civilian jets.

q. Explain Operation North Woods.

r. Explain why we evacuated a number of Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters "by accident" at Tora Bora.

s. Explain why president Eisenhower thought the USSR wasn't much of a threat and why he stridently warned the populace against the military-industrial complex.

t. Explain why we fought in Vietnam and why we conquered Hawaii, the Phillippines and Cuba, why we forced China and Japan to trade with us and why we started a war with Mexico.

u. Explain the 40+ interventions we started and/or funded after WWII, all under the pretext of the Cold War, which nearly no one in a position of power believed was real.

v. Explain why we offered the Taliban either a "carpet of gold" or a "carpet of bombs...before the snows fall in October" shortly before 9/11, why we had a plan for war with Afghanistan, according to Brzezinski's geostrategy, and why we attacked that nation in October, 2001.

w. Explain why several hijackers were quartered near US military bases.

x. Explain why a significant number of the alleged hijackers are still alive.

y. Explain why we invaded Iraq over WMD, given that we sold Saddam the precursors for that WMD and turned a blind eye as he slaughtered his own subjects and thousands of Iranians.

z. Explain why we bombed Afghanistan after the Taliban told us they'd hand over Bin Laden for house arrest and an international criminal tribunal.

For fun, look into why a former member of the UK Parliament and the former head of German intelligence both think, along with 100+ US scholars, that 9/11 was an inside job.

3. Your second paragraph contains by far the most penetrating question you've ever asked me, the equal of which probably no reader has asked. As you may have guessed, I can't answer it, except to say, all I have left is hope. If "we" lose in November, I may well flee the country ahead of the totalitarian state you refuse to see coming (why the denial, PDS?).

4. The last two presidential elections were almost certainly stolen. The evidence is overwhelming, if you choose to look at it. So no, I'm not so confident in 2006 or 2008.

5. I haven't changed a whit since you started reading, except that I've become massively more informed. For years, I have technically been an agnostic. I still am. But I live as an atheist. I do not understand why people have a problem with this. Unlike Bush, I do not flip flop. I know what I think and why (he doesn't even think). I have no reason to believe there is a god; if there is one, he is nothing like the god most religions describe; that's what evidence and logic indicates. Since I can't prove a negative, I can't say for certain that there is no god. Therefore, I am an agnostic. But I live without doubt, when it comes to the divine. I live without guilt or morality--though not without empathy, which the GOP rejects. I don't think there's a god. If there is a god, I don't care and reserve a small bit of contempt for him--whatever's left over from what I feel for most Republican congressmen, the Bush family, Reagan and Ayn Rand. As I wrote in one of my unpublished novels, "If god wasn't dead, he should be executed."

So, no, you haven't seen anything except a greater willingness for me to forthrightly state what I think.

6. Yes, I am independent. That hasn't changed. Most progressives would say the same. But as our corrupt system of government makes it all but impossible to have a third party, I vote for Democrats. I hope never to vote for a Republican again. They disgust me beyond description. Unfortunately, I live in Louisiana, so it's in our interest to vote for slimy, scum-sucking conservatives. Until those despicable asswipes are kicked out of orifice, we have no choice. Happily, most New Orleanians, including conservatives, hate Republicans as much, if not more, than I do. I wonder why.

Death from Above

Our nonexistent national news media loves to whip up patriotic fervor by showing green-screen smart-bomb attacks on targets but never shows the effects of those attacks. During the first Gulf War, for example, Americans weren't shown the highway of death, a miles-long stretch of highway which we bombed, slaughtering possibly thousands of fleeing Iraqis, leaving a trail of charred corpses pointing at Baghdad. To get an inkling of its horror, you had to watch last year's Jarhead. But thanks to Link TV, now you can see what's actually happening on the ground in Lebanon as Israel indiscriminately massacres civilians (we do the same in Iraq daily). You need to signup with YouTube to watch it--it's quick and easy--but if you don't like that, try bugmenot.com. And what are we doing about the bloodshed? Nothing. Kinda reminds you of last August, don't it? (Video via Raw Story.)

Make Nice? Yeah, Right

I never thought I'd see an almost 180-degree reversal in the national mood. But it happened months ago and despite the "bounce" that so many Washington media whores keep seeing in Bush™'s poll numbers, such a bounce exists as much as support for the Iraq War among our generals. As we approach the upcoming Lieberman-Lamont fisticuffs in Connecticut, the Democratic and media establishments in Washington are beyond anxious; they're hysterical. Even Rush Limbaugh is worried. Meanwhile, a few Democratic politicians seemed to've noticed that, you know, Blue Blogistan is way ahead of the curve on this one. Our mood is the nation's mood: anti-Bush and anti-GOP. Anti-authoritarian. While Establishment consultants fret over Democrats being anti-Iraq-War and pro-sanity, the rest of the electorate is feeling at peace with themselves over how they're about to vote. We ain't ready to make nice. Far from it. And make no mistake about it, though Republican gerrymandering may thwart a number of easily won races against the GOP, at worst at least one house of Congress is going to topple--or at worst be too close for the K Street Patronage Machine to ram through every last piece of corrupt legislution that Bush™ wants. Lamont is about to kick Lieberman's whiny bitch ass. And come November, we're gonna clean the floor with the rest of the appeasers in the House. And no consultant's cozy job in DC will be safe....

UPDATE: Nitwit Assrocket weighs in on Blue Blogistan's "crusade" against Lieberman: "Today's liberal movement is more about anger and hate than it is about policy, and Lieberman just doesn't fit in, no matter how he votes."

This from a man who thinks Il Duce is an undiscovered genius.

Bloodbath

Let's be clear. Iraq is not teetering, it is not on the verge, it is not on the brink, it is not descending (unless by that you mean further). There is no longer any debate here. Iraq has plunged headlong into the abyss of civil war. Not that anyone in Washington, including our execrable national media, has noticed. No, it's all Palestine all the time, with bloodthirsty autocrats like Bill Kristol and friends calling for "escalation." To what point, Mr. Kristol, should we "escalate"? The escalator here is going one way: down. It's long past time we got off.

Unless, of course, you and your puppet boy king started all of this in September, 2001. Then, at least, we know you meant the world to go this way all along.

Yes, Bush was right when he spoke of a "grave and gathering threat." He just got the country wrong. As the rest of the world knows, the United States of America is the greatest threat to world peace. It is impossible to overstate the case.

UPDATE: Lookee here, somebody agrees with me (incidentally, my opinion's based on the extensive work of academic types who developed a thorough, statistical taxonomy of civil war, much of which, I think, this author relied on).

Media? What Media?

Friends, not only is our national "media" not liberal, it's nonexistent. Witness their latest non-coverage of a now-infamous event, covered not because it happened (and maybe it's not all that newsworthy) but because blogs covered it. That's right. Assuming it wasn't much of a story in the first place, why noting that other people were noting its occurrance as actually increasing its newsworthiness is as absurd as the event itself. Yes, I am referring to the Bush backrub*.

The Carbetbagger Report gives the gory details.

*His good-ole-boy indiscretion may be the least indiscrete, offensive act of his entire career. On a sliding scale from backrub to slaughter, that's not bad.

More on our nauseating non-media later.

