losing the battle against one's own cognitive dissonance

Glenn Greenwald has penned (or shall I say... um... keyboarded?) the most insightful reaction to the Republican wankfest against the New York Times for their coverage of W's bank-record-monitoring. His attack of the assumptions of the conservative argument against the Times is cogent, for sure, but my favorite part is where he discusses how utterly unhinged many of these voices have become:

...all sorts of people who live and work in distant places that are far less likely to ever be the target of a terrorist attack so whimsically and stupidly accuse the journalists at the Times of wanting to help terrorists stage attacks against America.

That is the level of discourse and reasoning flooding the airwaves and public debates. Accordingly, the reporters of the Times are not publishing these stories because they believe that Americans ought to know about and debate the Bush administration's secret, oversight-less intelligence-gathering programs. No -- it's because they are enemies of the United States, they hate Americans, and they want to help The Terrorists stage attacks on this country (of which they are the most likely targets).

The sudden attack on the Times is truly bizarre considering that W himself bragged about "following the terrorists' money" years ago. It seems to me that, at this point, all El Presidente has left supporting him are the real hardcore Bushites, the people whom he couldn't get to stop supporting him if he armed a roadside bomb while screwing a yak on national TV (as long as it's not a gay yak). And every day it's gets harder and harder to be such a person.

Several times lately I've said that I'm glad during these dark times not to be a conservative. Because as hard as it is for me to watch a bunch of self-deluding ideologues running amok in Washington, it must be really, really hard to get everything you want, and put in all of your policies and governmental theories, and make the whole country your "Conservative Experiment," only to watch it get dashed upon the rocks of reality. All that talk of bettering the economy by lowering taxes, of the necessity of preemption and the benefits of American world hegemony, of abstinence-only sex ed, of all things "trickle-down," and now every week a new report comes out showing that, 10 years down the road, none of it works. The poor and middle class are worse off; college, gas, and health care costs have all skyrocketed; the war in Iraq has failed, and may well drag the War on Terrorism down the drain with it; and conservative policies are more unpopular than they've been in years, while liberal ones have sparked new growth (even support for gay marriage has reached a statistical dead heat in recent polls for the first time).

And to top it all off, they're losing control of the government. It becomes more likely every day that the Republican era of dominance in the House will come crashing down in November. Not only that, but every week for the last 3 weeks or so, a new Senate race with a Republican incumbent has become competitive (Burns vs. Tester in Montana, Chafee vs. Whitehouse in Rhode Island, and yes I'm counting it, Lieberman vs. Lamont in Connecticut), making even their hold on the Senate (long a conservative bastion) ever more precarious.

The kind of reaction we're seeing now to the bank records report is the natural consequence of that fact. With all this weighing on the minds of the Bushite, and languishing in a sea of opposition, they're having to make ever more absurd and desperate defensive attacks when backed into yet another corner because The Leader did something authoritarian or incompetent again. Anything to scare the others back in line; anything to draw attention away from Our Wounded Leader.

This is how the Conservative Movement is going to die: in an ever-accelerating frenzy of wildly flailing attacks against anyone and everyone they perceive to be "against us," while a mountain of evidence of corruption, secrecy, and authoritarianism compels the rest of the country, embarrassed for them and yet embarrassed to have ever supported them, to turn their backs and quietly walk away.

Limbaugh can't get it up, gets caught pill-popping again

From Miami's CBS affiliate:

Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh was detained at Palm Beach International Airport for the possible possession of illegal prescription drugs Monday evening.

Limbaugh was returning on a flight from the Dominican Republic when customs officials found a Viagra prescription that did not bear his name. Instead, the bottle of pills had the names of two doctors on it according to the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office.

Limbaugh was returning on a flight from the Dominican Republic when customs officials found a Viagra prescription that did not bear his name. Instead, the bottle of pills had the names of two doctors on it according to the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office.

Rush Limbaugh caught returning from the Dominican Republic with illegal erectile dysfunction treatment.

Priceless.

Seriously though, does it surprise anybody that a guy like Rush, always trying to act all macho conservative yet was too gutless to go fight when his draft number came up in Vietnam (you may remember, he got a deferment for a boil on his ass-- literally), would end up having "masculinity" issues?

How did these guys ever come to have any credibility whatsoever?

more leaking

Yes, Mr. President, you're right, of course those who leak classified information to the press should be punished.



Joe Sudbay at AMERICAblog wonders:

It's really amazing that the press corps doesn't just break in to laughter when Bush gets like sanctimonious on this subject.

As a side note, it is interesting that the Administration hasn't actually said the information was "classified," they've simply suggested it was "secret." Which, of course, would mean it was legal for the paper to publish it. Glad we don't have to watch for terminology and word-parsing in the Bush era of honesty in government.

An Inconvenient Truth

In 39 years, I have never written these words in a movie review, but here they are: You owe it to yourself to see this film. If you do not, and you have grandchildren, you should explain to them why you decided not to. -- Roger Ebert

Went to An Inconvenient Truth last weekend. Wow. Two thoughts come to mind while walking out of the theater:

1. How did we let things get this bad, despite so many warnings?

Gore walks us through a thick, meaty presentation of the evidence that mercilessly skewers all skepticism and apathy. The thesis is powerful, the science is indisputable, the consequences are dire. We need to change, and we need to do it now. Pardon the former Veep for sounding shrill, but the end of the world is at stake. Literally.

2. Boy, did we back the wrong horse in 2000 or what?

It's not exactly the world's best kept secret that I loathe our current president and am pretty sure he will be reviled by our posterity for his incompetence, his corruption, and his lack of character or substance. I'm pretty sure that even the most strident W supporters in 2000 are at least a little disappointed to know that they elevated a f*&king cartoon character to the presidency. At the same time, however, I totally fell for the "both candidates are the same" media narrative in 2000 and voted for Nader.

Of course, the last 6 years have shown beyond any doubt that I was wrong on that one, but seeing this movie showed me just how far off the mark I was in my opinion of Al Gore. The Gore we see in this film is not only articulate, knowledgable, and fluent in the hard facts and statistics of the matter at hand-- we knew Gore was all that before-- but he is also witty, charming, and sympathetic. He is an incorrigible optimist, even while soberly explaining such dire matters, and even manages the occasional joke or tongue-in-cheek moment masterfully, like someone completely comfortable in their surroundings.

Basically, nothing like the wooden, narcoleptic personality that the media tried soooo hard to convince us was Al Gore.

He's been impressive for a long time, now. Dedicating his post-presidential run years to travelling the world giving this presentation over and over again, trying to change the world for the better is a far superior use of such a man's time than the selfish, greedy pursuits of most ex-presidents and presidential candidates. Gore was doing great things long before then, however; the stands he took as a representative, and then senator, and even as VP, showed a store of wisdom, foresight, and courage rarely seen in the federal government.

I'm slowly becoming more and more convinced that the Draft Gore people, who I used to think were wackos, are right: it is Mr. Gore's patriotic duty to step up and set things right. He is the only person out there with the brass to do what needs to be done and the foresight to successfully undo the havoc that a decade and a half of conservative ideologues have recklessly wrought upon our country. He has the experience, he has the record, he has the support, and face it folks, he's already won it once (and his odds looked a lot worse then than they do now). Mr. Gore needs to give the 52% of us who foolishly voted for Bush or Nader in 2000 the chance to rectify the horrible, horrible mistake we made.

Gore for President in 2008.

Tom Tomorrow

TT is pretty funny today, as he shows us the absolutely true story of the liberal cocktail party that caused a lifelong Democrat to become a Republican.

questions nobody's asking

W sez:

"I'd like to end Guantanamo. I'd like it to be over with."

Some of the inmates would be returned to their home countries, he said. But "there are some that need to be tried in US courts. They are cold-blooded killers. They will murder someone if out on the street."

Atrios listens, and wonders:

So, presumably Bush believes that "some" or even "most" are not "cold-blooded killers." In fact, it sounds like they haven't even committed offenses which would merit being tried in a court.

How long have they been there?

5 bucks sez nobody on TV or in the papers is going to ask that question.

a good Dem candidate on the Llano Estecado

(TX-19, a fair, representative, not-at-all gerrymandered Texas county)

I'll be damned:

Robert Ricketts is the former Director of Accounting Programs and holds an Endowed Chair in Taxation at Texas Tech University, where he has taught since 1988. He is a CPA, certified in the State of Texas in 1984, and has bachelors, masters and PhD degrees in accounting. He has practiced, studied, written and taught about tax practice and tax policy for over 20 years. He is well-prepared to go to Washington and work to resolve our nation’s serious budget problems.

Raaahhh NaaahhhBahhh (think sheep, as in voted with the GOP party line 98% of the time sheep) is a real turd of a politician, even for a Republican. Just read Ricketts' reply downthread a little to see what an awe-inspiring wanker the good people of Lubbock opted for in '04.

An artificially conservative district, but hey, ya never know.

Pentagon now publishing material to assist GOP in midterms

Not at all creepifying or inappropriate:

The meetings were followed by the distribution of a 74-page briefing book to Congressional offices from the Pentagon to provide ammunition for what White House officials say will be a central line of attack against Democrats from now through the midterm elections: that the withdrawal being advocated by Democrats would mean thousands of troops would have died for nothing, would give extremists a launching pad from which to build an Islamo-fascist empire and would hand the United States its must humiliating defeat since Vietnam.

Republicans say the cumulative effect would be to send a message of weakness to the world at a time of new threats from Iran and North Korea and would leave enemies controlling Iraq's vast oil reserves, the third largest in the world. (The book, including a chapter entitled "Rapid Response" with answers to frequent Democratic charges, was sent via e-mail to Republican lawmakers but, in an apparent mistake, also to some Democrats.)

amnesty for insurgents?

Here is the best post I've seen so far on why this bill allowing the Iraqi parliament to grant amnesty to Iraqi insurgents, even ones that have killed American soldiers, was actually supported by the Republicans and voted for by no fewer than 19 Republican senators (no Dems voted for it). Digby has found some very poignant links; I suggest you check them out.

Yet I confess, I don't get it. Seriously, I can't wrap my head around this issue. Why on earth did the Republicans support such an abomination? No amnesty for people coming to America in search of a better life, but amnesty galore for those who plant roadside bombs and shoot from the shadows at American troops? WTF?

full day on Crapitol Hill

So earlier today the House of Representatives, led by Republicans, stalled the renewal of the Voting Rights Act. Now why on earth would the Republicans be worried about minorities voting?

This comes just after the Senate decided not to have an up-or-down vote on raising the minimum wage. Anyone care to guess what they put on the agenda instead? Rollback of the estate tax.

Republican "valyews" at work.

Had enough? Kick the bums out.

it's dupe the flagwavers day!

(George W. Bush signing his autograph-- real picture)
Remember: according to the Republicans, desecration of the flag is a heinous offense and we should set everything else aside to move a constitutional amendment saying such to the front of the line.

Republicans, those uber-patriots.

Republicans are a threat to family values

Digby has the smackdown, in the form of a Washington Monthly article outlining the marital problems of the three most likely Republican presidential candidates:

Until relatively recently, a self-confessed adulterer had never sought the presidency.
...
But it wasn’t until 2000 that McCain, possibly emboldened by Clinton’s survival of his scandals, became the first confessed adulterer to have the nerve to run. Now, just a few years after infidelity was considered a dealbreaker for a presidential candidate, the party that presents itself as the arbiter of virtue may field an unprecedented two-timing trifecta. McCain was still married and living with his wife in 1979 while, according to The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof, "aggressively courting a 25-year-old woman who was as beautiful as she was rich." McCain divorced his wife, who had raised their three children while he was imprisoned in Vietnam, then launched his political career with his new wife’s family money. In 2000, McCain managed to deflect media questioning about his first marriage with a deft admission of responsibility for its failure.

It’s possible that the age of the offense and McCain’s charmed relationship with the press will pull him through again, but Giuliani and Gingrich may face a more difficult challenge. Both conducted well-documented affairs in the last decade–while still in public office. Giuliani informed his second wife, Donna Hanover, of his intention to seek a separation in a 2000 press conference. The announcement was precipitated by a tabloid frenzy after Giuliani marched with his then-mistress, Judith Nathan, in New York’s St. Patrick’s Day parade, an acknowledgement of infidelity so audacious that Daily News columnist Jim Dwyer compared it with "groping in the window at Macy’s." In the acrid divorce proceedings that followed, Hanover accused Giuliani of serial adultery, alleging that Nathan was just the latest in a string of mistresses, following an affair the mayor had had with his former communications director.

But the most notorious of them all is undoubtedly Gingrich, who ran for Congress in 1978 on the slogan, "Let Our Family Represent Your Family." (He was reportedly cheating on his first wife at the time). In 1995, an alleged mistress from that period, Anne Manning, told Vanity Fair’s Gail Sheehy: "We had oral sex. He prefers that modus operandi because then he can say, ‘I never slept with her.’" Gingrich obtained his first divorce in 1981, after forcing his wife, who had helped put him through graduate school, to haggle over the terms while in the hospital, as she recovered from uterine cancer surgery. In 1999, he was disgraced again, having been caught in an affair with a 33-year-old congressional aide while spearheading the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton.

Mind-boggling, isn't it? The sheer breadth of the hypocrisy. Truly stunning.

2 kidnapped US soldiers tortured

From Reuters:

Two U.S. soldiers missing in Iraq for three days have been found dead, their bodies showing signs of "barbaric" torture, an Iraqi general said on Tuesday, after an intensive hunt involving thousands of troops.
...
Iraqi Defense Ministry official Major General Abdul Aziz Mohammed told Reuters earlier that the bodies showed signs of "barbaric torture." He did not elaborate.

Now, I may need someone to remind me, but why exactly was it again that so many people threw such a fit about us torturing Iraqis, and about our Attorney General referring to the Geneva Convention as "quaint"? I just can't quite remember, something having to do with reciprocation or returning favors or protecting American soldiers from equal something...

This is on you, Abu Gonzalez, and everyone who helped install you.

This is on you.

Joe Klein needs a day job

Meet Joe Klein, hack of the ages:

"I was up there in the cockpit of that airplane coming into Baghdad," the President told the press corps assembled on the White House lawn after his dash into and out of the war zone last week. "It was an unbelievable, unbelievable feeling." In fact, George W. Bush's body language—let's call it the full jaunty—was reminiscent of his last, infamous cockpit trip, onto the deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln in May 2003 to announce the "end" of major combat operations in Iraq, beneath a mission accomplished sign. His public language is more cautious than it used to be, but he seemed downright frothy in a private session with the congressional leadership after his press conference.

He called the new Iraqi Defense Minister an "interesting cat" and Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, the deceased al-Qaeda leader, "a dangerous dude."

This guy is Time magazine's idea of a liberal. Sad.

Digby makes a good point about this article: why is this column about the president so... well... sexual? "The full jaunty," multiple mentions of the word "cockpit" for "airplane," the reminiscing about W's now-infamous USS Lincoln photo op (where, oddly, a number of male pundits including Chris Matthews focused on the president's codpiece), the "frothy" bit (though frankly I dunno what the hell he's talking about there).

Of course, Joe Klein is probably the only person on the planet who didn't roll their eyes when W said "interesting cat" and "dangerous dude." What an ass.

This article is also a great example of the kind of arguments--let's call them logical imperfections-- that pundits generally use in an effort to make us think that Democrats are wrong no matter what they're doing. Joe says that Kerry started out making a good speech this week,

but then—as is his awkward wont—Kerry overreacted and called for the withdrawal of U.S. troops by the end of the year. It was a proposition that garnered all of six votes on the Senate floor when Senate Republicans gleefully submitted Kerry's idea to a vote later in the week.

Ha ha, stupid Kerry, he's such a scaredy little stupidhead that he stupidly and scarededly wants out of Iraq by the end of the year!

The imminently wise and courageous Joe Klein, proud worshipper of the Presidential Codpiece, knows better, though (emphasis mine):

What can the Democrats do? They can play politics or be responsible. The political option is to embrace "cut and run"; call for an immediate withdrawal, as Kerry did; and hope the public is so sick of Bush and sick of the war that it will punish the g.o.p. in the fall. But embracing defeat is a risky political strategy, especially for a party not known for its warrior ethic. In fact, the responsible path is the Democrats' only politically plausible choice: they will have to give yet another new Iraqi government one last shot to succeed. This time, U.S. military sources say, the measure of success is simple: Operation Forward Together, the massive joint military effort launched last week to finally try to secure Baghdad, has to work. If Baghdad isn't stabilized, the war is lost. "I know it's the cliche of the war," an Army counterinsurgency specialist told me last week. "But we'll know in the next six months—and this time, it'll be the last next six months we get."

So you see, unlike John Scaredy who wants out of Iraq at the end of the year, Joe doesn't want out for another 6 months.

Bill Frist: kitty killer

Lest we forget who these people running everything really are:

There’s a potential pothole in U.S. Sen. Bill Frist’s road to the White House: He’s a confessed kitty killer.

He fessed up in his 1989 book, "Transplant," to adopting cats from shelters when he was in medical school, treating them like pets for a while, and then using them in his research experiments.
...
"It was, of course, a heinous and dishonest thing to do, and I was totally schizoid about the entire matter."