Marshall Whittman Takes the Bus to Crazy Town

I stopped reading the allegedly progressive Whittman a while ago, when he started spouting DC conventional wisdom. In other words, Liebermanesque war-mongering and Bush™ fellating: exactly the opposite of what every poll for months has shown the majority of Americans want. Well, he's at it again, foaming at the mouth over the "soul of the Democratic Party," which is under assault from enraged leftists who repeatedly, calmly mention that Iraq is in a civil war and we need to get the hell out. Yes, these enraged lefty bloggers are taking the Donkey down the path to perdition. Not only that, we lefties are "Swift-Boating" Joe in a "vile...disinformation campaign." A few lowlights:

Truth will not deter the left wing practitioners of swiftboating. Just as their right wing brethren sought to make a coward out of a war hero, the left wingers seek to make a right winger out of a long-standing liberal.
...
It is fashionable among Democratic pundits and politicians to express contrition about their support for the war and beg for forgiveness from the lefties. Joe's great "sin" is that he stands by his original position and expresses optimism about America's eventual success in Iraq. However, it is far more popular and acceptable in the Democratic Party to express defeatism and doom. And this is the party that the American people will trust with their security?

And here is a message for those moderates who are refusing to vigorously support Joe - they are coming after you next. Limousine Liberal Lamont is merely a tool for the nutroots to help achieve their ultimate objective. The goal of the activists and the celebrated nutroots is to move the party to the left on critical issues such as national security and trade. And the ultimate result will be that Democrats will only be able to visit the White House on a tourist pass.

Note to Marshall: The president who Joe's rimming barely has a 30% approval rating. Add Whittman to the long list of Red Blogistanis whose every utterance is exactly the opposite of the truth. Sadly, such Blogistanis are too dim-witted to even notice.

Read Whittman's entire witless ravings here.

Monstrosities

The English language has no adequate words to describe acts such as this. Unfortunately, our nation is being run by people who condone, even sanction, actions such as this. Want to know how our intelligence-security services and Executive branch perpetrated 9/11, slaughtering 3000 of our innocent citizens? Want to know how Israel can murder hundreds of innocent Lebanese? Want to know how Hitler and Stalin could exterminate millions? Read John Dean's latest book. Or, for the quick-and-dirty version, read Arthur Silber.

I'm sure the lonely, wandering conservatron will think I'm exaggerating. Again, unfortunately, I am not.

The Shame of It

As Sylvester the cat's son said. While Bush™'s assumption of (largely unexercised) dictatorial powers are disturbing enough, what's merely embarrassing is that, unlike the suave, educated proto-dictator Putin, Our Leader can't put a sentence together. He makes the United States look like a goddamned backwater. I guess that's what we get for loving anti-intellectuals and what the Bush crime family gets for raising that fucktard in a house devoid of books.

Say, is there anyone in Europe we could pay assloads of money to keep that stupid rat bastard of ours? I hear we have a few CIA "camps" he could attend....

Welcome to the Armaggedonalypse

Or the Apocaggedon. Or something. Anyway, wingnuts are more prone to hyperbole than their (non-ignorant) counterparts on the left. (Examples: Ken Lay compared to the crucified Christ, Rick "See the Fetus" Santorum comparing pro-filibuster Democrats to Nazis, some TNR hack calling lefty bloggers "blogofascists.") Still, even after John Gibson announced the War on Christmas, Newt and friends' recent announcement of WWIII or IV takes us beyond the rhetorical pale of the pale they formerly took us beyond. While the technique itself is not surprising, the announcement, per usual, took us off guard. And per usual, they're whipping up their authoritarian base. The rest of us could laugh if we weren't so busy crying over the armed madhouse this country has become*.

As if it weren't as obvious as Bush™'s lies, this is yet another brazen Orwellian attempt to frame the discourse in an insane fashion before an impending election. And this time, the GOP's collective back is to the wall; so who knows what crazy Rovian shit they have planned.

This conflagration in the Middle East, however, is far, far from being a world war, though it could turn into one. It is three separate but loosely connected conflicts, not one of which has much to do with terrorism--unless you mean Israeli and American terrorism against the populations of Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Gaza. But that's par for the course. While Israel's reaction to Hizbollah is inexcusably extreme and targets the very people who did nothing against them, we follow suit in other parts of the Middle East. At the same time, Hizbollah just makes everything worse by provoking via violent extremism the last nation on earth that needs provoking to do something violent and extreme.

And what is Il Duce doing about it? Trying to give Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel a friggin back rub.

Maybe that's because Our Beloved Leader doesn't know what the fuck is going on.

*Get Greg Palast's new book, Armed Madhouse, here. No, I don't get a cut.

Dr. Miracles

An excellent, funny short film.

William Kristol Takes the Bus to Crazy Town

I used to think neocon high priest Bill Kristol was one of the marginally sane practitioners of realpolitik (albeit a 9/11 co-conspirator and mass-murderer) but clearly that's not the case. He's bugshit crazy.

UPDATE: As usual, Tom Tomorrow predicted this in his quickly-becoming-reportage-rather-than-satire comic strip.

Clinton Got a Blowjob

Hilarious.

Israel: WTF!?

Not that Israel is known for "restraint" or, you know, general decency, but their latest response to Hezbollah has been a bit, um, over-the-top. Kidnap two of our soldiers? Why, we'll bomb civilian neighborhoods! If you've been wondering what the fuck is up with the little nation that could, Steve Clemons has a hypothesis that experts agree with and that no one is reporting on.

Fight or Flight

I hate to be alarmist or dreary or apocalyptic, but if we lose in November (that is, if the election is stolen yet again), it would be prudent to leave the country. Maybe nothing will happen around November 2008, but there's a decent chance that we'll see an actual Reichstag fire in this country. Yes, 9/11 and the subsequent anthrax attacks seemed like the Reichstag fire, but technically the next attack would qualify. 9/11 and the anthrax attacks merely set the stage for state control of every citizen's life. Another attack would be perpetrated as an excuse to declare martial law and gain absolute control over the nation.

So: if we lose in November, pack your bags and get the fuck out of Dodge. (If you live in Louisiana, you already have your bags packed and know what it's like to look at all your belongings with pathos and imagine that none of them will be there when you return.) If that doesn't work, then it's time for alternative solutions. One of these is a velvet revolution, where millions of American's mass in the streets and demand change. The other? Severe but necessary. I won't clarify what I mean, but midwestern militias will understand. It will be time for more radical solutions to the problem of governmental oppression. Either way, you'll need a coleman stove, lots of batteries, flashlights, water and canned food. Best also if you purchase a few tools used by hunters and the vice president. You'll be needing them.

And no, I am, most assuredly, not kidding. I'm busy making plans.

Borat

November 3 can't get here soon enough, and I'm not saying that just because of hurricane season.

Stupid Motherfucker of the Day

Blackfive. (Unnamed high-ranking Administration officials tell me that he also wanted to assert that Satan directly hired Joe Wilson and that the sky is green, but I couldn't confirm it.)

Profile in Courage

Okay, maybe a bit high-fallutin' a title, but Keith Olbermann is the only person outside of Comedy Central to host an actual news show. (I'm sure it's been noted many times before, but how sad is it that the only news shows on television are satirical? That's what happens when the MSM is dead and all you have left is Samizdat.) The unbelievably incompetent NYT (at least they report 10% of the news!) has a profile.

The Situation in Lebanon

Radio god Mike Molloy points to this Lebanese blog for on-the-scene reporting on the Israeli atrocities in Lebanon.

UPDATE: Predictably, Juan Cole has more.

John Madden for Vagicil

Bored as I am? Watch this. (Via The Great Society via Atrios.)

Ted Stevens' Internets

Ted Stevens' crazy rant last week was entertaining enough without commentary. But The Daily Show turned his sparkling turd into bars of gold.