Meet our Senate Majority Leader, folks! Not at all like our President, who is a whole different breed of sociopath:

In the weeks before the execution, Bush says, a number of protesters came to Austin to demand clemency for Karla Faye Tucker. "Did you meet with any of them?" I ask. Bush whips around and stares at me. "No, I didn't meet with any of them," he snaps, as though I've just asked the dumbest, most offensive question ever posed. "I didn't meet with Larry King either when he came down for it. I watched his interview with Tucker, though. He asked her real difficult questions like, 'What would you say to Governor Bush?'" "What was her answer?" I wonder. "'Please,'" Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, "'don't kill me.'" I must look shocked — ridiculing the pleas of a condemned prisoner who has since been executed seems odd and cruel — because he immediately stops smirking.

That snippet was penned by none other than Tucker Carlson, darling of the conservative media.

Dubai still runs American ports

Congress thumbed its nose at the American people, even going so far as to silently kill a provision that would've guaranteed US control of our ports.

Had enough yet? Vote Democratic.

the Omnivore's Dilemma

Just read The Omnivore's Dilemma. Great book, I highly recommend it. Though I may never eat corn again.

FOX News

video from Youtube. Funny, and fitting!

go dad!

Apparently my dad just won the Democratic primary in Virginia. Go dad! And keep me in the loop next time!

what would we do without the Japanese?

A Japanese scientist has "reconstructed" the voices of Leonardo da Vinci and the woman in the Mona Lisa. You can listen to their voices here.

Yes, I know, the page is in Japanese. Just click the damn links.

Our media elite are idiots

Gawd what a moron. Bill Bennett, one of the foremost rightwing pundits in the media, goes on the Daily Show and gets his ass kicked by a comedian. Video via Crooks and Liars:

Stewart: So why not encourage gay people to join in in that family arrangement if that is what provides stability to a society?

Bennett: Well I think if gay..gay people are already members of families...

Stewart: What? (almost spitting out his drink)

Bennett: They're sons and they're daughters..

Stewart: So that's where the buck stops, that's the gay ceiling.

Bennett: Look, it's a debate about whether you think marriage is between a man and a women.

Stewart:I disagree, I think it's a debate about whether you think gay people are part of the human condition or just a random fetish.

Seriously, Bennett comes off looking like a sputtering neanderthal as all his best arguments fall impotently under Stewart's withering sarcasm. I am truly embarrassed for the mainstream media if this guy represents their best and brightest.

Even moreso, I am embarrassed for my country if these knuckledraggers are dictating our national conversation. And you wonder why the American people are so criminally misinformed?

As a side note, look in the clipped quote above where Stewart does something I've almost never seen a "liberal" pundit do: he refuses to accept Bennett's bullshit framing of the issue. Of course this isn't about marriage being between a man and a woman. You can tell Bennett's not used to a liberal actually questioning his frames; he seems to slouch slightly, fully cognizant that he just got clowned and will have to spend the rest of the conversation in damage control. Don't accept a bullshit frame: such a basic technique in sophisticated argumentation, yet so utterly unknown among our media "elites."

In other news, here we are now, 4 years down the road of having Ann Coulter paraded across the stage of every political news show on television, years after her lifting the national discourse on Middle Eastern policy with such gems as "We should kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity," and saying that all liberals (roughly a quarter of the population) should be hung for treason, just for being liberals, and claiming the only real question about Bill Clinton was "whether to impeach or assassinate" (and that was in 1998, when Clinton was the sitting president).

Months after Coulter said in her syndicated column: "[T]he government should be spying on all Arabs, engaging in torture as a televised spectator sport, dropping daisy cutters wantonly throughout the Middle East and sending liberals to Guantanamo."

A year and a half since she called an incident where a student threw a pie at her "an act of terrorism" and said that New Yorkers "would immediately surrender to terrorists."

Now, after 4 years of Coulter-mania, the media is actually starting to think that maybe, just maybe, this witch is a teensy bit hateful and fringe for mainstream discourse, now that she said of the 9/11 widows: "[T]hey believed the entire country was required to marinate in their exquisite personal agony. Apparently, denouncing Bush was an important part of their closure process." [p.103] and "These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by grief-arazzis. I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much." [p.103] (via Media Matters).

Amazing how far to the right the boundary of acceptable discourse is when it took Coulter shitting on the families of American victims of terrorism to cross it. At least there is a line, though; I was almost convinced that Coulter would dryhump Nixon's corpse on national TV for the news media to call foul on her.

another one from the "fair and balanced" files

Media Matters is pretty good at catching journalists and pundits when they screw up, though a lot of times it's fairly small or unsurprising points. Where Brock and the boys really thrive is in quickly building up a mountain of fairly small and unsurprising points, or in tracing the projection of a lie across the media landscape. Every once in a while, however, some idiot (usually from Fox News) drops their guard for a second too long, says something grossly dishonest or tries to change the story from one day to the next, and gets pwn3d by MMFA.

Which brings us to Fox News' Neil Cavuto, host of Your (Bizzaro) World. This has gotta hurt, folks. Cavuto does a segment on his show 4 days ago accusing the media of being "biased" because they've been spending sooooo much time on the Haditha massacre (ya know, the one it took the mainstream press a week to take seriously after it first broke) instead of covering Marines getting blown to bits by insurgents. The captions on the screen comprise various permutations of the word "bias," like "blatant bias" and "biased coverage."

Some of you may already see this coming.

The day before on Neil's show, however, he does a segment talking about... have you guessed it?... how the media focuses too much on Marines getting blown to bits. And the caption under that story?:

Indeed, sir.

you in South Bend? time to write an email

Okay, everyone in SB listen up. If you watched WNDU (NBC) news last night, you may have seen a story about Count Chocola's new attack ad. The piece was horribly partisan, however, and we need to let them know we're not gonna let them skew their coverage to get "ARMPAC" Chocola re-elected.

The problems with the coverage? The big one was in what they showed. WNDU played the Count's entire commercial, nonstop and without commentary superimposed on top. So the Count got free airtime, and in the best television real estate possible (cuz, ya know, Chocola really needs the financial help, being the only Indiana House incumbent with $1 million cash on hand and all). Moveon's ad, meanwhile, was only partially played, and with Terry yapping on top of it to boot!

The other problem with the ad: Terry McFadden's tone as he talked about Moveon. His voice suddenly changed when he said, "the ad attacking Chocola, however, was paid for by Moveon, a liberal activist group." You should've heard the contempt oozing from his voice as he said those last 3 words; you'd have almost thought you were listening to, well, cable news.

Don't want your local news coddling the conservatives? There's only one solution: write a letter.

Now.

Here's a copy of the letter I sent, if you want to use it. Don't copy it verbatim, however, or else they'll think some liberal activist group is organizing it and won't take it seriously:

To Whom It May Concern,
I normally choose to watch WNDU's news shows because the anchors are likeable, thorough, and typically lack any discernible bias. This evening, however, I was appalled at Terry's piece on Chris Chocola's new attack ad. I apologize in advance for the tone of this message, but the partisanship of the story was both sudden and uncharacteristic of channel 16 news, which made the story quite upsetting. I have several issues with the presentation of the story, both in terms of content and tone.
First and foremost, WNDU only showed a brief clip of Moveon's ad, yet they played the Chocola ad in its entirety. I am well aware that the Fairness Doctrine was ditched years ago, but why is WNDU giving Chris Chocola free airtime-- and in the middle of their newscast, no less-- yet Moveon is not?
After that, Terry mentioned that (paraphrasing), "the ad against Chocola was paid for by Moveon, a liberal activist group." The tone of his voice noticeably changed at that moment, seemingly dripping with contempt at the mention of the word "liberal." Frankly, there was enough Chocola-babying in the overall "poor little Chris has to defend himself forcefully from those mean old Democrats" narrative of the piece without the anchor spitting out the word "liberal" as if it's some sort of insult.
I have always trusted WNDU, and the McFaddens, to provide me with fair and reasonably objective news, but I for one am sick and tired of seeing Republicans get preferential treatment in the media, and the next time I see it on channel 16, I will quit watching your news and urge everyone I know to do likewise.

Sincerely,
****** ******
South Bend

holy hand grenades, batman!

Mon Dieu:

Imagine: you are a foot soldier in a paramilitary group whose purpose is to remake America as a Christian theocracy, and establish its worldly vision of the dominion of Christ over all aspects of life. You are issued high-tech military weaponry, and instructed to engage the infidel on the streets of New York City. You are on a mission - both a religious mission and a military mission -- to convert or kill Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, gays, and anyone who advocates the separation of church and state - especially moderate, mainstream Christians. Your mission is "to conduct physical and spiritual warfare"; all who resist must be taken out with extreme prejudice. You have never felt so powerful, so driven by a purpose: you are 13 years old. You are playing a real-time strategy video game whose creators are linked to the empire of mega-church pastor Rick Warren, best selling author of The Purpose Driven Life.