Ivo Errs

I hate to pick on Ivo Daalder, because he's an excellent and sane analyst, but in his criticism today of Bush™'s nonexistent foreign policy, Daalder concluded that

While there has been a shift in foreign policy during Bush's second term (one Jim Lindsay and I wrote about here some 9 months ago), it's not so much a shift from unilateralism to multilateralism as it is a shift from relying on the use of force to doing nothing.
...
It was this combination of unilateralism, preemptive force, and regime change that made Bush's foreign policy revolutionary.

(Emphasis mine.)

I hate to say it, but Daalder is wrong. Far from being "revolutionary," Bush™'s foreign policy has been America's standard practice for nearly two centuries. Almost every war this country has fought, including the Revolutionary War, has flowed from a pretext. Our stated reasons for war are almost always about selling the war to the public. This has held true from as early as the Mexican War onward. Even our involvement in the much-lauded WWII was largely artifice (allowing that the cause was good), owing more to our repeated provocations of Japan than of the actual (anticipated) Pearl Harbor attack.

No, the difference between Bush™'s foreign policy and the policies of previous administrations has nothing to do with the use of "preemptive military force" but instead with brazenness. Bush™ does what the West has always done; he just doesn't care what others think of it and his attempts to cover up his real agenda are so laughable that it's a wonder that by now the GOP hasn't imploded. That they have not owes an America-sized debt to the power and efficiency of the Republican propaganda machine and the suckers who haven't yet caught on to the lie.

Creeping Fascism Quote of the Day

As John Dean notes in his recently released book, Authoritarianism comes naturally to those of a conservative bent and it's almost exclusively found among Republicans, most of whom* love to follow He Who Leads**. (May his sheep multiply and his cattle grow fat on the grass of the field; selah.) If there are any liberal Authoritarians, they're few and well hidden--perhaps because liberalism and Authoritarianism are diametrically opposed. On that note, we present what Steven Bradbury, head of the Justice Department's office of legal counsel, told Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) regarding the Supremes' recent Hamdan decision:

The President is always right.

As Nixon famously declared, "If the president does it, that means that it is not illegal***."

Mmm, yeah.... Fuck that pesky "constitution"....

But the few actual conservatives left in America shouldn't worry, and above all they shouldn't smear the good name of Our Beloved Leader® by describing such actions as "Authoritarian" or "fascistic"--because as everyone knows, fascism requires uniforms. I mean, it's not as if Bush™ is using signing statements to subvert Congress' laws or surveilling everyone's email, phone traffic, medical records, financial transactions or Web-surfing history. Or, for that matter, using fake terror plots and alerts and live terrorists to keep the public in a state of fear.

That's the stuff of fantasy.

*Yes, I know there are some libertarian Bushians, but many of them seem intent on defending everything this Empire Administration does.
**Why do I keep thinking of Voldemort and Sauron?
***A previous version of this post got the quote slightly wrong. Thanks to YouTube, I've corrected it.

Bush Pilot

Brilliant.

Guide to Fascism

In case former readers like PDS still don't understand what fascism is or how to smell it when you run across it in your local grocery store, here's a handy guide. Hey, criticism and insults only matter if they come from the left, not the right. Right?

Adam Corolla to Anne Coulter: Blow

Lest this past week find you short of lefty shadenfreude, here's Adam Corolla (for once) doing a public service. Give him a medal.

Minimalist SciFi Comedy

Approximately four readers know that I have intimate knowledge of minimalist filmmaking, since I have in my possession the 30-min., single-angle, ennui-filled attempt at porn that my aged aunt and uncle recorded a couple of years ago (a few of you have--wince--seen it). Be that as it may, here's a great example of where SciFi might go next: the way of the handheld documentary. Or as Burroughs would put it, "Louder! Funnier!"

Goddamned Liberals

Liberals got women the right to vote. Liberals got African-Americans the right to vote. Liberals created Social Security and lifted millions of elderly people out of poverty. Liberals ended segregation. Liberals passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act. Liberals created Medicare. Liberals passed the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act. What did Conservatives do? They opposed them on every one of those things—every one. So when you try to hurl that label at my feet, ‘Liberal,’ as if it were something to be ashamed of, something dirty, something to run away from, it won’t work, Senator, because I will pick up that label and I will wear it as a badge of honor.

—Matt Santos, The West Wing
(Via Simply Left Behind via C&L.)

Um...Yeah....

So I skipped over the umpteen million humongous stories last weekend to give Pursuit shit, which he's long deserved. In part to bump that post from the top of the page, in part because the headline was too sweet to pass up, here's its replacement: Hasselhoff in Chandalier Accident.

No, for once, I'm not kidding. Reminds me of that Woody Allen line from Zelig where he refers to someone dying in a gardening accident. The original Raw Story headline read "loo chandalier accident" but unfortunately it looks like no loos were involved.

So anyway, Evil Twin Knight Rider was accosted by a light fixture. Go figure.

UPDATE: See comments for Schroeder's info: there may have been a loo involved....

Pursuit of Ignorance

The stupidest shit on the planet. He makes Jeff Goldstein and Assrocket look like sincere, well-read geniuses. (Sorry, but he's too stupid to figure out how to give each post a permalink, so I have to link to his entire blog.)

That said, he appears to be an excellent cook. A pity he strays into other territory of which he knows so little that he's living proof that you can actually know less than nothing.

UPDATE: Lein (formerly known as the Savant--and he really is wise) asked me why I hate Pursuit so much. Well, I don't. It's just that our country has been overtaken by evil, selfish pricks and handed over wholesale to the second generation of robber barons, and it's people like Pursuit--stupid, incurious, insecure, fearful dicks--who are stirring the pot in which we're boiling. (PDS: Did I finally insult him more than 8 times? Are you ever going to call him on his many insults of his betters? Of course not.) Let's be as clear as Coulter: People like Pursuit are traitors. What's pathetic is they don't even know it.

Ann Coulter Must Be Fragged

Last night, my neighbor's dog Harvey emailed me the following:

Ann Coulter must be fragged.

She must be eliminated from this earth.

She is the cause of all evil. She is the cause of all your pain.

The Great Triumverate of Glory--the Ghost of Stalin, Osama Bin Laden, and Harvey Fierstein--will never reign supreme until this vile, subhuman firenewt is
destroyed.

Until she is gone, we will never be able to create the world we yearn for, that world where we indulge in which glorious Communism rules over all, where we
spend our time indulging in the most decadent and promiscuous homosexual carnalities, and then pray to Allah six times daily.

She is preventing this.

She must go away.

A quick demise is too good for her. One must acquire hollow point bullets. Two to the kneecaps. Two to the elbows. (That way, even if we are interrupted, her life will still be constant agony.) The bleeding will need to be stopped, or she will expire too quickly. Then we will apply nails, just as the great Romans did to her precious Nazarene. But we will be more creative. One to each shoulder and hipbone (which will be prominent). Then we will move to the boxcutter, that sacred instrument of our beloved hijackers. We will saw off her ears, her lips, her nose, her hair. Will will cut off her penis. Her shrieks will delight us. But do not harm the eyes--not yet. Now we will finish her. Take your sharpened knife, and cut into her lower abdomen. Do it quickly. Reach in and grab hold of her entrails, pull them out, and show them to her. Then stab her in both eyes. If she lives a moment more, so much the better. Revel in her agony.

When you do this your troubles will go away.

Right now you feel lonely, but afterward you will not.

Right now you despair, but afterward you will not.

You will be a wondrous, Communist Islamic Homosexual, just as you were meant to be.

You will be all-powerful.

You just have to do it.

Frag Ann Coulter.

Frag Ann Coulter.

Frag Ann Coulter.

Do it.

Do it.

DO IT!!!!

A Year without a Fitzaclaus

No Fitzmas. Ever.

But, hey, you know, he could always OD on amphetamenes and drown in the toilet.

Or maybe rat on someone even bigger....

The Hypocrisy of Sean Hannity

One of our mystery reporters (the one who guest-blogged for me last year) asked me to post this for him:

Every time Ann Coulter and her latest cracked jeremiad plays on talk shows, it seems, comes the inevitable attempt by her apologists to draw parallels with someone on the left -- never with examples given. Al Franken, they say, is just as irrational and hateful from the other end of the spectrum, or Michael Moore -- although, to my knowledge, Franken has never openly wished that Timothy McVeigh had bombed Fox News, and Moore has never openly called for the assassination of Pres. Bush.

But, you know, there may well be a Coulter of the Left, and he beat her on criticizing 9-11 widows by about four years. He also said shortly after Pres. Reagan's death that he "ought to be turning crispy brown about now," and that the Army was "looking for a few good homosexual rapists" after Abu Ghraib broke. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Ted Rall.

And the larger point here isn't necessarily that there actually is someone on the liberal side who can be, on occasion, just as vicious and irrational as Coulter. The point here is that you see Rall's work on the web, or in alt-weeklies in places like Berkeley and Madison. You're not seeing Rall on the fucking "Today" show, are you, and he's not #1 on Amazon, is he?

Course not -- although he is, every now and then, on 'Hannity & Colmes,' just like Dreamboat Annie. The treatment each received on the show for saying essentially the same thing -- that certain 9-11 widows are capitalizing on their husbands' deaths -- was, shall we say, just a tad different.

Hannity to Rall, 6/8/04:

You are mean. You are cruel. You are thoughtless, and you are a hateful human being. You don't have a soul. And you don't care about anybody but yourself. And you do this for shock value so that your name could be noticed. You're a slob. You're an absolutely -- you're a hateful human being to do this to families that are suffering. There's no excuse for it. There's no rationale for what you're doing. You're mean, cruel and thoughtless.

Hannity and Coulter, 6/6/06:

HANNITY: I share a lot of your views. But I want you to explain to everybody what is the foundation of Ann Coulter? Because a lot of people, when I mention your name to liberals they melt. You are like Alka-Seltzer in water. They bubble, fizz, give off their energy. You are the anti-Christ to them. Who is--what is the Ann Coulter? Where does your philosophy come from?

COULTER: Well, that's the toughest question I'm probably going to get on the book tour. In as much as I don't like talking about myself, I'm a Christian, and everything comes from being a Christian. Everything I do, I mean, from the interview that Alan was just reading from to Human Events.

I mean, I do think Christianity fuels all of my books, because you are called upon to behave in a certain way as a Christian, and that is to fight lies, injustice, cruelty, hypocrisy. That fuels everything.

HANNITY: All right. And I want to remind people, tomorrow, Book Review in Huntington. We're going to be there together from 2 to 6.

BONUS: Coulter afflicted by rhetorical Tourette's Syndrome.

Zarqawi Killed in Air Strike

About time. And no, we're not "winning" in Iraq, if such a thing could even happen. But no matter what you think of the war or the insurgency, most of which has nothing to do with Zarqawi, this is a good day.

AFTERTHOUGHT: And, well, yeah, it would've helped if we'd killed him in his terrorist training camp in the Kurdish no-fly zone which we controlled when we knew exactly where he was. But then we couldn't've dangled him like a shiny fishing lure in front of rabit Rightists as a manifestly absurd excuse to invade Iraq, now could we? That's okay; it was worth it. Because we're winning in Iraq!

You Could Be Preznit!

I've always wondered what Condi sees in him. (BTW, even if she's a mass-murderer, you just know somebody that pent-up is fantastic in bed. Way to go, George!)

How to Steal a US Presidential Election for the Second Time

Here.

Too bad Hillary and her spineless ilk don't yet get that this country is even less Republican-friendly than in 2000. People like this are in a shrinking minority in this country, let alone the world.

The loser of both the 2000 and 2004 elections, faux-president Bush, didn't get any "capital" from the last election, and yet he spent it, much like he spends the Chinese money that America doesn't have. Now he's flat broke and facing more than two years of pretending to govern. I shudder at the possibilities of what might happen before his term ends.

Evolution Exposed!

Damn it, the Bible was right all along! (PZ Myers via C&L.)

P.S. I'll be voting for the GOP from now on!

No-Shit News Item of the Day

Here. (Via Raw Story.) Still, it's nice to know....

Pat Robertson Takes on Jack La Lanne

Pat Robertson claims to leg-press 1000 lbs. (Thanks, Abbytaylor.)

He's supposedly leg-pressed 2000*.

P.S. 1000, maybe. But 2000? Come on. We're sure it has nothing to do with him pushing his "age-defying" protein shake....

BONUS: Jack La Lanne's site is here.

*Previously, this figure read "20000." That was a typo.

Pentagon "Releases" 9/11 Video

And it tells us nothing new. So no end to speculation that an airliner didn't hit the Pentagon, and even if the video had settled that, no end to the overwhelming reasons to believe that our intelligence-security services were deeply involved in the operation (cached).

God Speaks

His name is Murry Waas.

P.S.: Washington Press Corpse: this is the guy to emulate.

Iran, Plane Crashes

I've been procrastinating about this for a couple of months. Given our rapid movement toward war with Iran, it's hardly germane, but I want to post it before we "do something" about that country. Sad to say, but I'm the only one who (to my knowledge) noticed the following. I'm sure there were plenty who did, in various intelligence circles, but I'm the only one who's bothered to mention it in public [pats self on back].

Early this year, a year after Seymour Hersh reported that the US was messing around in Iran (again) and many months after the unacknowledged Joshua Kurlantzick reported that the US was supporting the now oft-reported crazy MEK in conducting covert operations in Iran, three planes "crashed" in Iran. No big deal. Except that the crashes were timed close together (again, no big deal) and two of them killed a number of the sort of people you'd want to kill if you were aiming to topple the government (okay, well, pretty convenient).

It's late and I have a job, so here's the homework:

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/12/06/tehran.crash/index.html

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/01/09/iran.crash/
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/02/19/world/main541219.shtml

Two of the crashes were within a month of each other, early Jan. 2006 and Dec. 2005. The other one was in 2003. In the most recent two cases, the plane was transporting the "elite" Revolutionary Guard. Given that we're messing around inside Iran with Rummy having a near blank-check to take covert action, this is highly suspicious.

As the CBS piece notes, in the December 2005 crash, "All aboard — 18 crew and 284 passengers — were members of the Revolutionary Guards, an elite group under the direct control of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The guards protect Iran's borders and defend ruling hard-liners in this ultraconservative society." It also notes that several of the victims were "high-ranking officers of the Guard."

That's who we're trying to get rid of--the ruling hard-liners.

In the latest crash, in early February, 11 high-ranking Revolutionary Guard officials were killed. Iran's news service, IRNA, reported that "the guard's Commander of Ground Forces, Ahmad Kazemi, along with the commander of the 27th Rassoulollah Army Division and the chief of intelligence, died in the accident."

The chief of intelligence died. Pretty convenient. Now I don't know what's going on or who did this (it could be coincidence, but it stinks of something else), but I would be amazed if we weren't involved, either directly or through a third party, say, the Iranian crazies that are buddy-buddy with the neocon establishment (you know, the MEK):
http://www.wetdogdesign.net/realitique/iran-kurlantzick.htm.