Umm... wow.

a conversation long overdue

A day or two ago Pachacutec from FDL asked the unaskable question: is the War on Terror (gasp!) bullshit? His answer was a little weak (I think he misunderstood the etymology of "Terror" in that phrase as being shorthand for "terrorism") but he gets props for daring to address the question first. And apparently he upset neo-cons: the thread got hijacked by conservatives positively flummoxed over Pach daring to ask such a treasonous question.

It is Digby who really hits it out of the park, though:

When you think about it, a "war on terrorism" is actually a "war on warfare" which kind of brings the whole damned thing home, doesn't it? ... A war on warfare is entirely absurd, however, in a literal sense. Using war to eradicate terror or terrorism is an oxymoron. And yet the nation has been drunkenly behaving as if it is a real war, spending the money, deploying the troops, inflicting the violence.
...
This is the problem. This elastic war, this war against warfare, this war with no specific enemy against no specific country is never going to end. It cannot end because there is no end. If the threat of "islamofascim" disappears tomorrow there will be someone else who hates us and who is willing to use individual acts of violence to get what they want. There always have been and there always will be. Which means that we will always be at war with Oceania.

"Oceania," for the non-Orwell fans, is the country Britain fights endlessly against in 1984. In the book, the war is prosecuted endlessly, British society is constantly propagandized and permanently on a war footing, and the war is used by the government to keep the people in line.

As an aside, this is why all the conservative ranting about things that are "PC" is bullshit. You think what Digby is saying here is politically correct? There are plenty of issues that liberals get pounded over just for questioning them, just like conservatives. Liberals, unfortunately, don't have the "PC" chimera to hide behind.

American troops massacre civilians in Haditha

NCIS expected to confirm it:

A military investigation into the deaths of two dozen Iraqis last November is expected to find that a small number of marines in western Iraq carried out extensive, unprovoked killings of civilians, Congressional, military and Pentagon officials said Thursday.
...
Evidence indicates that the civilians were killed during a sustained sweep by a small group of marines that lasted three to five hours and included shootings of five men standing near a taxi at a checkpoint, and killings inside at least two homes that included women and children, officials said.

That evidence, described by Congressional, Pentagon and military officials briefed on the inquiry, suggested to one Congressional official that the killings were "methodical in nature."

Noted without comment.

an inconvenient bias

I'm hoping to convince Amber to go to Grand Rapids this weekend so we can see Al Gore's new movie, An Inconvenient Truth. It's supposed to be a good one.

The press Gore is getting is truly fascinating, however. Have you noticed the peculiarly 1999 feel of the press' choice of memes lately? Like the huge 50-source NYT story about the Clintons' sex life earlier this week, or Gore getting skewered over and over again by reporters and pundits:

...one so-called liberal newspaper was busy this week publishing a right-wing attack against Gore over trivial matters like what exactly he did--and where he was--during the summer he turned 15. (I kid you not.) Chris Matthews was inviting guests on his show, and lauding them, for writing Gore "is one slice short of a loaf." PBS' Gwen Ifil was asking one Gore profiler if the former VP doesn't come off as "holier than thou." And MSNBC's Don Imus was ridiculing Gore as "the phoniest bastard on the planet--a horrid human being."

Proponents of the "liberal media" meme never want to talk about the 2000 election and the press' almost thuggish treatment of Al Gore, as outlined in this great Rolling Stone article, because it puts the lie to their story.

The greatest irony of the 2000 election was that Gore was characterized by the media as a chronic liar and exaggerator, yet it was the media who had to lie and exaggerate to make that claim stick. How do you feel about the last 6 years of presidential administration, and have you thanked the New York Times for it?

Update: changed last sentence from "a reporter" to "the New York Times" to reflect the fact that not all reporters were in on Smearfest Y2K (just all the big time ones were).

more on skilling/lay convictions

First of all, I want to share with you a couple of relevant diaries on the subject. Darksyde from DailyKos has a nice rundown here, and clammyc talks about the convictions from the perspective of a former Arthur Andersen auditor who (along with his wife) lost his job because of Enron's shenanigans. It gives you a sense of the far-reaching consequences of these guys' crimes (though, as a side note to one of his points, I personally think Enron led to Bush a lot more than Bush led to Enron). Atrios, who was a college professor in California when Enron took it hostage, briefly analyzes how the media, in their faux economic expertise, so tragically failed to understand the situation there, while Digby outlines the ties between Kenneth Lay and president Bush (I would like to add to his post that W essentially let Kenneth Lay write the controversial Federal Energy Bill a couple of years ago that gave the oil, coal, and nuclear industries billions of dollars in free handouts). Says Digby of the media's complicity of silence in this whole saga:

The fact that the biggest campaign contributor to the occupant of the white house was in charge of the biggest corporate ponzi scheme in history should have been news. It wasn't.

So true.

There is so much one could say about the bundle of crooks and scandals now known collectively as "Enron":
Enron is the epitome of a corporate culture off the deep end of executive-centered priorities; it is the the corrupt "get mine and get the hell out" mentality to the Nth degree.

Enron is a warning to us of what can happen when a government branch gets too cozy with big business and loses its ability to conduct honest oversight.

Enron is a one-word rebuttal to the lazy ideology of laissez-faire libertarians, who foolishly assume that American boardrooms would do what's best for workers and consumers were it not for government regulations forcing them to do just that.

Most of all in my mind, though, Enron is the story of how the actions of a tiny handful of people can ruin countless lives without ever picking up a weapon. There seems to be a sentiment out there that Lay and Skilling's crimes are somehow not as big a deal as some others because they didn't involve sex or violence.

But this was not just a matter of skimming from a corporate budget; these bastards ruined people's lives. Because of the deliberate lawbreaking and deceit of Lay and Skilling, hundreds of would-be rising stars of the business world have a permanent black mark on their resumes, and countless thousands, perhaps millions, of people were robbed of their savings, their retirement, and their dignity. People who labored for decades, managing their money wisely and putting away a little at a time, building a nest egg so they can live out their glory days the way they've always dreamed of, people who did everything right, will now be spending their twilight years sacking groceries at WalMart, thanks to Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling.

And many of the victims were robbed blind by the very people they trusted to take care of them.

To wreak that level of havoc on the lives of such a mind-blowing number of people, with no remorse, blaming everyone else all the way down, shows a lack of compassion or human decency that "moral bankruptcy" doesn't begin to describe. Make no mistake: the lack of guns or sex doesn't mollify their heinous, heinous crimes. These guys are narcissistic sociopaths who deserve the fullest measure of justice the system can mete out to them.

And they still have Hell to look forward to.

there is a God

and He hates you, Jeff and Kenny boy. From Reuters:

A jury found former Enron Corp. chief executives Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling guilty of lying about the company's financial troubles in a verdict on Thursday that could send them to jail for years.

Lay, 64, was convicted of six counts of conspiracy and fraud and faces up to 45 years in prison.

Skilling was found guilty of 19 counts of conspiracy, fraud, insider trading and making false statements which, combined, carry a maximum sentence of 185 years. He was not convicted on nine criminal counts.

In a separate trial, U.S. District Judge Sim Lake found Lay guilty of all four bank fraud charges for illegally using money from $75 million in personal loans to buy stock.

I think this is worth declaring a national holiday, personally.

reel big fish

The speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, arguably the 2nd most powerful man in Washington, is officially under investigation by the FBI. From ABC (via TPM):

Federal officials say the Congressional bribery investigation now includes Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, based on information from convicted lobbyists who are now cooperating with the government.

Part of the investigation involves a letter Hastert wrote three years ago, urging the Secretary of the Interior to block a casino on an Indian reservation that would have competed with other tribes.

The other tribes were represented by convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff who reportedly has provided details of his dealings with Hastert as part of his plea agreement with the government.

What need I say?

In Memoriam Lloyd Bentsen

Lloyd Bentsen, businessman, senator, statesman, Texan, Bush/Quayle smackdowner, has died.

Bentsen pwn3d Bush 41 early in his career, and years later put 41's VP candidate on the mat with this jawbreaker:

When his younger opponent compared himself to President John F. Kennedy, Bentsen, his voice dripping with disdain, retorted: "Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you are no Jack Kennedy."

Years later it still makes me cringe.

false equivalence

Matt Yglesias over at TPM takes on the "Democrats are just as bad, just look at Rep. Jefferson" meme (emphasis added):

Jefferson was a corrupt freelancer . . . a more-or-less random member of congress abusing his office for personal gain. Compare this to the case of Tom DeLay, the key mover-and-shaker in the Republican caucus for many years and an important one for years before that. His muck-worthy activities not only accrued to a more significant player, but also bore a direct relationship to the creation and sustenance of the GOP machine.