Put this in the context of the recent reports of serious planning for attacks on Iran and the outed-agent Valerie Plame was working on Iran, and the Plame leak begins to look suspicious (I'm not saying it wasn't more than a political maneuver, which everyone outside of Power Line acknowledges, but there may be something else at work).

Rob

DISCLAIMER: Yes, I think the first, earliest crash was just an accident. It's the latter two that look suspicious. But hearing about the first one raised my suspicions about the ones that followed. As usual, for something this (ahem) important, I get no comments whatsoever.

Data Strip-Mining

Greg Palast, the BBC reporter who proved that the 2000 election was stolen and unearthed not one, but two US plans for Iraqi oil, has the skinny on the latest domestic warrantless wiretapping record-collecting move by the unrepentent monarchists in the White House. Think it's bad? Oh, yes, it's bad. But (as usual) it's much, much worse. Read. Weep.

Georgie McCarthy

Cheap shot or accurate description? You be the judge (via Crooks and Liars).

The (Last) Mayoral Debate

Last night's run-off mayoral debate between candidates Landrieu and Nagin was striking. All of them were, I suppose, since the moderaters routinely asked pointed questions and were clearly engaged in the answers given--unlike, say, Bill Schieffer. But last night, John Snell acted like a wife who'd been cheated on and was addressing her husband who'd just come home to pick up a few things for another night in a hotel. "Did you think about me when you were fucking her? huh?" he may as well have asked. He brought up the past--Nagin's Bring Back New Orleans Commission plan, which he called "pure fantasy," the undisclosed budget and the fiscal health of city hall. And yet, unlike the wife in my example, he was fair. He grilled Landrieu too (but Landrieu isn't running N.O. right now and doesn't have to answer for un-picked-up debris). It was beautiful. Because anyone running for an important office should be grilled. The rest of us are grilled in important job interviews, but politicians rarely are. Dare I hope that one day we could have presidential debates like that?

Lein Shory Irate Savant Leaves the Closet

My friend Lein Shory has been through more than his fair share recently, and unfortunately that means his blog Irate Savant is at an end. We salute it, we'll miss it and we hope to see it in some other form (such as an epistolary novel, say, with pen-and-ink drawings). But to hell with all that. What we care about is Lein's son, Logan, and his health. If you have any spare change, if or when Lein puts up a paypal button, please give the bastard some loot. God knows, he needs it.

P.S. Lein was the best writer in our class at LSU. His blog proves it. I know no publishers or agents read this rag, but in case one shows up, give him a chance, people.

P.P.S. Those readers who remember occasional commenter and blogger LNS should know that LNS was Lein--in his normal, non-fictive voice.

BONUS: Lein's new, non-fiction blog dealing with his current crisis with his son is Ad-Hoc Existence. Unlike friends and cousins, I didn't lose my house in Katrina, but given the state of things in New Orleans, I can't help but relate to Lein's situation. He's going through what New Orleans itself is going through.

SUPER BONUS: Okay, maybe not. But anyway. Lein was a big reason I started this blog. I'd wanted to start one in the winter of 2002 but opted instead for talking to myself about how we needed "regime change" in Washington. I kept reserving my rants for my beleaguered (but otherwise well-treated) girlfriends until Lein gave in and started Irate Savant. That was the kick in the ass I needed. So I started ranting in public. Next I plan to quit my job and start handing out tracts on Bourbon Street.

Hold the Corps Accountable

The Times-Picayune reports (again) that the Corpse of Engineers built New Orleans levees using obsolete data. Where's the prosecution? A few people in that organization need to be tried for negligent homicide, don'tcha think?

NOTE: Since the man who made the disastrous decision is dead, maybe not. But the article doesn't addresses neither the porous-soil issue that was central to the 17th St. breach nor the issues with most of the breaches, which weren't due to overtopping. Using outdated storm data was unconscionable but how that may have affected issues like sheet-pile too short for the soil is a big question. The half-assed guess that the Vicksburg office signed off on was made by someone for some reason. Who? What? I imagine the T-P will tell us eventually.

Why, Thank You

The god I don't believe in knows well how I feel about Red Blogistan, so this doesn't come casually. Captain Ed, of all people, in defending the 101st Fighting Keyboardists, wrote this, perhaps by accident but I assume because he's a nice, gracious dude:

Many on the left disagree, however, and often they provide challenging arguments and valuable perspectives on policy and the manner in which it gets implemented.

Given the severely divided state of the country, sharpened in the Red-Blue Blogistan divide, this is quite an admission. I wish others would admit as much. Kudos to the Kaptain for giving Blue Blogistan a teensy bit of credit. Maybe I'm an asshole, but I can't do the same (no offense to the Kaptain--this is a broader issue). That's not because I don't think most Red Blogistanis are sincere, it's because they're opinions are (mostly) based on falsehoods. If we were all working from the same base of information, this problem wouldn't exist and we could argue about solutions to problems instead of arguing about whether problems exist.

The broader issue is this. It would be wonderful if the country weren't divided. It would be wonderful if there were nothing but raucous debate from varying perspectives on all the issues of the day. But we have no such debate. On TV and even in the papers we have a restricted, narrow range of debate, usually limited to a couple of points of view reduced to a couple of sentences each. This is childish (and probably has a lot to do with the decline of the papers and the ascent of simplicity-prone, image-dependent TV--and I say that as a photographer and ad-agency employee).

To make matters worse, our country's being run by a Party who's wedding to bullshit marketing (read "outright lying") to push their agenda through, because few voters would approve of their agenda if they understood it. Not only that, but their followers have been eating this perfumed horseshit and not questioning it but instead declaring how good it smells and what an ingenious meal they've been served (Zagat rated!).

I used to suspect that the blogosphere was divided by perspective. But after extensive research into various issues (using, oh, I dunno, primary sources), it's pretty clear that one side, though biased in favor of certain policies and behaviors, is familiar with verifiable facts (or at least decent reporting) while the other is mired in bullshit.

It's not a matter of perspective, it's a matter of propaganda. And the propaganda is all on one side.

Snowed In

Jeebus. Next: Fox News announces it's changing its name to "White House Propaganda."

UPDATE: It's Uhfishul.

CIA Blogmining

Recently Schroeder noted that his blog had mysterious readers from Reston. The night I read his post, I noticed I had some too (I've been getting hits from Reston for ages). My "readers" were on an AOL server, so I figured that it was just a crawler, which it probably was. But as Schroeder pointed out, lots of spooky gov't agencies hang out in Reston. So it was with some interest that I read this Washington Times article sent in by a flesh-and-blood reader.

Pulitzers for Journalism

So many reporters do their jobs and get little, if any, recognition. Most, it seems, get lots of complaints about minor errors and no kudos for getting most of their facts straight. Hats off, then, to the New Orleans' Times-Picayune and the Mississippi Gulf Coast's Sun-Herald for kicking proverbial ass during and after that Stalin-inspired storm Katrina ravaged our corner of the coast. Hats off as well to James Risen and Eric Lichtblau for breaking the story of domestic spying, to Dana Priest for his coverage of secret prisons, and to Marcus Stern and Jerry Kammer for uncovering the Dukestir's malfeasance. While it's unfortunate that there wasn't stiffer competition (ahem), these guys deserve free dinners and drinks for eternity. We're some kinda grateful.

Get the skinny here.