Beyond DeLay, the salient point about, say, the Dukester is that his cash-for-contracts scheme was in many ways continuous with standard operating procedure for the Republican Party. It was different. But a difference of degree, not of kind. Normally, the cash comes in as campaign contributions or lobbying jobs for yourself and your retainers rather than pocket money or boats. But the public policy auction is happening at all levels. Look at the energy bill, or the farm bill, or the Medicare bill. Legislation is for sale to the highest bidder in all cases. That -- and not the fact that this or that Republican may or may not be under indictment -- is the point. And it connects up with the pattern of executive branch lawlessness and malfeasance. The overall attitude is that the institutions of government are the property of the people who happen to be holding power; power that can be deployed without constraint on behalf of its holders or their paymasters.

This is dead on. It's the Republican "culture of corruption" for a reason: the Republican method of governing, that is pay-for-play politics and aggressive courting of lobbyists and allowing corporate interests to draft legislation, lends itself to corruption because the Republican party no longer answers to its constituents. In such a system as we have, where the candidate with the most money wins 95% of the time, Republicans no longer answer to their constituents. They simply assume that, after they let ExxonMobil and Halliburton and AT&T do the actual business of governing, they can use the flood of contributions to brainwash the public and press into ambivalence about which party is worse while galvanizing the Christian "wackos" (to use the words of Jack Abramoff) to get the vote out.

Meanwhile, the Democrats are taking their message to the people, all over the country, while using Democracy Bonds and small contributions to start replacing the money they used to get from lobbyists and big business. In fact, some time ago news broke that lobbyists are getting ticked off at Democrats because, all of sudden, Democrats don't seem to care about meeting with them. Of course, they said it was Dean's fault. For once, they were right.

The choice in November gets simpler every day.

fast food nation movie

Freakin' awesome. Killer cast.

he's huggable

Meet Snuggly, the Security Bear.

you all knew it was coming

Idiot.

"this one is ugly"

Oh dear. From MSNBC (via SusanG at DailyKos):

WASHINGTON - A Pentagon probe into the death of Iraqi civilians last November in the Iraqi city of Haditha will show that U.S. Marines "killed innocent civilians in cold blood," a U.S. lawmaker said Wednesday.

From the beginning, Iraqis in the town of Haditha said U.S. Marines deliberately killed 15 unarmed Iraqi civilians, including seven women and three children.

One young Iraqi girl said the Marines killed six members of her family, including her parents. “The Americans came into the room where my father was praying,” she said, “and shot him.”

On Wednesday, Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., said the accounts are true.

Military officials told NBC News that the Marine Corps' own evidence appears to show Murtha is right.
...
Military officials say Marine Corp photos taken immediately after the incident show many of the victims were shot at close range, in the head and chest, execution-style. One photo shows a mother and young child bent over on the floor as if in prayer, shot dead, said the officials, who spoke to NBC News on condition of anonymity because the investigation hasn't been completed.

One military official says it appears the civilians were deliberately killed by the Marines, who were outraged at the death of their fellow Marine.

“This one is ugly," one official told NBC News.

I haven't really had a chance to process this yet.

Comments?

Da Vinci Code movie a war on Christianity?

I have to admit, I can sympathize with the fundies on this one, at least on the basis of appearances. If The Da Vinci Code were purported by the author to be a work of pure fiction, then all this would be a bit silly. I distinctly remember, however, the preface of the book talking about how the descriptions of the art and historical documents and whatnot are accurate, the implication being that Brown really is arguing that Jesus was a completely mundane nobleman type who ran off with some sweet piece o' social status named Mary Magdalene and they travelled the world together and had lots of nobleman type babies. Maybe I'm wrong on this, but that's how I interpreted the preface.

So, if the book is attacking the divinity of Christ, and thus the Incarnation, the Transfiguration, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, the truth of Scripture (in any sense, literal or otherwise), and the legitimacy of the Church (Catholic or otherwise), and if Christian churches define the basis of their religion as a trinity of Christ, Church, and Bible, then isn't the book by definition an attack on Christianity? Furthermore, are Christians wrong in noting that there is a relative dearth of material from secular types attacking other religions, and thus are they wrong to feel singled out in the prevailing cultural atmosphere?

Even if you disagree, you have to admit that Hollywood coming off of its liberal onslaught in 2005 and making a movie about this book its big summer showcase looks bad.

All this is not to say I'm joining the fundie crusade against Hollywood or secularism or whatever-- I don't think an omnipotent God needs me to defend God-- I'm just saying that their feelings of being attacked are, at least prima facie, justified.

presidentin' on the air

Anyone catch W's speech? It's like clockwork these days: polls not lookin' hot for Republicans, time to beat up on some brown people.

no, not Turdblossom!

Everyone is on pins and needles over the possibility of a Karl Rove indictment coming down the pike this week. Atrios says there's a hum in the air, and Digby says that Atrios has a nose for this sort of thing. There was a report by Jason Leopold from truthout that Fitzpatrick gave Rove the weekend to "set his affairs in order," though that appears not to be true at this point.

What do you think? Is he going down or not?

the end of the free press

We should've known it was only a matter of time. From ABC News:

A senior federal law enforcement official tells ABC News the government is tracking the phone numbers we call in an effort to root out confidential sources.

"It's time for you to get some new cell phones, quick," the source told us in an in-person conversation.

ABC News does not know how the government determined who we are calling, or whether our phone records were provided to the government as part of the recently-disclosed NSA collection of domestic phone calls.

Other sources have told us that phone calls and contacts by reporters for ABC News, along with the New York Times and the Washington Post, are being examined as part of a widespread CIA leak investigation.

By "confidential sources" he of course means "whistleblowers." And yes, intimidation of whistleblowers is against the law. But then again, so is data-mining people's phones without FISA approval.

But don't worry, I won't make any comparisons to fascism 'cuz it's, like, totally different.

the axis of feeble

This week's cover of The Economist:
From the Economist. Damn.

the Office

I know, I know, LOST is the greatest show on television. But who'da thunk the jaw-dropping surprise moment of the week would come from Jim and Pam from the Office? Here's a great rundown from Salon, and a great synopsis of the Office's evolution from someone who thinks wayyy too much about TV:

It's not that the writing improved between the two seasons -- it has always been strong -- or that Carell ramped up his shtick, but through the fall and into the spring, the show cast off the last vestiges of the BBC show it was originally based on and found its wings.

I've been lovin' the show since the first season because the humor is so excruciating and voyeuristic and refreshingly human, not at all like the cookie-cutter crustiness of King of Queens and all that other shite. Yet I didn't realize until the season finale yesterday just how much I've gotten into the characters.

The writing on this show is really good.

wow, is that even possible?

Harris Interactive pegs W at 29%. I'm gonna take this one with a grain of salt until I see one of the more reputable outfits match this number.

Update: I had forgotten that this is the Wall Street Journal/Harris poll. This is one of the more reputable outfits! Ponies for everyone!

Update II: Atrios has a funny reaction to the poll.

step outta line, the man come and take you away...

So, can we impeach yet? USA Today's big scoop:

The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.
...
"It's the largest database ever assembled in the world," said one person, who, like the others who agreed to talk about the NSA's activities, declined to be identified by name or affiliation. The agency's goal is "to create a database of every call ever made" within the nation's borders, this person added.

For the customers of these companies, it means that the government has detailed records of calls they made — across town or across the country — to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others.
...
The NSA's domestic program, as described by sources, is far more expansive than what the White House has acknowledged. Last year, Bush said he had authorized the NSA to eavesdrop — without warrants — on international calls and international e-mails of people suspected of having links to terrorists when one party to the communication is in the USA. Warrants have also not been used in the NSA's efforts to create a national call database.

Remember, AT&T now owns SBC (and, I believe, Cingular), so if you use any of those-- or Verizon or BellSouth-- the government now has a list of every call you've made since they started this program. The other important thing to note is that these companies volunteered the information; the NSA didn't subpoena your call records, and these companies could've turned them down.

In fact, one company did just that (turned the NSA down, that is): Qwest. If they operate where you live, I would strongly suggest switching your service to them. John Aravosis also suggests encrypting your emails from now on, and provides links to show you how.

don't they have anything better to do?

You'll be super shocked at this one. From the Washington Post:

House and Senate Republican negotiators reached a final agreement yesterday on a five-year, nearly $70 billion tax package that would extend President Bush's deep cuts to tax rates on dividends and capital gains, while sparing about 15 million middle-income Americans from the alternative minimum tax.
...
Middle-income households would receive an average tax cut of $20 from the agreement, according to the joint Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center, while 0.02 percent of households with incomes over $1 million would receive average tax cuts of $42,000.

What can I say? I stand in awe of Republican family valyews.

Well, I know the crops in Iraq are doing well, what with us rebuilding schools and all...

Do you feel like you're being brainwashed yet? From the Washington Post:

Career appointees at the Department of Agriculture were stunned last week to receive e-mailed instructions that include Bush administration "talking points" -- saying things such as "President Bush has a clear strategy for victory in Iraq" -- in every speech they give for the department.

"The President has requested that all members of his cabinet and sub-cabinet incorporate message points on the Global War on Terror into speeches, including specific examples of what each agency is doing to aid the reconstruction of Iraq," the May 2 e-mail from USDA speechwriter Heather Vaughn began.
...
Another attachment "contains specific examples of GWOT messages within agriculture speeches. Please use these message points as often as possible and send Harry Phillips , USDA's director of speechwriting, a weekly email summarizing the event, date and location of each speech incorporating the attached language. Your responses will be included in a weekly account sent to the White House."

Yeah, you read that right. Dept. of Agriculture employees not only are being told to plug talking points about the Iraq War into their speeches, but the Administration is keeping tabs of how many times they do.

Have you ever felt that we are all just figments of George Orwell's imagination?

Mr. 31%

Remember that poll yesterday that pegged W at 31%. It wasn't an outlier.

buried in the muck

Looks like the Republicans have become so hopelessly corrupt that they don't even know what ethics look like anymore. FromDallas Business Journal (via Think Progress):

"He had made every effort to get a contract with HUD for 10 years," [HUD Secretary] Jackson said of the prospective contractor. "He made a heck of a proposal and was on the (General Services Administration) list, so we selected him. He came to see me and thank me for selecting him. Then he said something ... he said, 'I have a problem with your president.'

"I said, 'What do you mean?' He said, 'I don't like President Bush.' I thought to myself, 'Brother, you have a disconnect -- the president is elected, I was selected. You wouldn't be getting the contract unless I was sitting here. If you have a problem with the president, don't tell the secretary.'

"He didn't get the contract," Jackson continued. "Why should I reward someone who doesn't like the president, so they can use funds to try to campaign against the president? Logic says they don't get the contract. That's the way I believe."

As if I have to say it, yes, it is illegal to deny a contract based on political affiliation. What made this jackass think that kind of thing is ok? Interestingly, as Think Progress notes, it's also not normal practice for the Secretary to negotiate contracts, though really, it would just be another drop in the ocean at this point.

it hurts because it's true

A great editorial from the good Chicago paper:

A "blogstorm" is thundering across liberal Web sites. Many liberals are furious at the White House press corps for virtually ignoring Stephen Colbert's keynote speech at the press corp's own White House Correspondents' Dinner last Saturday.
...
How's this for a newsworthy lead? It was perhaps the first time in Bush's tenure that the president was forced to sit and listen to any American cite the litany of criminal and corruption allegations that have piled up against his administration. And mouth-tense Bush and first lady Laura Bush fled as soon as possible afterward.

Wow, someone in the traditional media finally said it. Someone finally acknowledged the possibility of ... no, it can't be!... conservative bias in the press corps?!:

To non-liberals, this may seem like an isolated complaint. To liberals, it further justifies their belief that the media, particularly TV news, is a big stinking cabal of conservatives.
...
This is trouble for the media. It has been losing customers to bloggers and Web sites for years. This won't help. The media's implosion of silence could be one of the final reasons many liberals use to not turn on TV news. It's not like they feel a vested interest in the industry anyway, since it has been bought and parceled by conservatives.

There is Rupert Murdoch's Fox News, that Pravda of GOP propaganda and breeding ground for Bush appointees. There are the networks' Sunday news shows that give more face time to Republicans. There are cable news channels like MSNBC, where Republicans have programmed the shows and hired on-air Republicans and conservatives-lite, from Tucker Carlson to Joe Scarborough and Chris Matthews. Some TV watchdogs even chronicle these conservative media daily, backed up by transcripts and video clips from TV news shows, in the expansive Web site, MediaMatters.com.

I think it's quickly solidifying into conventional wisdom that the International Society of Cocktail Weenie Addicts so brazenly refused to report on Colbert because, at the end of the day, they were his pinata every bit as much as the president, and as ridiculous as Colbert made the president look, the press looked even more pathetic for being so thoroughly cowed and complicit. Every day the truth becomes more uncomfortable for the media, who, in an age where nearly all government apparatus and national organizations have failed us, have failed us perhaps most profoundly because they were supposed to be the watchdogs. They were supposed to be the stopgap.

Why has it taken this long for someone in the media to connect the dots? The media foamed at the mouth over Clinton's infidelity and tried their damnedest to undermine his approval ratings by printing editorial after editorial telling us that everyone hates the president (which we didn't) and that impeachment is the only just reaction (which it wasn't). Then there was the 2000 election, where the media mercilessly attacked Gore, gleefully replaying over and over every tiny misstep of the Gore campaign, and every bogus charge and libellous claim of the Bush campaign (you think the Swift Boat Vets didn't base their strategy on the media's "golly-gee!" gullibility in believing that Gore really said "I invented the internet?") without any hint of integrity and remorse after the fact. Then there was the genuflecting toward the president after 9/11, and the fight to justify the Iraq War, where psychological warfare was waged upon the American people every day from the nation's editorial pages and cable news shows.

Remember people, someday we will have to tell our children that we as a country actually debated such things as the use of torture, whether the president can act outside the law and even the Constitution itself, wiretapping American citizens, and whether outing covert CIA agents is the same thing as whistleblowing on illegal government practices.

Someday, the press is going to have to own up to the fact that they took sides long ago, and the consequences have been disastrous. Yet, just like the president, when they can't spin it away, they just remain silent, hiding the truth, and waiting for the people to get distracted by the next story.

raisin' da roof

From the Washington Post (via FDL):

A $2.7 trillion budget plan pending before the House would raise the federal debt ceiling to nearly $10 trillion, less than two months after Congress last raised the federal government's borrowing limit.

The provision -- buried on page 121 of the 151-page budget blueprint -- serves as a backdrop to congressional action this week...

With passage of the budget, the House will have raised the federal borrowing limit by an additional $653 billion, to $9.62 trillion. It would be the fifth debt-ceiling increase in recent years, after boosts of $450 billion in 2002, a record $984 billion in 2003, $800 billion in 2004 and $653 billion in March. When Bush took office, the statutory borrowing limit stood at $5.95 trillion.

Tell me more about fiscal responsibility, tell me more...

But hey, at least they're having to keep piling on the loans to China (that, of course, the communists can sell to places like North Korea and Iran anytime they want-- isn't that a nice thought?) to pay for important stuff, right?

Leaders also hope to pass a package of tax-cut extensions that would cost the Treasury $70 billion over the next five years. They would then turn Thursday to a $513 billion defense policy bill that would block President Bush's request to raise health-care fees and co-payments for service members and their families.
...
But the federal debt keeps climbing because of continued deficit spending and the government's insatiable borrowing from the Social Security trust fund.

Suddenly, it makes a lot more sense why they're saying Social Security will run out of money sooner than expected, eh?

God does not like me this much

All the scuttlebutt is that Fitzgerald's investigation is going to end in a couple of weeks, and will culminate in the indictment of Karl Rove.

I'll believe it when I see it.

CIA shakeup

For those of you who are interested, Josh Marshall is all over the recent events in the CIA, particularly the links between them and crooked lobbyists: Foggo and Goss' connection to the infamous Watergate hooker parties, CIA director nominee Hayden's to the same defense company, MZM, that bought Cunningham, etc.

All this, of course, is beside the point of Hayden's active participation in the creation of the domestic eavesdropping program now squatting over the Bill of Rights. And then there's this. Just so we're all on the same page, here's the text of the 4th Amendment:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

It should be noted that even this paltry degree of verification is beyond what you'll get from the traditional media (to whom every day I feel more inclined to refer as "the Stupids").

Suffice it to say there's a pretty significant part of this story that isn't getting much airtime.

Bush at 31%

Holy crap:

President Bush's approval rating has slumped to 31% in a new USA TODAY/Gallup Poll, the lowest of his presidency and a warning sign for Republicans in the November elections.
...
Bush's fall is being fueled by erosion among support from conservatives and Republicans. In the poll, 52% of conservatives and 68% of Republicans approved of the job he is doing. Both are record lows among those groups.

Moderates gave him an approval rating of 28%, liberals of 7%."

You'd almost think he was trying to score low.

it's funny, but not like he's thinking it's funny

I couldn't agree more. From Reuters UK:

BERLIN (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush told a German newspaper his best moment in more than five years in office was catching a big perch in his own lake.

"You know, I've experienced many great moments and it's hard to name the best," Bush told weekly Bild am Sonntag when asked about his high point since becoming president in January 2001.