Pesky "Leftists"

Joe Klein and Eric Alterman duked it out in the Huffinton Post recently over Klein's breakfast remarks about the "left wing" of the Democratic Party. Klein claims Alterman misrepresented what he said by conflating the terms "liberal" and "left wing" (though how "right wing" could accurately reflect "liberal" positions or how "liberal" isn't "left" he does not say). Klein can nitpick if he wants, but his remarks are still relevant. In his own defense he wrote in the HuffPo that

The default position of leftists like, say, Michael Moore and many writers at The Nation, is that America is essentially a malignant, imperialistic force in the world and the use of American military power is almost always wrong. Liberals have a more benign, and correct, view of America's role in the world and tend to favor the use of military force if it is exercised judiciously, as a last resort, and in a multilateral contect--with U.N. approval or through NATO. The first Gulf War, the overthrow of the Taliban and the Kosovo intervention met these criteria; Bush's Iraq invasion clearly did not.

(Emphasis mine.)

Here, Joe Klein unwittingly reveals his profound ignorance of both history and world journalism from the last few decades. Leaving aside the ethical question of whether intervention is "wrong," America's imperialist interventions are so well documented that it's pathetic that so many Americans (most self-styled "conservatives," say) are unaware of them. If they were aware of what the foreign policy apparatus of our government has done, they would be horrified. Knowing what the US government has done and reacting appropriately to it as humans capable of empathy and regret is distinct from supporting socialist or progressive policies. This is why "left" and "liberal" are non-descriptive, distracting adjectives here. There has always been a tradition in this country of non-intervention in foreign affairs. President George Washington advised against it, and even a pro-assassination president like Eisenhower warned against the corrupting influence of the military-industrial complex. Recently, conservatives like Pat Buchanan and Justin Raimondo of antiwar.com have argued against intervention (Raimondo is pretty hard-line about it).

Shelves of thoroughly researched books that Joe Klein apparently hasn't read have detailed the covert (and overt) actions of the US intelligence-security apparatus in world affairs, and "almost always" these actions weren't "exercised judiciously, as a last resort, [or] in a multilateral contect" (even spell-check would've caught that one, Joe). To note this is not to "hate" America, it is to recognize what's been done in our name and what's led to much of the world "hating" us. It is to insist that instead of following the usual protocols, we should actually do what Klein stupidly thinks we've done. Because if we really had used "military force if it [were] exercised judiciously, as a last resort, and in a multilateral contect," we'd have few problems.

This is not what we have done. As I told one of our mystery reporters last week (at the Mayfair Lounge, no less), Americans live in a bubble. Within the borders of our country, our laws sorta kinda apply (see influence-peddling, elections, etc. for exceptions), while without our borders our government acts like Tony Soprano. This is no exaggeration. It is the truth. But it is not without exception. And this is where it's critical to note that knowing our history and writing about it is not to "hate America" or to be "anti-American." Because Western governments have repeatedly and routinely acted just as the United States has. When the US wasn't preeminent, back in the days of the French and British and German empires, Western colonial powers did exactly what we've been doing since WWII. (Indeed, we did the same things before WWII, but to a smaller extent, because we weren't so powerful and rich. Remember Mexico? Remember the Maine?) I don't doubt most governments throughout history have acted similarly, depending on their ability to do so. The reason America stands out is that it's the lone superpower. Even during the Cold War, the US was stronger and richer than the USSR, and it acted accordingly, viz. for its "interests."

But what are "interests"? Why do governments do these things? Governments--and ours is no exception--always claim that their reasons are noble. They're going to bring freedom, defend the country against a dire threat, civilize the natives--you name the cause, they've made it, always straightfaced and rarely sincerely. The British were going to liberate Iraq. Later, of course, they fought a battle for Fallujah, faced an insurgency and bombed thousands of civilians. Yes, things certainly have changed. In the late 19th century, Western nations invaded Africa and raped it for its resources. What did they tell their people at the time? They were going to "civilize" Africa. Who knew that "civilizing" meant cutting down so many with recently invented Gatling guns? (Pesky darkies!) And does anybody remember the Opium Wars or how we pried open Japan's legs? Our current wars and the reasons for them are no different. Anyone who wants to know what the "war on terror" is about should peruse Zbigniew Brzezinski's book The Grand Chessboard. (Hint: it's not about "terror.") There is one word for why most governments do such dastardly things: power. And in many instances that amounts to trade.

In the case of our "war on terror," America's "interests" are power-based. They have to do with money and influence and with maintaining our preeminence in the world. If we acted "judiciously" in Bosnia because of the Kosovars, why did we make a deal with Al Qaeda there? According to Congressional terrorism expert Yosef Bodansky, American officials promised Al-Zawahiri's brother (or Al-Zawahiri himself) $50 million in exchange for Al Qaeda not attacking us there. We also trained KLA terrorists in the region, even after we supposedly had stopped because of international agreements. This is troubling, to say the least. If we bombed Afghanistan because of 9/11, why were we preparing to do so before 9/11 and why did American officials reportedly threaten the Taliban with a war in October, which is exactly what happened after the WTC and Pentagon were attacked? Oddly enough, an oil pipeline route was at stake; so was influence over Afghanistan and Central Asia (Condi Rice's expertise), the fulcrum of power in Eurasia. But enough of 9/11. There's a long list of covert US action to "hate."

Here's a short list: United Fruit, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, Chile, Argentina, Cuba, Congo, Iran, Egypt, Italy, the Phillippines (Abu Sayyaff? We helped create them). For more, read Killing Hope, The Assassination Business, or the ugliest one of all, The War on Truth. The list is too long for a blog post of any detail. If you're curious, not really busy or not incredibly lazy, then read these books; they'll change your perception of what you're told on TV. Note: Why did Al-Zawahiri pick 9/11? That's when the US-supported Egyptian security forces picked him up and tortured him (he's since deserved it). Go figure.

Some Americans may have asked themselves why prisoners at Abu Ghraib and many other detention facilities, for example, were mistreated tortured. I don't know. But I and many others have repeatedly noted that the methods used were drawn up by the CIA and taught to police forces throughout Central and South America decades ago. The mystery of Abu Ghraib isn't why or how it happened, it's why and how we let it happen repeatedly in the past fifty years. The only difference between then and now is that in Iraq, we weren't using proxies.

Since the grand productive colonial days, Western governments have done no less than what they always have, limited only by an increasingly curious media (until recently) and evolving standards that mitigate against wholesale slaughter. (I don't doubt that non-Western governments do the same or would do so if they were rich and powerful, but I don't know much about them.) So are Brits or French who criticize their governments' foreign maneuvers labelled "anti-British" or "anti-French"? Do they "hate" their countries? I don't know. But presumably they do not. As with US citizens who criticize their government's inhumane foreign actions, I imagine they recognize the distinction between covert action and country. If a wife criticizes her husband, does she hate him? If he punches his friend and she scolds him, is she anathema? No. And those who criticize the abhorrent behavior of our government are no different.

BONUS: Nobody noticed, but in his Klein-critical HuffPo piece, Alterman wrote that he "went to a breakfast this morning sponsored by HBO and the Council on Foreign Relations where Tina Brown interviewed Julia Sweig, author of Friendly Fire: Losing Friends and Making Enemies in the Anti-American Century..." (emphasis mine). Time Warner's HBO and the CFR? How bizarre is that? Is there a precedent?

Negligent Homicide

No, I'm not dead, I just started a new job at a fancy ad agency and don't know what the future of this extremely low-readership blog will be. But anyway, one of the many stories barely reported in this news vacuum known as the Washington Press Corpse is that the Army Corpse of Engineers (no, not all of the engineers, but presumably a few decision makers) is guilty* of negligent homicide. In honor of the news vacuum, which continues to not show the consequences of either Iraq or, god forbid, Katrina, here are a couple of gruesome photos compliments of Robert Lindsay by way of Your Right Hand Thief. (By way of Schroeder.)

BONUS: On a tangential note, Mystery Reporter 1 (2?) and I recently dined at Cooter Brown's for the final Final Four game. Highlight was the Tom Benson sandwich, made of chicken. (For out-of-towners, that's an insult to the owner of the Saints.)

*Not in the court-of-law sense, since they haven't been prosecuted. But the prosecutorial evidence is abundant.

Fear-Mongering with Mushroom Clouds

Booman goes over Murray Waas' must-read National Journal article on the president's knowledge of those notorious high-strength aluminum tubes and what it has to do with the outing of Valerie Plame. Seems the tubes were more important than the Niger forgeries because there was a clear document trail proving that Il Duce knew well and good the evidence was disputed. (Via C&L.)

More Good News for New Orleans

The day after we find out that the Corpse of Engineers underguesstimated flood protection costs by $6B, there's this from the Christian Science Monitor:

Hurricane Katrina's devastating strike on New Orleans last fall highlighted shortcomings in the city's levee system. It also focused attention another long-term problem: The city and the region around it are sinking.

New research suggests, however, that at least for nearby Michoud, La., the dominant driver pulling the region under may not be among the usual suspects: oil extraction, pumping groundwater to the surface, or diverting the Mississippi for navigation.

Instead, the King of Slump may be a deep fault that cuts across southeastern Louisiana and under Michoud. During the 1970s, the fault appears to have contributed from 50 to 73 percent of the subsidence in this section of Orleans parish, depending on the time period measured. If sustained over a century, that would equate to as much as a six-foot sea-level rise, independent of any increase tied to global warming.

The rest here.

Ripping off Blogs Is Apparently Routine

Seems TPMmuckraker's had the same problems as Raw Story.

UPDATE: A little headway.

Where's the Good News?

I am sickened at the MSM's coverage of everything they deem "newsworthy." Not only do they not report the schools being built in Iraq and the stray dogs being adopted into loving homes, but they also neglect good news stories the world over. Here's a provisional list:

Darfur. Yes, yes, people are being killed, starved, driven from their homes, but lots of them are getting fed by the UN. And the Sudanese government, via their terrorist Janjaweed proxies, are clearing land for Arab settlement and thinning the herd of poor, dark-skinned people. C'mon, MSM, do your job!

Belarus. Oh, sure, the media gloms onto the gloom, telling us how the election was stolen, how anti-government campaigners were arrested, how protest is being suppressed. So dreary. As Barbara Bush told Diane Sawyer in an interview on the eve of Iraq's liberation, "Why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?" Where are all the stories of Belarussians picking themselves up by their boot straps and taking positions of authority in the government so they can establish income streams based on their insider position and provide for their families? What about all the good things the government has done, like paying its employees? What about the steadfastness and resolve of Belarus's leader to "stay the course"?

Iran. Our leader, President Bush, has repeatedly stated that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons. But the media just spins that to say that Iran is a threat to the United States. Even the normally calm, thoughtful Neil Cavuto recently said on his Fox News show that we may already be at war with Iran. Aren't two wars enough? Please, MSM, why must you force our beleaguered president into another conflict?

New Orleans. Katrina was last August, and yet the media insists on pushing the meme that the city is in danger from a weakened and underdesigned flood-protection system and that most of its homes are unoccupied. What about the miles of functioning city along the river? That's 20% of the city!

The Next Blog You Should Be Reading

Spectral City.

Assrocket's (not so) Strange Aesthetics

Power Line's Assrocket is promoting the spankin' new blog of long-time reader Dafydd ab Hugh, a Star Trek™ novelist. I love hate to pick, but he and quasi-literate Bush beastie Roger Simon raise significant questions about the connection between intelligence and taste. Adding weight to my unfounded evolving hypothesis that low-wattage Bushbots are aesthetically challenged, Assrocket's comment that Dafydd ab Hugh's new blog, Big Lizards (nice homoerotic imagery there), is "one of the most graphically spectacular...sites on the web." Now, given the source, I took that assertion with a mineful of salt. But never did I imagine that Mr. Assrocket's aesthetics could keep pace with his reasoning skills in their sprint to the bottom. I won't add a screenshot. Go look for yourself.

NYT, Better Late than Never Edition

The New York Times finally gets around to reporting on the latest Downing Street Memo widely reported in the UK several weeks ago. Thank you, NYT, for doing your job. We know you're a bit slow, and in the case of the series of earlier Downing Street memoranda, ahem, extra super duper slow, but thank you just the same. (By the way, you might want to check into whether the World Trade Center was demolished with explosives and whether any of those 19 hijackers are still alive. But we don't want to rush you.)

NOTE: As one of our mystery reporters has often said, it's common for stories to be held, pending confirmation(s), analysis, etc. This may be the reason for the NYT delaying the most recent DSM story. Of course, that's no reason for their dearth of coverage of the slew of memos widely unreported in the US last year.

BONUS: In the NYT story, a NSC spokesbot claims that the misAdministration's public and private comments about the then upcoming sequel Gulf II: Invasion were entirely consistent. Today the Finger Puppet* reinforced the meme. But as anyone who recalls the runup to the war knows, it's total bullshit. As late as March 6, 2003, the president asserted that he hadn't made up his mind yet--a bald-faced lie (as if his sudden love for "regime change" in early 2003 didn't amount to "I really want to invade Iraq").

*Disinformation Secretary Scott McClellan

He's Alive

Always nice to know my cousin in Iraq is alive and in one piece, especially after a suicide-bomber attack:

Just wanted to send out this quick e-mail to calm concerns. Yes, the suicide bomber attack did happen where I'm at, but no Americans were hurt. He did it at the front gate, where we were screening potential new army recruits. Yes, I did know several of the casualties.

The AP Rips off Raw Story

If this isn't a breach of journalistic ethics, I don't know what is. You may have noticed the recent AP article on the changes Stephen Hadley made to guidelines for security clearances. The article came out several days after Raw Story's originally researched one. Turns out that GLBT groups brought Raw Story's article and information to the AP and demanded the story be covered. So they plagiarized Raw Story, attributing nothing to them. Larisa Alexandrovna reveals the AP's mindset:

We contacted an AP senior editor and ombudsmen both and both admitted to having had the article passed on to them, and both stated that they viewed us as a blog and because we were a blog, they did not need to credit us.

Funny, because the Associated Press proclaims on their blog website:

...we insist on the highest standards of integrity and ethical behavior when we gather and deliver the news.
...
It means we don't plagiarize.

Except when they do.

Hypocrites.

NOT EXACTLY UPDATE: I meant to add this at posting time but I was trying to get out the door. Anyway: Is the AP ignorant or just full of shit? Anyone who's perused a handful of blogs can tell that Raw Story is as much of a blog as the New York Times or Salon. That's probably why they have a sub-category on the front page called "blogs." If Raw Story's a blog, then so are Debkafile, Buzzflash, Consortium News and Counter Punch. Would the AP plagiarize their original reporting as well?

UPDATE: Larisa has the latest on the AP's antics.

A Free Press: Who Needs It?

The Associated Press fired a long-time Vermont correspondent. Why?

Emerson Lynn, editor and publisher of The St. Albans Messenger, said one clue to Mr. Graff's departure might have been The A.P.'s having told him this month that it was inappropriate for him to have posted a column by Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, on the wire.

Mr. Lynn said that for the last two years, The A.P. had prepared a package of articles about Sunshine Week, in which media organizations advocate openness in government. Senator Leahy had written a column highly critical of the Bush administration on the matter for the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

The column said, for example, that "the foundations of our open government are under direct assault from the first White House in modern times that is openly hostile to the public's right to know."

On March 8, Mr. Graff posted Mr. Leahy's column on an advance wire that carries material that can be used at a later date. He had attached an editor's note saying Mr. Leahy "was asked by the American Society of Newspaper Editors for his thoughts on the status of the right to know for use in Sunshine Week, organized by media organizations and other groups to combat government secrecy and bring attention to the public's right to know."

The A.P. removed the column from the advance wire within an hour and advised newspapers not to run it.

Mr. Lynn said Mr. Graff called him and told him he had been criticized for posting a column that The A.P. said had compromised the integrity of the wire service.

Mr. Lynn said Mr. Graff was surprised because he had posted a similar column from Senator Leahy last year during Sunshine Week and had not heard any criticism and because Senator Leahy had held a hearing last year on the matter and Walter Mears, a former A.P. executive editor and vice president, had testified.

The article doesn't mention (and I'm not saying it should, though it would've been nice) that this unforgivable act followed a curiously skewed AP story last month that twisted itself in knots trying to tie Abramoff to Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV).

So what's going on with the AP? Scared shitless, apparently, like the Washington Post.

Let's just get this clear: While the United States has a legally free press, overall the press is far from free. We live in a mediasphere that's a new, improved version of China's. The big difference is that the people who run the country discovered long ago that you don't have to deny freedom of speech and freedom of the press to influence the public's perception of reality. That's why most Americans are severely uninformed and a full one third of voters live in an outright fantasy land.

BONUS: Lest I be accused (not that anyone would bother) of being unfair, it's worth noting that the AP also let the famous "straw man" article, which analyzed Bush's addiction to straw man arguments, go on the wire.

Iraq, Read to George Edition

Anyone who works for the president might want to sit him down and read him Juan Cole's latest article in Salon.

Protect Levees with...Wetlands

Just a little dab'll do ya. (Via PGR.)

Saddam's APB for Zarqawi

Remember how Zarqawi's presence in the part of Iraq Saddam didn't control was supposed to "tie" the Baath regime to Al-Qaeda? No, it didn't make any sense to me either, but now we have this: "Iraqi documents collected by US intelligence during the Iraq war and released by the Bush administration...[include] one the administration said showed that Iraqi intelligence officials suspected al Qaida members were inside Iraq in 2002."

Gotcha, lefties! Oh, wait:

However, one of the documents, a letter from an Iraqi intelligence official, dated August 17, 2002, asked agents in the country to be on the lookout for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and another unnamed man whose picture was attached.

We're sure that's because he was late for a meeting with Saddam or something. Maybe, you know, Zarqawi hadn't called recently and Saddam was getting antsy. "Abu...[wringing hands] Where is my Abu...?"

Juan Cole (our source for this beauty) follows up with this:

The September 29, 2002 Denver Post paraphrased Cheney, "He said the evidence presented against Iraq will be long and persuasive, including more details of a relationship between Hussein's forces and the al-Qaeda terrorist network."

Poem of the Day

the rifle lay between us
i looked at it then
up at him
he looked at it
then up at me
i lunged first
but felt his hand when
mine reached the
rifle
who would be first to pull
the trigger?

Sombody, Stop Me

Your government at work:

The Alabama cow is believed to be at least 10 years old, which would mean it was born before the government's 1997 ban on the gruesome and disease-spreading practice of using the remains of cows as an ingredient in cattle feed. Yet the Food and Drug Administration, after announcing in 2003 that it would ban such practices, still allows cattle blood to be fed to calves and bovine remains to be fed to chickens (after which the leftover feed is scooped off the floor with the chicken manure and added--you guessed it--to cattle feed). Not only does that make a mockery of the ban, it goes against the common sense that a grazing herbivore wasn't meant to be a cannibal.

(Emphasis mine.)

The LA Times article quoted above arrived from LNS with strings of exclamation points and a portion of the text in red. Since this was the only time in years of exchanging email with LNS that anything was so colorfully typed, I assumed it was important. Thanks, USDA*, or should I say Mistuh President? Who's in charge up there, the former lobbyist for the Cattlemen's Feed Association?

NOTE: The article requires registration. To get around it, try bugmenot.com.

UPDATE: Your gov't responds to the recent discovery of a third mad cow by...reducing testing. According to Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns, that's because testing isn't a food safety measure, it's "for surveillance.... It was to get an idea of the condition of the herd." Ah, okay. So, like, testing random birds for West Nile isn't a public health measure, it's to get an idea of the condition of a flock. That opens up a whole array of legal defenses, come to think of it. If, for example, I fired a shotgun at Mr. Whittington Johanns from 30 yards away, it wouldn't be to kill him, just to find out whether my gun works.

*A previous version of this post listed the FDA, not USDA.

Ah, So...

See those lights in the windows of realitique™ HQ? We weren't burning the mid-morning oil working, no, we were feverishly debating why Il Duce seems so, well, passive. He's the least active president...ever. Yes, we knew he likes to play CEO (a game for the whole family!), but we didn't know he was focusing only on two issues. According to Insight,

President Bush has decided to stay out of the lion's share of decisions made by his administration.

Sources close to the administration said that over the last year, Mr. Bush has chosen to focus on two issues, leaving the rest to be decided by Cabinet members and senior aides. They said the issues are Iraq and the Republican congressional campaign in the 2006 elections.

"Lots of important issues that deal with national security are never brought to the president because he doesn't want to deal with them," a source familiar with the White House said. "In some cases, this has resulted in chaos."

Now I love hate to pick, but what, exactly, is he "doing" about Iraq? From here (deep within the bowels of Sav-A-Center, in our nuke-proof bunker) it sure looks like all da Preznit's doing is talking a lot--and without specifics. He's not doing anything. 87 bodies in Baghdad? Bombing religious shrines? Give a speech. And the 2006 erections? What is Bush doing, crunching numbers? Has he noticed his are falling? Give a speech. If Bush didn't breath recirculated bubble air, he might notice that the speeches aren't working. CEO? Yeah, like Ken Lay.

For more insight into the bungling that was the Dubai debacle, read the rest of the article here.

(Via American Street via Daou.)

BONUS FOR BUSH: He might want to consider that pesky, precipitous not-quite-civil-war here and the latest Abu Ghraib investigation here.

South Dakota's Abortion Application Form

Spittle & Ink's got the goods. (Thanks, Laura.)

A View from Mid-City

Times-Picayune columnist Chris Rose on how Mid-City's doing. It's one of those huge parts of town that is pretty much ignored--like so much inconvenient, undramatic information--by your friendly national news media. Rose could collect his post-Katrina columns under "Lamentations." He always makes me cry. (Via Harry Shearer in the HuffPo.)

Feingold Argues for Censuring the President

Here.

Oops: Did Slobie Accidentally Kill Himself?

In a delightfully ironic twist, the Guardian reports that Milosevic may have taken a drug to "negate the effects" of his high-blood-pressure meds, hoping to get sent to Moscow:

Donald Uges, a toxicologist from Groningen University, told Reuters that tests he conducted two weeks ago on Milosevic's blood showed traces of rifampicin, a drug used in treating leprosy and turberculosis that would have made other medicines ineffective.

He suggested Milosevic had taken the drug in the hope the UN war crimes tribunal would agree to his requests to go to Moscow for treatment if his condition did not improve.

"I don't think he took his medicines for suicide - only for his trip to Moscow. When he was in Moscow he would be free. That is where his friends and family are. I think that was his last possibility to escape the Hague," Dr Uges told Reuters.

Let the River Go

Radical coastal restoration now. (Via Schroeder.)