"I would say the best moment of all was when I caught a 7.5 pound (3.402 kilos) perch in my lake," he told the newspaper in an interview published on Sunday.

Even Bush agrees, in 5 and a half years in office his shining moments came when he was far, far away from Washington and cameras and politics. It figures: it's where he spent the most time, judging from the record-shattering, mind-boggling amounts of vacation he's taken.

I think we can all agree that possibly the stupidest move the collective public has made in the last 30 years is robbing this poor man of the chance to play "rancher" all day long.

slow weekend

Sorry all, I know I've been slow in posting, especially considering the events of the weekend. I was off at a huge medievalist conference in Michigan (NERD ALERT!) and I was away from computers for several days. Anyhoo, I'll drop some lines about the CIA head issues and whatnot in the near future.

round of applause

Congrats and a big 10-gallon tip to Amber for passing her inexcusably comprehensive exams, and a pre-emptive tip to Grimsaburger, who hasn't taken them yet but is a lock for hers as well.

And I have only one thing to say to the Academy, for sticking with such a disastrous and unhealthy examination system: "HEY!! YOU EVER HEAR OF DIMINISHING RETURNS, JACKASS!?"

binga Chush

Says President Nukular:

After saying he did not consider the anthem sung in Spanish to have the same value as the anthem sung in English, Mr. Bush said: "I think people who want to be a citizen of this country ought to learn English. And they ought to learn to sing the anthem in English."

Atrios documents the hypocrisy. First:

Of all of the recent fake controversies the Spanish Star-Spangled Banner one was actually the one which put my jaw on the floor and left it there. We are really living in stupid times.

In 1919 the US Bureau of Education commissioned a Spanish version of the song. I don't know why they did so, though an obvious explanation would be because of the substantial numbers of native Spanish speaking citizens living in US states and territories - then and now.

Second (from Kevin Drum's American Dynasty, emphasis added):

When visiting cities like Chicago, Milwaukee or Philadelphia, in pivotal states, [Bush] would drop in at Hispanic festivals and parites, sometimes joining in singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" in Spanish, sometimes partying with a "Viva Bush" mariachi band flown in from Texas.

Every time he opens his mouth, ya know?

the sheer breadth of the incompetence

How many does this story have to come out before people start connecting the dots?

According to current and former intelligence officials, Plame Wilson, who worked on the clandestine side of the CIA in the Directorate of Operations as a non-official cover (NOC) officer, was part of an operation tracking distribution and acquisition of weapons of mass destruction technology to and from Iran.

Reports Shuster in this rush transcript: "INTELLIGENCE SOURCES SAY VALERIE WILSON WAS PART OF AN OPERATION THREE YEARS AGO TRACKING THE PROLIFERATION OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS MATERIAL INTO IRAN. AND THE SOURCES ALLEGE THAT WHEN MRS. WILSON'S COVER WAS BLOWN, THE ADMINISTRATION'S ABILITY TO TRACK IRAN'S NUCLEAR AMBITIONS WAS DAMAGED AS WELL."

Remember, people, this all started with a stolen election, which led to a lazy president caught with his head on the desk when bin Laden sent his goons into America's airports. This, in turn, led to the devising of a selfish war cloaked under the War on Terra, which was argued for in the State of the Union address ("Saddam is seeking nukular uranium from Niger"). The questioning of these claims by Joe Wilson prompted the White House to out his secret agent wife to shut him up, as well as others who might be tempted to speak out. The damage done to our anti-WMD proliferation operations in Iran by blowing the cover of one of the agents involved leads to... ?

It's all just one long chain of incompetence and deceit. The important thing, of course, is that he has not yet gotten a blowjob from one of the interns. That's why none of this is impeachable.

today I become a Titans fan

Well, folks, there it is. For the second time this year, Vince Young has made a fool of all the talking heads in sports and outdone the much-vaunted Matt Leinart:

With the third pick, the Titans had three outstanding quarterbacks to choose from. Matt Leinart had worked under Titans offensive coordinator Norm Chow at Southern California, and Jay Cutler of Vanderbilt was the sentimental pick locally. They later picked up USC running back LenDale White in the second round.

Reese said Young's upside was the deciding factor.

"People want to make him out to be a Michael Vick. He's not that. He's different," Reese said.

"This guy, he led the nation in college as a junior in passing efficiency. This guy is special. Now we have to get him special in the NFL, and that's why it's going to take a little bit of time. And we realize that. It's a big jump."

I particularly like the fact that, in a way, Young is the hometown hero-- after all, not so long ago the Titans were known as the Houston Oilers.

Again we see how useless and myopic the vast majority of professional sportscasters are. I didn't read a single one who put Young higher than no.7 (several had him going to Oakland... yuck!) and they were pretty much all in agreement that Leinart would be in the top 3. Some of the same ones are now snickering at the Texans for passing on Leinart and Bush (despite the fact that QB and RB are pretty much the only positions they don't need) so that they could pick up a DE and, ya know, maybe try to fix the worst defense in the NFL.

One moron (whose mock draft article is, predictably, already taken down from Yahoo! sports-- you should've seen the reshuffling on their sports page after the Rose Bowl!) actually said that the Titans would never take Young because-- get this-- their offense would have to be totally redesigned. 'Cuz, ya know, if there was any quarterback in the NFL one could compare Vince Young to, it certainly wouldn't be Steve McNair .

There's a reason these guys aren't coaches or scouts, and it ain't because the money's better in professional wankery.

is there anything they haven't done?

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the impotence of negativity

From AP:

A Senate inquiry into the government's Hurricane Katrina failures ripped the Bush administration anew Thursday and urged the scrapping of the nation's disaster response agency. But with a new hurricane season just weeks away, senators conceded that few if any of their proposals could become reality in time.
...
The senators concluded that only by abolishing the Federal Emergency Management Agency — which Sen. Susan Collins (news, bio, voting record), R-Maine, called a "bumbling bureaucracy" — and replacing it with a stronger authority could the government best respond to future catastrophes.

Digby has an interesting take on this, specifically that such governmental failure is, in fact, the Republican objective, because it plays into the Reaganite "government is the problem" perspective. When bureaucratic structures fail, Republicans can stand over the ashes and rubble and proclaim that they were right: government is utterly unable to do anything effectively. Nevermind that in some of these cases (FEMA being one such case), these apparatus worked just fine until the Republicans came into power and sapped their funding, packed their leadership with cronies and sycophants, shoved them deep into the bowels of larger and clumsier bureaucracies, etc.

Though it is true that FEMA and other organizations were corrupted and stultified by Republican mismanagement, I don't know if I'm quite willing to jump off Digby's bridge and say that Republicans actually intended for FEMA to fail (though I do think you could say that about John Bolton's torpedoing of UN reform). Instead, it seems to me merely to be the natural consequence of hiring people to do a job who fundamentally believe that the job can't be done.

Let me explain. Supposedly there is a tactic used in Buddhism to figure out the answer to a problem. They try instead to remember it, because to admit that there may not be an answer is to succumb to the crushing, self-defeating power of despair. In the West, we call it "the power of positive thinking," or "where there's a will, there's a way." People have an uncanny, almost preternatural ability to prove themselves right, so if they engage upon a task that they honestly believe they cannot accomplish, odds are, they won't.

Reaganite Republicans do not believe that the government is capable of working effectively. For them to admit that it can, and often does (even including some of their biggest bogeymen, like Social Security and Medicare), would undermine their entire political philosophy. Is it any surprise, then, that they have been a failure at governing, that nearly everything they've touched in domestic policy, from Medicare Plan D to FEMA and Homeland Security to FDA administration to the budget has been a disaster?

History utterly refutes Collins and Lieberman's conclusions that FEMA is hopelessly broken and doesn't work: it was a smashing success and the crown jewel of American disaster relief agencies less than a decade ago. It's just never worked effectively under Republicans.

the Christian Right is neither

From the Washington Post (via Digby):

Amid all the partisan rancor of congressional politics, the softball league has for 37 years been a rare case of bipartisan civility, an opportunity for Democratic and Republican aides to sneak out of work a bit early and take the field in the name of the lawmaker, committee or federal agency they work for.

This year, the league will be missing something: a lot of the Republicans.

During the off-season, a group of Republican teams seceded from the league after accusing its Democratic commissioner, Gary Caruso, of running a socialist year-end playoff system that gives below-average teams an unfair chance to win the championship.

The league "is all about Softball Welfare -- aiding the weak by punishing the strong," the pitcher of one Republican team told Mr. Caruso in an email. "The commissioner has a long-standing policy of punishing success and rewarding failure. He's a Democrat. Waddya' expect?" read another email, from Gary Mahmoud, the coach of BoehnerLand, a team from the office of Republican Majority Leader John Boehner.

Digby notes that this softball game is, umm, relaxed: no balls or strikes so people can wait for their choice pitch to swing. He then opines:

Can someone tell me why these awesome GOP athletes aren't in Iraq instead of measuring their dicks in a slow-pitch softball league that a junior high girls team could easily dominate? Could it be because they are a bunch of pathetic, bedwetting chickenshits? I thought so.

A worthy question, indeed.

I had a bit of a different reaction, though. The sentiment that these future burglars and lobbyists emote has interesting, and ironic, parallels, especially for being from the "Christian valyews" party. I feel that I have license to consider their statements paradigmatic, as they echo the statements of many "conservatarians" I have known, and are emblematic of part of the core of the conservative ideal. The perspective of these kids is echoed by congressional leaders, Republican presidents, and the heads of many churches in this country.

Compare the above statement about the "weak" and "strong" to this: "Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you at the foundation of the world, for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, ... Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me." Not too similar at all, eh? That was Matthew 25:35-40, one of the foundational passages in Christian theology, considered by many the hard core of Christian ethics.

How about this: This figure describes his faith as "a brutal religion of elitism and social Darwinism that seeks to re-establish the reign of the able over the idiotic, of swift justice over injustice, and for a wholesale rejection of egalitarianism as a myth that has crippled the advancement of the human species for the last two thousand years." Now there's a matching sentiment!

The name of the figure who gave the last quote? Peter Gilmore.
His occupation? High Priest of the Church of Satan.

passing the savings on...to the oil companies

From AP:

Crude oil and gasoline futures fell Tuesday after President Bush gave the Environmental Protection Agency the authority to relax regional clean-fuel standards to attract more imports of gasoline to the United States and to make it easier for supplies to be moved from one state to another.

I'm sorry, are we supposed to be buying the argument that gas prices are high because petroleum companies spend so much on environmental safeguards? Seriously, in the era of the "Clear Skies Initiative" and record profits for oil companies, we're supposed to believe that consumers are getting screwed because ExxonMobil is hard up for cash?

Maybe they could reallocate some of Exxon CEO Lee Raymond's $49 million annual compensation.

Leaks

Here is a good post by Larry Johnson on the kind of hypocrisy coming from the Bush Administration and their faux-patriot toadies. Says Johnson:

There is a fundamental moral and ethical difference between someone who leaks information in order to serve the public good and someone, like George Bush, who authorizes leaks only for the purpose of saving his sorry political ass.

Couldn't have put it better myself. The cases he's referring to are the leaking of the identity of Valerie Plame, a covert CIA operative working on, of all things, Iranian WMD counter-proliferation (as in, her job was to stop Iran from getting nukes) by administration officials Karl Rove and Scooter Libby, and the alleged leaking by Mary McCarthy of the fact that the CIA is torturing detainees in secret ex-Soviet gulags in Europe.

In the former case, the Administration intentionally leaked information to the press as a shot across the bow of a man who dared to debunk the false "Saddam is seeking uranium from Niger" story that W used to scare us into Iraq. In the latter case, the administration is doggedly trying to punish others for whistleblowing on the truly wicked policies Rumsfeld put in place.

There is no moral equivalence between intimidation and whistleblowing. Anyone who makes such a claim is lying to you.

The only standard being applied here is what is good for W. What is good for W should be done, what is bad for W should be punished. That is not ethics, or morality, or "family values" (unless by "family" in the same sense as the Mafia), or responsible policy-making, or smart military policy.

It is self-preservation at any cost. Even if that cost is the rule of law. The mantra of the Bush Administration.

W's letter to the first daughters

Well, he is right about the valley girl thing.

Poor Bus(c)h twins. I'd have picked Jack Carter, but whatever.

re: Jenny's post

Jenny made some good points in her comment on the "answers to Matt's q" post that I suggest you check out. I want to take a moment to continue those streams.

I can't find the link, but someone a lot smarter than myself said recently (paraphrasing) that it's a sad fact of this country that people whose ancestors have lived in California since it was part of the Spanish Empire get treated like "immigrants" by people who are the descendents of Okies. I imagine that has mixed effects on people: some feel a connectedness with illegals and want to help them, others feel like they're suffering for someone else's actions and resent them for it.

Even that notwithstanding, though, Jenny's 100% correct that it's stupid to assume that Hispanics represent some singular voting block in the way that African Americans or Christian conservatives do, because there's not as much holding that group together. Catholicism in America is pretty evenly divided along political lines, and there's really no reason to suggest that non-immigrant Hispanics (i.e. those who have assimilated into "mainstream" American culture) would necessarily share any political affinity with immigrants. It's sorta like saying that everyone of Polish or German ancestry in the US should have the same political proclivities as Polish or German immigrants or even immigrants in the general sense.

That being said, it does appear that Hispanic immigrants (and judging from pictures of various protests, immigrants generally) share an affinity with, or at least sympathy for, illegals. As Jenny mentioned, the protests were not comprised solely of illegals, and in all likelihood were not even majority illegals. This is a potentially huge voting block (immigrants, that is) that gets made into a whipping boy by nativist conservatives every time some foreign power scares the bejesus out of them (for a little light reading on this point, just google "Operation Wetback" to see a particularly disgusting former manifestation of what we're seeing now).

It's a subtle strain of racism that conflates "Hispanics" and "immigrants," and that racism appears both in Congressman Hayworth's defense of the Arizona proposition, and in my own inability to immediately recognize it for what it was.

This is a conversation, and an admission, that needs to be made on a national level if we are ever to deal honestly and seriously about the immigration issue.

lobbing grenades in the propaganda wars

Just in case anyone was confused by the latest Republican propaganda, the wicked House bill that Latinos are reacting to is a Republican bill, not a Democratic one. Republican Rep. James Sensenbrenner introduced the bill making illegal immigration and aiding/abetting a felony, and then an amendment was introduced to soften it to a misdemeanor.

So the story goes, the Republicans added the amendment because they didn't want to give illegals the right to an attorney and a jury trial that would be afforded them if accused of a felony. Judging from the recent media onslaught, however, it looks like there was more to this.

The amendment was a trap. It was sorta like asking the Democrats, "Yes or no, have you stopped beating your wife?" If the Dems voted for it, the Republicans would say they were for criminalizing illegal immigration and selling out their principles; if they voted against, they were for felonizing illegal immigration.

The Democrats did the smart thing; they knocked down the amendment, because the Sensenbrenner bill in its original, undiluted state was more likely to scare lawmakers away and fail to pass the House, and extremely unlikely to survive the Senate.

Thus, the Republican tripe on the airwaves right now is a pathetic and mendacious attempt to foist their own scapegoating and hatemongering onto the Democrats who actually protected illegal immigrants and their families.

answer to Matt's q

Matt asked a question about a republican pol on Press the Meat last week who said something about a majority of Hispanics supporting the House approach to immigration.

So I did some digging, and here's what I found:

Last weekend Rep. JD Hayworth (R-AZ) was on the show, and he said:

As I write in my book, let’s take a look back to 2004. Proposition 200 on the ballot in Arizona, to deprive illegals of social benefits, and it passed overwhelmingly. And as the Arizona Daily Star reported, it passed with a majority of Hispanic votes as well. The fact is, Hispanics voted in greater numbers for Proposition 200 than they did for President Bush, who received 43 percent of the Hispanic vote in Arizona.

So it looks like it was actually an Arizona state bill, not the federal one, that he was talking about. Now, the next question from here is "what did the proposition say?"
From Wikipedia:

Proposition 200, an Arizona state referendum passed in November 2004 with 56% of the vote, requires individuals to produce proof of citizenship before they may register to vote or apply for public benefits in Arizona. The proposition also makes it a misdemeanor for public officials to fail to report persons unable to produce documentation of citizenship who apply for these benefits, and allows citizens who believe that public officials have given undocumented persons benefits to sue for remedies.

So the prop was harsh and racist in my opinion, but nowhere near making crossing the border illegally or helping anyone who did a felony, like the House bill. There's also something to be said for the fact that 43% of Latinos in AZ voted for W in 2004, so it sounds like AZ Latinos are pretty conservative, anyway. There are a ton of people, Hispanic and otherwise, who would support denying welfare to illegals but not shoving them through the highly expensive judicial system or throwing them in prison.

I was bothered by something when I read this, though, namely that Hayworth had said the bill passed "overwhelmingly," but here it says it garnered 56% of the vote, which is admittedly strong, but "overwhelmingly?" Not so much. So I decided to check and see just how many Latinos voted for it.

Apparently Rep. Hayworth didn't get his degree in math, unless there's a new school that says 47% is a majority.

Sargent on immigration

The beauty of cartoons is that they can distill an entire argument into a single, easily comprehensible and recognizable idea. Like this one, the brutally simple yet cogent rebuttal to Republican mean-spiritedness on immigration reform: