Heraldblog

Gingrich thinks Limbaugh is "irrational"

2009-03-08T12:46:00.004-05:00

And cue Newt's apology in five, four, three, two...

Saturday morning music break

2009-02-14T08:48:00.000-06:00

Memo to Dubya: Try peering in his sole

2008-12-15T19:17:00.005-06:00

Muntader al-Zaidi: This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq.

President George W. Bush: I don't know what his beef was.

People of Iraq: I think he's trying to tell you that we object to all those people you killed.

Clash of the Titans

2008-10-13T21:05:00.007-05:00

What was this guy thinking?

Arnold Conrad, the former pastor of Grace Evangelical Free Church in Davenport, warmed up a McCain rally last week with the news that God will be really, really embarrassed if Barack Obama wins the November election.

“There are millions of people around this world praying to their god—whether it’s Hindu, Buddha, Allah—that his opponent wins, for a variety of reasons. And Lord, I pray that you will guard your own reputation, because they’re going to think that their God is bigger than you, if that happens,” said Conrad.

God doesn't need this shit. I mean, he worked his ass off, seven days and seven nights to create the universe, and the last thing he needs is to get dissed by that smart aleck Vishnu who's all "So, God, how's that Obama guy working out for you?", and Buddha going on with his "one with everything" psychobabble.

My God may be an awesome God, but he looks at the polls just like everyone else.

What Bill O'Reilly doesn't want you to know

2008-09-26T14:10:00.002-05:00

It's not because O'Reilly is a stickler for evidence. He just needs a bogeyman. In this case, it's a liberal political advocacy group that raised funds to publicize what our corporate media hasn't told us: that John McCain has a serious health issue.

That's all.

"Less taxes, more war"

2008-09-16T14:05:00.002-05:00

I'd have to give neo-con Attorney Gabriel Nathan Schwartz an A for honesty. Not sure about his judgement, though, given that a couple hours after giving this interview, Schwartz was drugged and robbed by a St. Paul hooker.

That's not a bridge we can believe in

2008-09-04T22:23:00.004-05:00

OK, so Sarah Palin was for the bridge before she was against it. I get that. But the larger question is, why does Alaska need federal funding for a bridge? Alaskan oil generates more wealth per capita than any other state. What was once called Seward's Folly could rightly be called the Saudi Arabia of North America, and not just because it's run by religious nuts. While most states go begging for funds year after year, Ketchikan Tea generates surplus revenue year after year - $5 billion in 2008. Palin even forced an oil windfall profits tax through the Alaskan legislature last year that netted $6 billion. That's enough dough for 18 bridges to nowhere, with change left over to spay the governor's daughter.

For all their talk of fiscal restraint and personal responsibility, Republicans line up at the federal trough with everyone else.

Priceless

2008-09-02T21:17:00.001-05:00

Paris responds

2008-08-06T08:24:00.007-05:00

Paris Hilton Responds to McCain Adfunny videosFunnyOrDie.com

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

Who but John McCain could elicit sympathy for Paris Hilton? I can't wait for Team Spears' response.

FunnyOrDie.com is a working collaboration of comedy heavyweights Will Ferrell and Adam McKay, BTW. Great to see them making a difference.

Paris' response actually makes sense, and yes I did use the phrases "Paris Hilton" and "make sense" in a single sentence. Allowing limited off shore exploration - and that's what we're talking about, since drilling is years away - while investing in energy conservation and alternative fuel transportation - is the best of both worlds. Increasing domestic supply is a doubled edged sword if not managed right. On one hand, sending fewer petro dollars to Islamic theme-park oil producers and African despots is a good thing. But increased supplies at home mean lower oil prices, which means less incentive to conserve and drive more efficient cars. Hilton's energy platform, which bares an uncanny resemblance to Obama's philosophy, is the best of both worlds.

Paint it black

2008-05-20T12:54:00.003-05:00

They just can't help themselves, those brave National Review editors who, like the musicians on the Titanic, kept a stiff upper lip right to the end. Of course it's easy to be distracted when the ship of state is listing and the cold reality of political armaggedon calls from below decks.

But still, "Black" refers to Charlie Black, Sen. John McCain's sleazeball senior advisor, who lied about his shady lobbyist connections. Black, in this context, has nothing to do with the junior senator from Illinois.

By the numbers

2008-04-29T18:50:00.006-05:00

In his ridiculous and embarrassing press conference today, the former governor of Texas said the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge contains "27 million gallons of diesel and gasoline from crude oil." That's as much gasoline as American's burn during a single 5 o'clock rush hour. But even if he meant to say 27 billion barrels of oil, that's still far from reality based. According to ANWR.org, a website that promotes the exploitation of the national wildlife refuge, "Studies of the ANWR coastal plain indicate it may contain between 6 and 16 billion barrels of recoverable oil." The 27 billion figure is wildly optimistic estimate of the oil "in place", that could be recovered if the higher estimates are correct, and if oil companies think it is profitable to invest in new technologies to suck the last drops of oil from the Earth's crust before the human race returns to its hunter gatherer roots.

How can Bush even pretend to be serious about a national energy policy if he can't even get the numbers right?

In hot pursuit

2008-04-12T08:55:00.005-05:00

There was a time when Bush Administration officials could tell a lie with the best of them. Sure, they fell short of fooling all of the people all of the time, but you have to admit, their WMD/alQaeda-Saddam link whoppers had most Americans, and 99 percent of the press, going for a while.

And that's what has me puzzled about Cheney's latest prevarication. He's telling anyone who will listen (aka Sean Hannity) that if the US leaves The Land Between the Rivers, then al Qaeda will get rich on Iraq's vast oil reserves, and use its new found wealth to destabilize the world.

Listening to the interview, I can imagine Bush and his co-conspirators huddled around a radio in the Oval Office, one of them going "Here it is! Wait for it! It's coming!", and then breaking into Katrinas of laughter when the line comes. "I can't believe he really said it. I bet him a thousand dollars he couldn't pull it off without laughing," says Bush, wiping away a tear.

It's beyond improbable that al Qaeda, a Sunni terrorist group, could wrest control of Iraq's oil fields from 20 million or so Shiites, then develop and maintain the complicated infrastructure, let alone possess the technical expertise necessary to extract one barrel of oil. It's like fearing that the Detroit Crips will seize General Motors, execute a successful corporate restructuring, then use the profits to import more cocaine.

Cheney's fairy tale reminds me of those scenes in TV cop shows where the bad guy is chased down the street, and he keeps knocking things over so they fall in the path of his pursuer to slow him down - a baby carriage, a newspaper rack, a fruit vendor stall. Rebranding al Qaeda as a rogue union of petroleum engineers is intended to slow down the anti-war hounds, to give the toothless media lap dogs one more excuse to back off on pushing calls for troop withdrawal. It also provides Hannity and other barking loons with more talking points to use against the 72 percent of Americans who disapprove of President George W. Bush.

Thank you Chicago Tribune

2008-03-07T23:40:00.003-06:00

Looks like the former first lady is padding her resume. The Chicago Tribune on Hillary's foreign policy chops:

Pressed in a CNN interview this week for specific examples of foreign policy experience that has prepared her for an international crisis, Clinton claimed that she "helped to bring peace" to Northern Ireland and negotiated with Macedonia to open up its border to refugees from Kosovo. She also cited "standing up" to the Chinese government on women's rights and a one-day visit she made to Bosnia following the Dayton peace accords.

Earlier in the campaign, she and her husband claimed that she had advocated on behalf of a U.S. military intervention in Rwanda to stop the genocide there.

But her involvement in the Northern Ireland peace process was primarily to encourage activism among women's groups there, a contribution that the lead U.S. negotiator described as "helpful" but that an Irish historian who has written extensively about the conflict dismissed as "ancillary" to the peace process.

The Macedonian government opened its border to refugees the day before Clinton arrived to meet with government leaders. And her mission to Bosnia was a one-day visit in which she was accompanied by performers Sheryl Crow and Sinbad, as well as her daughter, Chelsea, according to the commanding general who hosted her.

Sinbad deserves at least an ambassadorship for that one.

Hillary Clinton is a monster

2008-03-07T14:51:00.005-06:00

What, that was some sort of secret? The only question is, what kind of monster?

Is she a vampire, sucking the life out of Obama's message of hope? Absolutely. By saying that only she and John McCain are fit to lead the military, she has handed the GOP a kick-Obama-in-this-shins card this fall, just so the super delegates will have a strong reason to nominate her this summer.

Or is she Frankenstein's monster, stitched together with Karl Rove's brain, Dick Cheney's black heart, and George Bush's phony charm? A case can be made.

Hillary Clinton's slash and burn style of taking her case to the people recalls Godzilla in many ways, a creature awakened from a long sleep by human avarice and folly, who brings violence and mayhem to an unsuspecting population. Yes, Hillary is like Godzilla.

But the most terrifying monster of all, and what I fear we are now dealing with, is the monster that we can't see. It's always out sight, but we know it's out there, lurking, waiting for its moment, we can feel its eyes. Then we remember - we know the monster! But then it is too late.

The monster is us. It's our own cowardice and comfort. It's our unwillingness to face down the fearmongers and doomsayers, the nasty little men and women in need of a balcony.

Yes Hillary Clinton is a monster, but she's our monster. We gave her life. Now it's time to drive a stake through the heart of her campaign, and that of every politician like her.

I'm Heraldblog and I approve this message.

Bush's press conference

2008-02-29T07:16:00.002-06:00

Spare change from McCain

2008-02-20T07:27:00.004-06:00

It didn't take long for John McCain (R-Roadkill), to beta test his line of attack on Sen. Barack Obama (D-Speeding car). From TPM:

"I will fight every moment of every day in this campaign to make sure Americans are not deceived by an eloquent but empty call for change."

McCain said the phrase "eloquent but empty call for change" repeatedly, indicating that the campaign had settled on it as a chosen phrase against the person they expect to be their opponent this fall.

"Eloquent but empty call for change." Get used to that one, you'll be hearing a lot of it.

McCain also reminded voters that Obama said he would bomb Pakistan, a supposed US ally. What Obama really said was that he would take unilaterial action against al Qaeda in Pakistan if the Pakistan government failed to act. Sort of like how the Bush Adminstration launched two Hellfire missiles from a Predator drone last month to take out an al Qaeda dude in Pakistan.

Abu Laith al-Libi, a wanted al Qaeda terrorist, was killed in Pakistan by a CIA airstrike, three U.S. officials told CNN Thursday.

Al-Libi was described as a senior al Qaeda leader believed to have plotted and executed attacks against U.S. and coalition forces, including a February 2007 bombing at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan during a visit by Vice President Dick Cheney.

He was on a "most wanted" list of 12 accused terrorists which was issued in October by the Combined Joint Task Force-82 -- an anti-terror unit in Afghanistan.
Earlier, a knowledgeable Western official and a military source confirmed al-Libi's death to CNN. The same official said al-Libi is "not far below the importance of the top two al Qaeda leaders" -- Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri.
The officials said al-Libi was killed by a missile from an airplane.

Oops.

Mental mush

2008-01-08T22:48:00.000-06:00

President Bush just gave an interview to Al Arabiya, the government-controlled voice of Saudi Arabia . Can you guess which quotes are actually his, and which ones are fabricated in order to heap well-deserved ridicule on this wantwit? The answer is posted in the first comment.

I think the major obstacle to peace is going to be the politics of both Palestinians and Israelis trying to take advantage of the difficult work that these two leaders are going to have to do to define a state; that's what I think. I think that extremists, in some instances, will try to stop the peace.
Taking dictation out of the region is a common interest of - is common to all of us.
There was common interests - common ground has been now recognized.
And so I've spent a lot of time with allies in Europe, for example, convincing them of the importance of working together to send a common to the Iranian regime.
And in order to have a safe and secure society, the state has got to show that it can provide security for the people and not tolerate pockets of extreme radicals who are murderers in their intentions, and he did.
The average - you know, it's still tough. There's still too many suiciders, but the level of violence is declining.
Freedoms are given - a gift from God, and whether you call God Allah or God, he tells us - or she - that it's given.
Relations are improving when they get better, but not with suiciders.
I would give - if, in fact, Syria is trying to stop suiciders, I will give them credit, of course. I hope that's the case. It's certainly one way to begin to earn better relations with the United States, is to stop the exportation of suiciders who go kill innocent people.
We've sanctioned Syria, and I'm looking at different ways to keep sending a tough message, because so far, he has shown no willingness to be constructive on Lebanon or in dealing with a militant Hamas or in stopping suiciders from heading into Iraq.

h/t: First-Draft

Rudy on MTP

2007-12-09T09:56:00.000-06:00

Giuliani just told Tim Russert that he's opposed to mandating a 35 mpg standard for automobiles by 2020 because congress should concentrate on nuclear and hydroelectric power instead.

Huh?

Mike Huckabee - nauseating liar

2007-12-08T20:00:00.000-06:00

In 1992, Mike Huckabee was running for the Republican US Senate seat from Arkansas when he said AIDS patients should be quarantined. Fast forward 15 years and Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee is running for his party's nomination for President. And he has some splainin' to do:

Before a disease can be cured and contained we need to know exactly how and with near certainty what level of contact transmits the disease. There was still too much confusion about HIV transmission in those early years. Recall that in 1991, Kimberly Bergalis testified in front of Congress after contracting HIV from her dentist, and that summer a study was published showing that HIV was transmitted through breastmilk more easily than had been thought. But the federal government provided some guidelines: Also in 1991 the Centers for Disease Control recommended restrictions on the practice of HIV-positive health care workers.

Huckabee is lying. HIV's transmission routes and epidemiology were fairly well understood by 1985. Reagan's Surgeon General C. Everett Koop took the lead in educating the public about the nature of the disease at least four years before Huckabee misled Arkansas voters.

It is asinine for Huckabee to claim he was advocating the "same public health protocols" as used for other diseases. Somebody should ask Huckabee to name a single disease where public health policy calls for quarantining victims. By 1992, it was well known that quarantines would have done little to stem the AIDS epidemic, since a person can carry the virus for years without showing symptoms.

But Huckabee wasn't concerned about public health policy in 1992 - he just wanted to appeal to his base's prejudice against people living with HIV/AIDS and those at risk for it.

Anti-evolution. Pro abstinence-only sex ed. Scientific illiterate. Yep, Republicans are going to love this guy.

The shadow candidate

2007-12-06T22:01:00.000-06:00

Does every Massachusetts politician think he's the ghost of JFK? Is there something in the water in the Bay State? Willard Romney (and stop calling him Mitt, everyone) spoke directly to undecided Iowa Republicans today to put them at ease about his Mormon faith. Unfortunately for Willard, the rest of the country was watching when he said this:

We separate church and state affairs in this country, and for good reason. No religion should dictate to the state nor should the state interfere with the free practice of religion. But in recent years, the notion of the separation of church and state has been taken by some well beyond its original meaning. They seek to remove from the public domain any acknowledgment of God. Religion is seen as merely a private affair with no place in public life. It's as if they are intent on establishing a new religion in America - the religion of secularism. They are wrong.

What utter hogwash. Willard Romney is selling two contradictory ideas in the same paragraph. First, that government should not interfere with religion, and vice versa. Then, in the next breath, that government should not be afraid to embrace religion.

Because that's what behind his sweeping generality about those who "seek to remove from the public domain any acknowledgment of God." What the hell is Willard talking about? The public airwaves are filled to the brim with God talk. Church groups are free to congregate on public lands for worship, baptism, or creation science scavenger hunts. Our coins bear the words "In God We Trust", despite apocryphal emails to the contrary. But the greatest testimony to Willard's mandacity is when our public domain news media give Romney a free pass out of respect for his religious faith. No lie is big enough that the media won't scurry for cover when uttered in the shadow of the cross.

John F. Kennedy famously spoke to an assembly of Texan religious leaders during the 1960 Presidential campaign, and it was JFK's memory that Willard Romney hoped to evoke in Thursday's speech, also in Texas. But when Kennedy spoke, he made it clear there were bigger issues at play than a candidate's choice of religious faith. Romney claims just the opposite, that a candidate's faith is important, but not which religion he belongs to. You can watch JFK's speech here:

Bangkok market

2007-11-24T08:04:00.000-06:00

Bangkok's official population is 6 million, but many experts think it could be three times that. Space, obviously, is at a premium.

First Lego League

2007-11-20T07:48:00.000-06:00

I had a great time last Sunday helping to judge the First Lego League competition at Mukwonago High School.

Laura Bush greets "Beekeeper of the Year"

2007-10-23T08:35:00.001-05:00

Celebrating 200 years of American apiculture.

We do not torture

2007-10-22T21:39:00.000-05:00

On Sept. 11, 2001, an Egyptian national named Abdallah Higazy was staying in a New York City hotel room when the planes hit. Higazy and other guests quickly evacuated the building, and a short time later hotel workers found a device in Higazy's room that enables a person to communicate with airline pilots.

Authorities suspected Higazy was involved in the 9/11 plot and arrested him. So far, so good.

But the FBI got a little crazy and threatened Higazy's family with extradition to an Egyptian torture chamber if he didn't confess. Higazy at first denied any knowledge of the strange device, but he couldn't hold out for long. He finally confessed, thus sparing his wife and children. A despondent, shocked Higazy headed for the bowels of the New York City justice system.

Meanwhile, an airline pilot showed up at Higazy's hotel and asked if anyone had seen the radio that he accidentally left in the hotel room closet.

So the courts free Higazy (Hey guy, sorry about that. No hard feelings, right?), and Higazy lawyers up and sue the hotel and the fascist prick FBI agent that threatened his wife and kids.

Now the story gets real interesting. Steve Bergstein, a legal blogger at Psychsound, was checking federal court decisions one day not long ago and came across a 44-page document on the Higazy case. Then he posted the story on his blog as he ate lunch, cause that's what blogging lawyers do. Then, well, I'll let Steve tell the story:

Then something strange happened: a few minutes after I posted the blog, the opinion vanished from the Court of Appeals website! I had never seen this before, and what made all the more strange was that it involved a coerced confession over 9/11. What the hell was going on?

I let some other legal bloggers know about this, particularly the How Appealing blog and Appellate Law and Practice. They both ran a commentary on the missing opinion. Then someone sent How Appealing a PDF of the decision (probably very few of them were floating around since the opinion was posted for a brief period of time) and How Appealing posted the decision.

Then things got even stranger. The Court of Appeals actually phoned How Appealing to request that he remove the opinion from his website since it contained classified information. The Court said that a revised opinion would come out the next day without the classified information. How Appealing actually refused to remove the opinion. Through it all, hundreds of people came to my legal blog to see my summary of the opinion. It was either my blog or printing out and reading a 44 page epic.

The next day, the Court of Appeals reissued the Higazy opinion. With a redaction. The court simply omitted from the revised decision facts about how the FBI agent extracted the false confession from Higazy. For some reason, this information is classified. Just as the opinion gets interesting, when we are about to learn how an FBI agent named Templeton squeezed the "truth" out of Higazy, the opinion reads at page 7: "This opinion has been redacted because portions of the record are under seal. For the purposes of the summary judgment motion, Templeton did not contest that Higazy's statements were coerced."

Fortunately, the US Court of Appeals for Manhattan ruled for Higazy, so his suit can proceed.

More global warming denialist comments

2007-10-22T20:12:00.000-05:00

Because some people were put on Earth for my amusement:

The sun is hotter now, the earth has warmed because of increased solar activity. That seems so simple to me, why would anyone believe that a naturaly accuring gas like CO2 could raise the earths temp?
Because some borderline retarded, self serving, pompous, hipocrit tells you it does?
Global warming is real, we cannot stop it, we need to stop wasting resorces on prevention and start working towards a nation that thrives in the warmer climate.

Such as investing in Florida waterfront property, currently located in Georgia.

Gore was very pissed after 2000 elections and he wanted to fight those that beat him. Bush being an oil man made Gore choose Global Warming as his platform.If Gore had won that election all this Global Warming fear would not have been an issue. That is as political as it gets Gore!

Don't leave out the Decline and Fall of the American Empire fear. Or the Arrest and Detention Without a Warrant Fear.

It is politically motivated and has already cost Americans billions of dollars.Power companies have had to retro-fit power plants to remove emissions that volcanos around the world spit out at a rates higher than all plants combined. Just one example of how it is political.

Volcanoes are Republicans?

What can brown do for you?

2007-10-21T11:03:00.000-05:00

How does a non-white candidate for office overcome racism to become governor of the poorest, least-educated state in the union? By acting more ignorant than his constituents!

Bobby Jindal, the son of Indian immigrants, was elected governor of Louisiana yesterday. Jindal, 36, is Oxford educated, yet supports teaching intelligent design as an alternative to evolution, and banning all abortions. No word on whether he plans to marry his first cousin, too.

Lousiana hasn't elected a non-white governor in over 100 years, but this time things are different:

Yet Mr. Jindal, with his decisive victory on Saturday, appears to have overcome a significant racial hurdle that blocked him in 2003, according to analysts: race-based opposition in the deeply conservative northern and eastern parishes of Louisiana that once supported the Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.

A born-again Roman Catholic, Mr. Jindal made a particular campaign target of these areas, visiting them frequently and bringing his brand of devout Christianity to their rural churches. His social-conservative message — teaching “intelligent design” as an alternative to evolution in public schools, a total ban on abortion, repealing hate-crimes laws — would have been welcome in these areas.

Also welcome in "these areas" - non-uppity minorities. Mr. Jindal will fit in perfectly.

Meet Trent Wisecup

2007-10-16T11:24:00.000-05:00

This is what panic looks like.

Trent Wisecup, the chief of staff to Rep. Joe Knollenberg (R-Bush's BFF), runs interference for his boss when a constituent starts asking questions. Apparently Wisecup's idea of constituent service is to channel Sean Hannity on a bad day. A sample of Wisecup's witty remarks:

"You're pro-Toyota and you live in Detroit."
"You're blinded by your hatred of this country."
"You're a political activited with a poilitical agenda."
"Go away. We don't want you here."

This really is how they think.

Congratulations Mr. Gore

2007-10-14T01:31:00.000-05:00

A Nobel Peace Prize for Al Gore is small consolation for a stolen election, but I'll settle for that, plus the sound of Rush Limbaugh's head exploding.

Man's contribution to global warming is as close to scientific certainty as it's going to get. Only fools and scientific illiterates disagree. And here's what they're saying:

After looking through the comments it seems everyone has rightly realized that Gore's arguments are see-through.

i believe the same tactics are used in arguing for evolution. all this crap about scientific consensus and how all other people who disagree are flat earth people. its just plain brainwashing.

I blame Galileo. Stupid empiricism.

answer this question ... you have an Olympic sized swimming pool (50m x 25m x 2m) filled with the current atmosphere. 2,500,000 liters worth. How many of these liters are man-made greenhouse gases? (CO2, CH4, N2O, CFCm CCl4, CH3CCl3, CHF3, etc.)

Does this mean we'll have to wear Speedos and shower before we go outside?

I've studied the problem and done the math. The amount of green house gases in the atmosphere are man-made is less than 0.002% of the total. That's a tiny tiny amount, yet, we've been led to believe this amount is some how the tipping factor to global warming. What a crock. The problem is that these lies have been promoted as the truth, and the real truth is some kind of oil industry smear campaign. That IS the problem.

And I'll be presenting my data at the Cletus County Adult Education Science Fair tomorrow night.

Clifford May: liar and coward

2007-10-07T21:46:00.000-05:00

That's right, Mr. May. Deal with it.

Can someone tell me what controversial procedures have been used at Guantanamo Bay? As far as I'm aware there is not a shred of hard evidence — and certainly no proof — that torture or even enhanced interrogation methods have been employed there.

Hey, we all make mistakes. But only creepy little fascists like Clifford May make mistakes and then stick by their words. He has a President to protect.

This is what I don't get about the neo-con right. They had this vision for how to project American power in a way that assured "an American century". I was OK with that, on a very abstract level. I mean I'd rather live the rest of my life in an American century than a Chinese century or a Brazilian century. And American values of free-speech and respect for human rights have had a pretty good run for the last 100 years or so.

But the neo-con vision didn't work out quite the way May and the other pukes planned it, and thinking people have tossed their fetid ideology in the compost bin of history, where it will slowly decompose with the dessicated orange rinds of communism and the stale coffee grounds of fascism. But still the neo-cons fight on with one ridiculous lie after another. We do not torture! The terrorists will follow us home!

It's not reasonable to expect corrupt wantwits like Clifford May to correct themselves, to admit what everybody already knows. They are not about accountability, or self respect, or contributing to the marketplace of ideas. For Clifford May and the rest, it's about saving their hides, the one thing about America least worth saving.

Taps for Larry Craig

2007-10-04T13:08:00.000-05:00

A Minnesota judge today ruled that Sen. Larry Craig's (R-Closet) guilty plea to disorderly conduct was "accurate, voluntary and intelligent" and "the conviction is supported by the evidence."

It may be a while before Craig is called intelligent again. Senate Republicans are pledging their own ethics investigation into Senator Wide Stance, because (a) they want him out of their party and (b) a GOP show trial will divert the public's attention from Republican scandals involving the US Attorney firings, mercenaries running AMOK with no accountability, the administration's war crimes involving torture of prisoners, and several others I won't add because this sentence is already too long.

The case may seem open and shut, much like a bathroom stall door, but the ACLU has lined up behind Craig, figuratively anyway. Craig pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct, a charge which has been used for decades against gays and other minorities to quell dissent and quash otherwise harmless behavior.

Limbaugh clarifies

2007-09-29T12:53:00.000-05:00

His "phony soldier" comment was only directed at people who pretend to be soldiers, but never were. To clarify his point further, Limbaugh explained that Rep. Jack Murtha, a decorated Vietnam combat vet, is an example of a phony soldier.

Got that?

Weak-end warrior

2007-09-27T15:55:00.000-05:00

Where's the outrage? Where's the House and Senate Censure resolutions?

Rush Limbaugh says the US military is riddled with "phony soldiers":

During the September 26 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Rush Limbaugh called service members who advocate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq “phony soldiers.” He made the comment while discussing with a caller a conversation he had with a previous caller, “Mike from Chicago,” who said he “used to be military,” and “believe[s] that we should pull out of Iraq.” Limbaugh told the second caller, whom he identified as “Mike, this one from Olympia, Washington,” that “[t]here’s a lot” that people who favor U.S. withdrawal “don’t understand” and that when asked why the United States should pull out, their only answer is, ” ‘Well, we just gotta bring the troops home.’ … ‘Save the — keeps the troops safe’ or whatever,” adding, “[I]t’s not possible, intellectually, to follow these people.” “Mike” from Olympia replied, “No, it’s not, and what’s really funny is, they never talk to real soldiers. They like to pull these soldiers that come up out of the blue and talk to the media.” Limbaugh interjected, “The phony soldiers.” The caller, who had earlier said, “I am a serving American military, in the Army,” agreed, replying, “The phony soldiers.”

Limbaugh speaks with authority on the subject of phone soldiers. He avoided the Vietnam draft by claiming a pilonidal cyst.

Eat cheese or die!

2007-09-18T21:32:00.001-05:00

I just want to give a shout out to both of my state's US Senators. Russ Feingold (D-Freakin' Awesome) and Herb Kohl (D-Better than McCain) have thrown their support to the Habeus Corpus Restoration Act. But alas, only 52 senators are on record for this important bill. We need eight more patriots to override President Bush's expected veto.

Habeus corpus guarantees that the government can't throw us in jail without letting us know the charges. Totalitarian dictators, police states, and the Republican Party have no use for habeus.

Bring our troop home

2007-09-14T14:50:00.000-05:00

Among President Bush's many head scratching-moments during his Thursday night address to the nation was when he thanked the 36 nations that support the American mission in Iraq. That numbers falls to 35 after October 1 when Iceland pulls its man out of Baghdad. That's right - one guy:

Foreign Minister Ingibjörg Sólrún Gísladóttir has decided to remove an Icelandic Crisis Response Unit (ICRU) member from a NATO training program for the Iraqi army in Baghdad next month, causing disappointment among NATO leaders.

The ICRU member has been working in Baghdad for the last two years, primarily as a media representative, and will cease working there October 1, Morgunbladid reports.

John Craddock, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe for NATO and the US European Command, said at a press conference in Iceland yesterday that Iceland is an important and active NATO member and that he was disappointed with Gísladóttir’s decision.

But Craddock added that he understands that NATO member nations have to make decisions according to their best interests and “estimate what they can do and what they cannot do, what they want to do and what they don’t.”

Can you imagine a country with a leader that makes decisions based on "what they can do and what they cannot do, what they want to do and what they don’t?"

We are all Icelanders now.

GOP to America: "We own 9/11, dammit!"

2007-09-11T17:17:00.000-05:00

I was going to write about Ann Coulter and Rudy Giuliani appearing together at a 9/11 commemoration tonight, and what a God-awful idea that was. But then I had second thoughts. It seemed hypocritical for me to attack these two 9/11 fetishists for not remembering the day properly, while I'm venting just as much rage right back at them. President Bush and his Republican attack poodles have been milking that tragedy for six years now, and it's brought us to a point where the GOP has the country convinced it owns 9/11.

I was going to write about Ann Coulter and Rudy Giuliani, but then I read this from Milwaukee blogger Illusory Tenant:

Every once in awhile we need to be reminded that there are thoughtful and even scholarly conservative Republicans, as opposed to the contingent of moronic dipshits that populates the blogosphere and wake up every morning to go and see what Michelle Malkin commands them to be outraged about today.

Despite George Bush's best efforts to make us forget, Americans of every political stripe walk among us who can put 9/11 in its proper perspective. They know that liberals don't want to offer counseling to al Qaeda terrorists; that dissent is patriotic; and that democracies prevail because of, not despite, the rule of law. They know outrage, a natural consequence of the 9/11 attacks, becomes toxic when used to rally the base instead of the country.

Of course you won't hear these words on "conservative" talk radio, or read them on Powerline, except as a punchline to a joke. Only conservatives can make up jokes about 9/11, and Coulter and Giuliani will be knocking 'em dead tonight.

Conspiracy theories

2007-09-11T11:45:00.000-05:00

People who think 9/11 was an inside job seriously need to have their heads examined. They cherry pick evidence that supports their asinine suspicions and ignore the mountain of data that goes against them. Debating these loons is like playing Wack-a-Mole - as soon as you knock one dubious claim on the head with the hammer of evidence, another claim pops up.

That said, if it weren't for 9/11 conspiracy nuts we wouldn't have 11 Settembre, a fascinating blog by an Italian skeptic with impressive technological skills. Enjoy.

Iraqi doctors surge to border

2007-09-10T10:28:00.000-05:00

Maybe Brit Hume will ask White House Surge Spokesman David "On Board" Petraeus about this during their one hour Fox News love fest:

According to the Iraqi Medical Association (IMA), the shortage of doctors and nurses in Iraq is now critical and having a devastating effect, especially on small towns and villages.

“Our latest research shows that up to 75 percent of doctors, pharmacists and nurses have left their jobs at universities, clinics and hospitals,” Walid Rafi, a senior member of the IMA, told IRIN. Of these, at least 55 percent have fled abroad, he added.

According to Rafi, low salaries and the shortage of equipment and medicines, are other push factors. “Medical staff earn US$50-300 per month. They might persevere for a while but if the opportunity arises, they don’t think twice and leave the country,” Rafi said.

Here's another question that won't be asked: Why are Iraqis fleeing their country for the safety of neighboring military dictatorship Syria, if Iraq is so much better off without Saddam? What about all those purple thumbs - are they pointing up, or pointing down, when it comes to the surge?

GOP meltdown

2007-09-06T15:56:00.000-05:00

Ordinarily, you have to read the comments at Redstate.com or Powerline to see how truly inane the Republican base has become these days. But last night the GOP Presidential debates did just as well.

Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Thumb Screws) actually said "I would do waterboarding - I don't believe that that is 'quote' torture." Admittedly, Tancredo's bloodlust is toned down from what one finds at Redstate, where sunshine patriots not only endorse waterboarding terror suspects, but for the cashier at the all night convenience store down the street as well who may or may not be Muslim. But I still find Tancredo's comment astonishing given that the entire civilized world recognizes waterboarding as torture.

The GOP debate is also a rich source of found humor. Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-Who?), got into an interesting back and forth with Rep. Ron Paul (R-Can't Win) over Iraq. Paul, the only anti-war candidate in the GOP field, said the war was destroying the Party of Lincoln. Huckabee countered that the US was committed to Iraq, and said "Even if we lose elections we should not lose the honor of the Republican Party." One indication of the GOP's deep state of denial over the last seven years is that no one on the stage, or the entire audience, laughed.

Gov. Mitt Romney, with an inadvertent nod to empiricism, said the surge is "apparently" working. Big mistake. Sen. John McCain (R-Bankrupt) pounced:

"The surge is working. Not apparently working. It is working. It's working because we have a great general, we have a good strategy, in Anbar Province things have improved. The Malaki government is not doing the things we want it to do. The police are not functioning the way we want them to do. But we are succeeding. And the great debate is not whether it's apparently working or not. The great debate will take place on the floor of the United State Senate in the middle of this month, and it's going to be whether we set a date for withdrawal which will be a date for surrender, or whether we will let this surge continue and succeed and I can assure you it's more than apparent. It is working."

I feel better already.

UPDATE

Sean Hannity lied to Fox viewers about Dr. Ron Paul's showing in the network's post debate poll. Fox invited viewers to text message their vote for favorite candidate, and Paul outpolled the competition with 33%. The next favorite candidate was Gov.Mike Huckabee with less than 17%.

But Hannity cautioned Fox viewers, with no evidence, that Paul's numbers were due to overzealous supporters text messaging multiple votes for their candidate. That was a lie - Fox only allowed one vote per text messaging cell phone.

Evildoer-fighting progress report

2007-09-06T13:57:00.000-05:00

A Congressional Research Office report has concluded that Iraq's government is on the verge of collapse, and the report's author concludes there are no real prospects for political reconciliation.

The report, which was commissioned by the House and Senate, questions the troop surge and further casts doubt on President Bush's claim of military progress.

Meanwhile the President, with support from Senate and House Republicans, continue to bamboozle the American people and their media with made up statistics and rosy scenarios.

In other news, the real criminal, Sen. Larry Craig (R-Wide Stance), is fighting a misdemeanor charge arising from soliciting sex in the one place where soliciting sex is illegal.

Freedom marching news

2007-09-03T20:58:00.000-05:00

Via Newsweek:

The militia's sectarian-cleansing campaign is far too lucrative to be given up easily. When Sunni homeowners flee, say U.S. soldiers, their furniture is often locked up and their houses listed at local Sadr offices. Shiite families—many of them displaced earlier from Sunni neighborhoods—can peruse the listings, sometimes even photos of the property. For around 110,000 Iraqi dinars (about $88) per month, they can rent a furnished home and receive deliveries of cooking oil from the Mahdi Army. The militiamen earn even more money by controlling the gas stations in various neighborhoods, and by carjacking the nicest vehicles—usually, but not always, driven by Sunnis—at the checkpoints they set up.

Stall tactics

2007-09-01T09:47:00.000-05:00

Sen. Larry Craig's stated intent to fight his guilty plea to disorderly conduct stemming from an airport restroom sex sting could cause Democrats more problems than l'affaire Craig has already caused the GOP.

Much has been written about Republican hypocrisy in this case - that Craig, an apparently gay man, had been making life miserable for gays for most of his legislative career. But few are talking about the facts of Craig's arrest and asking the simple question "What did Craig do wrong?" Esquivalience asks the right questions:

Ok, he placed his bag against the stall door, which is, apparently, something "those intending to commit lewd acts" do. Also those who don't want to leave their bag by the sink, and have it stolen or detonated. It's a cubicle. He's supposed to maybe balance the bag on his head?

By the cop's own admission, he (the cop) "pumped his foot slowly up and down in response." In other words, Craig asked for sex using an arcane code extremely unlikely to "alarm, anger, or disturb" -- according to the the equally arcane code defining disorderly conduct in Minnesota -- an uninitiated fellow-lavator, and the cop knew what it meant and said yes.

Where's the victim?

Of course the Republican law and order crowd doesn't want to ask these questions. Craig plead guilty to disorderly conduct, which is the legal system's equivalent of Put Them in Jail Free card. The DC charge has been used for decades to harass and arrest gay people, the criminal code equivalent of fire hoses and police dogs. And for decades society has looked the other way when it's applied to men cruising for icky restroom sex.

Until now. Craig's high profile arrest, and his publicly-stated intent to fight his guilty plea, promises to keep icky restroom sex in the headlines for months to come, possibly through the 2008 elections. That's where things could get interesting.

Though I don't expect to see Craig marching in San Francisco anytime soon, the former Idaho senator and homophobe is positioned to become a champion for gay rights by virtue of hiring a legal team to take on an allegedly discriminatory application of the law. I can't pretend to know how serious Craig is about clearing his name. It would be easier if he just came out - it's not like anyone believes he isn't gay.

But should he fight the charge (and not being a laywer, I'm not sure what he can do to change a guilty plea), he will unwittingly become the poster boy for the civil rights of men who choose to have icky restroom sex. That could become a huge problem for the Democrats next year.

It's easy for Republicans distance themselves from Senator Wide Stance. There's no political cost since most Republicans are comfortable with their gay bashing party. And so far Democrats have had the luxury of sitting back and enjoying the spectable of the GOP throwing one of its own under the proverbial bus.

But that dynamic will change on Sept. 30, the day Craig officially vacates his Senate seat, and slouches back to Boise, an outed, gay, 62-year-old man in denial. At that point the GOP spin machine will make sure he becomes the Democratic Party's problem. And the spin might get enough traction to help Republicans next year.

The secret is to position icky restroom sex one foot tap away from gay marriage, no big deal for the GOP spin machine and its media echo chamber. With Craig's pathetic legal challenge slowly winding its way through the courts, Fox News, Rush and the rest will have plenty of ammo.

That will leave the Democrats with little choice but to distance themselves from Craig's own fight for justice, which will leave them open to charges of hypocricy and cause problems with their own base.

Of course none of this will happen if Craig admitted what everyone already knows, that's he's a gay man trapped in misery by icky red state politics as well as by his own denial. And by his curious loyalty to a party that pitched him overboard for no good reason.

Larry Craig joke

2007-09-01T08:00:00.000-05:00

What is the difference between a barnstorming pilot and Larry Craig?

A barnstorming pilot pulls out of a stall, and Craig pulls out in a stall.

Heraldblog: contributing to public understanding of important social issues since 2003.

Male bathroom etiquette

2007-08-29T07:58:00.000-05:00

Too late for Sen. Craig, but the rest of us can be saved.

Gonzo gone

2007-08-27T07:40:00.001-05:00

It's official - the Bush White House is in total meltdown. Let's summarize just some of the crises that have paralyzed the worst President since Warren G. Harding.

The new AG will have to be vetted by a Democratic congress, and one of the many questions put to him/her will be "Will you cooperate with our investigation of the USA firing scandal, and if not, why not?" It's a loaded question that comes down to the nominees views of executive privilege, separation of powers, and above all else, personal integrity. Bush will have little choice but to either let an underling function as interim AG for the next 16 months (if there's anyone left), or appoint a rat.

The September 11 troop surge report is sure to bring additional GOP defections, and shave a few more points off Bush's Nixonesque approval ratings. The President who swears we will stay the course will be forced by his own party to relent to troop drawdowns by Christmas.

And then there's this.

Grab the popcorn. It couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

Update: Josh said Gonzales quit so he can spend more time with his defense lawyer. Let the snark begin!

A very small man in a very big country

2007-08-24T09:39:00.000-05:00

Josh says President Bush's interests in Iraq are not the same as the people he purports to lead. Rather than act in the best interest of the United States, Bush is acting to shore up his legacy as President. It's a chilling thought when put in the context of lives lost, and damage to national prestige:

And here I think we get back to the root of the matter: We are bigger than Iraq.

By that I do not mean we, as America, are bigger or better than Iraq as a country. I mean that that sum of our national existence is not bound up in what happens there. The country will go on. Whatever happens, we'll recover from it. And whatever might happen, there are things that matter much more to this country's future -- like whether we have a functioning military any more, whether our economy is wrecked, whether this country tears itself apart over this catastrophe. But we'll go on and look back at this and judge what happened.

Not so for the president. For him, this is it. He's not bigger than this. His entire legacy as president is bound up in Iraq. Which is another way of saying that his legacy is pretty clearly an irrecoverable shambles. That is why, as the folly of the enterprise becomes more clear, he must continually puff it up into more and more melodramatic and world-historical dimensions. A century long ideological struggle and the like. For the president a one in a thousand shot at some better outcome is well worth it, no matter what the cost. Because at least that's a one in a thousand shot at not ending his presidency with the crushing verdict history now has in store. It's also worth just letting things keep on going as they are forever because, like Micawber, something better might turn up. Going double or nothing by expanding the war into Iran might be worth it too for the same reason. For him, how can it get worse?

And when you boil all this down what it comes down to is that the president now has very different interests than the country he purports to lead.

His speech other day in front of the VFW was hard to watch. Every time the President steps up to a mic, it reminds me of a perp sitting down for a chat with Lenny Brisco on the old Law and Order series. First comes the denial (I don't know nuthin' bout no gun!), then then anger (I got nuthin' to say to you pricks.) Then the bargaining (OK. OK. Let's say I did have a gun. Maybe it's not the same gun.) Finally, the perp sinks into depression and despair, buries his ruddy face in his greasy little hands, and lawyers up.

Bush jumbled syntax gives the appearance of a perp bouncing from one stage of grief to another, like a human version of pong. He clings deperately to his denial, but easily slips into anger at those who oppose him. His less-than-lame Vietman analogy was an effort to bargain his way out of the hole he's dug for his Presidency. All the while, his depression envelopes him like the cloud of dirt that follows Pig Pen in that old comic strip, Peanuts.

Only acceptance can now save George W. Bush's soul, and ours. Let us close with a prayer:

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

They like me! Imaginary people really like me!

2007-08-23T20:30:00.000-05:00

President Bush likes to say that since he will be vindicated by history, it doesn't matter what his critics say today. So what looks like a failed war effort and wasted treasure this year will smell like victory in an unspecified number of years. Of course you can say that about anything. In the year 2108, historians might look favorably upon Jimmy Carter, or the Boy Band era of the 90s. We just don't know, but more importantly, it just doesn't matter.

So why is Bush so quick to condemn America's withdrawal from Vietnam? It's been 30 years since the last US troops left that battered and bloody land, and Vietman has normal diplomatic ties with the US, and an emerging capitalist economy. The Vietnamese are not invading their neighbors. No dominoes fell.

Looking for vindication by people not yet conceived, in the context of a world not conceivable, is a coward's way of ducking accountability. Shame on the former governor of Texas. Shame on us for staying silent.

Am I missing something?

2007-08-21T11:06:00.000-05:00

Is it too cynical to suggest the White House has ulterior motives because it chose Harry Connick, Jr.'s 40th birthday to release General Petraeus' "progress" report? I mean not everybody knows the New Orleans native was born on Sept. 11, 1967, but they will now! And that's supposed to divert America's attention from what is most likely another well spun version of the truth? Ha! Or as Harry might say:

I forget what happens on the Fourth of July
Or when the rent is due
Dates and deadlines just float by
But I always remember you

h/t to Harry Connick fan Blue Gal

Give it a rest, Gibby

2007-08-18T14:05:00.000-05:00

Fox News Comb-Over Model John Gibson is making it very clear that he doesn't like John Stewart. What he's not so clear on is why he doesn't like the popular host of The Daily Show.

Gibson's hissy fit started last week when he made fun of Stewart for expressing grief in the wake of 9/11. You see, Republicans own 9/11, and anybody who steps out of line is immediately stripped of their patriotism, sincerity, and ability to be taken seriously. Stewart and other critics of President Bush are not allowed to grieve 9/11 without being mocked by Gibson and other barking media loons.

Stewart's response was brief and to the point: "Some idiot from Fox was "playing the tape of me after September 11th and calling me a phony because, apparently, my grief didn't mean acquiescence."

Gibson thinks this is unfair because

"He's a -- he's a comedian doing the news. He should expect some shots once in a while. I want to know, where is the Jon Stewart that was so grief-stricken, and why does he think what I think are reasonable measures to fight the war on terror like wiretapping, like going after Iraq, like Guantánamo Bay -- I think those are reasonable measures."

Let me break it down for you Gibby:

Wiretapping. FISA, as currently proposed by the Bush administration, violates the fourth amendment of the constitution. A simple fix is for the federal government to seek warrants for wiretaps on American citizens. Those warrants can be sought retroactively. But that's not reasonable enough for you, Mr. Gibson. You think it's reasonable to trash the fourth amendment, and give serial perjurer Alberto Gonzales authority to spy on any American, any time, for any reason, with zero accountability. Go ahead and say it Mr. Gibson.

Iraq: 3,800 dead Americans. A half million dead Iraqis. One trillion dollars. Four years of war and no end in sight. It takes one fevered imagination to claim that Bush's management of the Iraq War is a reasonable measure to fight terrorism.

Gitmo: The FBI's own study concluded that there is no credible evidence to suspect that the majority of Guantanamo detainees are involved in terrorism. How is that reasonable, and what does it have to do with convincing a billion Muslims there is an advantage to siding with the US?

John Gibson started a feud for no good reason, then screamed foul when Stewart hit back. How pathetic. Gibson should be careful about attacking comedians, because he is one himself. But Stewart has the honesty to call himself a comic. Gibson wouldn't know honest if it squirted him in the face with a bottle of seltzer.

Foul play at the Peacock Network

2007-08-15T13:38:00.000-05:00

I will confess to watching Datelines's To Catch a Predator from time to time. Chris Hansen's smarmy self righteousness is a perfect compliment to the lowlifes and sexual miscreants he snags. It's a guilty pleasure which I am drawn to as the Hansen's victims are drawn to the jailbait decoy. Fortunately, there is no law against trash TV. But I'll never see NBC's schtick the same after reading Luke Dittrich's piece in this month'sEsquire Magazine about a Dateline bust that went very, very wrong.

NBC is being sued by the sister of a man who committed suicide after he was caught in a Predator sting operation. The victim, a career Texas prosecutor named Bill Conradt, shot himself after he saw Hansen and the Dateline crew on his property, and just as a SWAT team was closing in. This is going to be very embarrassing for NBC, as the facts of the case come to light.

It's a long article, but exceptionally well written and worth it.

Sexual predator and Fox blowhard Bill O'Reilly, who hates NBC, is oozing schadenfreude over the case, but he's not smart enough to understand this is about legal due process and vigilatism disguised as entertainment. O'Reilly and his mad dogs at Fox think due process is for suckers, while the vigilante mindset is a fuel that keeps the Fox News engine running.

Deep in the heart of Texas

2007-08-14T21:05:00.000-05:00

That didn't take long. Don McLeroy, the recently appointed chairman of the Texas Board of Education, went on a anti-evolution jihad the other day, telling church goers to lie about the theological underpinnings of "intelligent design":

Following a long spiel about biblical truth, McLeroy told the audience to ignore intelligent design’s religious foundation when talking to the general public. Not to worry though, the “time to address [Biblical issues] will be after we have separated materialistic prejudice from scientific fact.”

The second step, he said, is to point out that evolution wrongly depends on “naturalism;” that supernaturalism or divine influences are unfairly excluded from the conversation. Finally, forget the scientists and target people without a firm grasp on evolutionary theory.

McLeroy was recently appointed by Texas Governor Rick Perry, who is, of course, a Republican.

Bill O' the Shill O'

2007-08-03T10:21:00.000-05:00

Heraldblog extends a hearty note of appreciation to fascist Fox News clown Bill O'Reilly for attacking the YearlyKos convention, now underway in Chicago. Bill O' has been hyperventilating all week about the "hatred" oozing from the Daily Kos website, which is frequented by a half-million readers each day.

O'Reilly's rage couldn't come at a better time. The country has turned against the Bush Republicans, and Democrats are finally showing some discipline. Kos and other liberal sites deserve much of the credit, in the same way Limbaugh galvanzied the red meat right in the early 90s. A.J. Dionne connects the dots in todays WaPo:

O'Reilly is irate that the leading Democratic presidential candidates are showing up this weekend. "The far left
wants a quasi-socialistic economy and a one-world foreign policy, where national security decisions are made only with the approval of other countries," O'Reilly fumed. "So that's the soup the Democratic presidential candidates will be dining on when they show up at the Kos convention."

I'm not in the habit of giving advice to Bill O'Reilly, but there's always a first time: Liberal rage at Rush Limbaugh not only was useless, but it actually strengthened his credibility with the right. (I speak from experience.) Bill, I bet Markos loves what you're doing.

Keep up the good work, Falafel Man!

Brave Michelle and The Case of the Mysterious Collapse

2007-08-02T08:22:00.000-05:00

The right's Fighting Keyboarders are crossing their manicured fingers and praying to St. George of the Dubya that the Minneapolis bridge collapse is the work of terrorists. Brave little Michelle Malkin opines:

DHS issued a statement that the collapse “does not appear to be an act of terrorism.” Isn’t it too early to say anything meaningful about what it “appears” to be? Couldn’t they maybe, I dunno, say nothing until they actually know something?

I mean, c'mon guys, we're losing valuable fear factor here! Malkin and other Bush cheerleaders could milk this disaster for three or four news cycles, reminding us all that we need to get 100% behind President Bush unless we want more traffic detours.

Bush butt boy John Hinderaker, who once called the President a genius, observes

"Bridges like these don’t collapse in the US, especially when they’re only 40 years old. It’s hard to say what could have brought it down, but hopefully the DoT will have more information.”

Yes, it's hard to say what brought it down, but it's easy to suggest that it "might" be the work of the bearded anarchists who hang out in a St. Paul mosque, speaking in strange tongues and, hey, look, what was that?!??!

If Hinderacker, Malkin, et.al. want to dwell on mysterious collapses, they could write more honestly about the Bush Administration which has been in free fall for, oh, I don't know, three years. The death toll is now up to a million people, yet the investigation is stalled by a lack of cooperation and denial.

Say five Hail Marys and vote for Obama

2007-08-01T11:34:00.000-05:00

My brother in North Carolina sent me this link:

Last week I had the fortune/misfortune* of visiting Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado. Through a series of machinations I needn't elaborate here, I ended up "filling in" for one of two park rangers guiding a tour group to the (stunning) ruins. As such, the (real) ranger briefly introduced me and noted my day job in the Political Science department at IU.

At the conclusion of the tour, a very sunburnt gentleman with an overpowering Dixie accent (I'd soon learn that he hails from Birmingham, AL) approached me quite urgently and said "I need to know who you think is going to win the presidential election." Taken slightly aback, I gave him a thoroughly noncommittal but accurate answer: it's too early to say, but the lay of the land certainly looks unfavorable for the GOP. However, the nomination of Hillary Clinton could be a wild-card because of her high negative numbers.

Following that stock response, he began to unburden himself in what I have decided to call the Republican Unburdening of the Soul ritual. He started telling me about how he is an upper-middle class (pilot for NW Airlines, apparently) white guy from the Bible Belt who has been a Republican since he could walk, he voted for George Bush (twice), he supported the War in Iraq, etc etc. But the RUotS always ends as familiarly as it begins. After describing his lifelong committment to Republican principles, he revealed that he now despises George W. Bush and loathes the failed Iraq debacle.

I have decided to name this ritual because it is happening so damn frequently lately. Its source is quite obvious: a major, major case of the guilts coupled with the embarassment of having been misled (or having deluded oneself) so thoroughly and easily. I swear to God, today's average Republican cannot avoid telling every liberal they meet how much they hate the war and the president. They're like sinners desperately seeking absolution and willing to solicit it from strangers. Failing absolution, they'll settle for conscience balm. Both ordinary people and elected officials (note the "rats fleeing a sinking ship" Senators like Lugar suddenly condemning the war they blindly supported for 4 years) are performing the RUotS lately.

Back to this gentleman, I (gently, and as non-confrontationally as possible) joked that I can't figure out why he voted for Bush a second time if he felt this way. He replied that his faith in the party and its principles was strong enough to trust Bush with more time to achieve a favorable outcome. While this is singularly piss-poor logic, I nonetheless understood his response as a reasonable emotional one. Then he said something that floored me in several respects:

"See, you (meaning 'liberals', even though I had not offered him any political affiliation; all academics are liberals) hate George Bush because he represents everything you hate. I hate George Bush because he represents everything I believe in being completely fucked up and ruined."
The profundity of that struck me. I've not yet heard a more concise, eloquent explanation of what the non-brainwashed part of the right-leaning electorate is experiencing these days. It also struck me as incredible that this is what political discourse v2007 sounds like: two people of opposing ideologies arguing about who hates George Bush more.

Unfortunately but predictably, the conversation ended with him describing his openness to Democratic candidates in 2008....but not without the caveat of his hatred of Hillary Clinton. And therein lies the disingenuousness of the RUotS ritual and conservative hand-wringing in general. They're like fat people who are always about to start dieting and exercising "tomorrow." They go on and on about how much they hate Bush, the war, and their more extreme party compatriots...but not without conjuring up a reason to vote for them again anyway. In short, this gentleman told me that he's completely disillusioned with his party while implying "I will use HRC as an excuse to vote for them again anyway."

It's a very convenient, and cowardly, coulda-woulda-shoulda defense. "I was totally ready to jump ship, but that Hillary Clinton was just too awful so I had to vote for the guy who baited me with more tax cuts." Pardon me if, under such qualified circumstances, I decline to end such conversations with "Ego te absolvo, my son."

I don't think a national party has melted down so quickly in recent history. Even the Republican misfortunes after Watergate were not as precipitous. With Bush's approval ratings hovering at one in four voters, one would think more GOP lawmakers would be abandoning ship, or at least looking for a new way forward for the Party of Lincoln. Instead, we get GOP Presidential hopefuls who are still pandering to the same inbred crackers who brought the party to such ruin in the first place.

The Pope is a primate

2007-07-31T16:49:00.000-05:00

Study: Multiple Stab Wounds May Be Harmful To Monkeys

I have a theory: Any scenario, no matter how grim, can be made funny by inserting the word "monkey".

Limbaugh lies again

2007-07-31T10:45:00.000-05:00

Facts are funny things:

We went into Afghanistan. It was pure fear. It wasn't diplomacy. It was the fear of God (or fear of Allah) that was put into the mind of Khadafy. Don't forget, he's already sitting there quaking in his boots because Reagan bombed his tent, after Khadafy was widely held responsible when Pan Am flight 103 went down over Lockerbie, Scotland. Reagan sent a couple of F-18 Hornets and such over there. We had to fly around the Iberian Peninsula because the French and the Spanish wouldn't give us permission to fly over, so we had to go around, up the tunnel, into the Mediterranean, handsome pilots targeting the tent, and Khadafy's daughter happened to be in there. So that's when it started. That is not diplomacy.

Lockerbie happened after Reagan bombed Khadafy. You can look it up. So can Limbaugh.

Handsome pilots? What's with Rush?

h/t Folkbum

Paul Hill Days

2007-07-30T07:27:00.000-05:00

I caught up with Missionaries to the Preborn as they paraded south down Prospect Ave. Sixty protesters in all, nearly half of them children, followed a festive, yellow banner that proclaimed Paul Hill Days. Those at the front of the line marched, beat drums, played hymns on a ragtag assortment of wind instruments, and called out a military-sounding cadence in honor of their hero, an assassin who gunned down a doctor and his escort 13 years ago.

Half clown troupe, half street ministry, the procession was largely ignored by passers by. A young man from the local technical college followed with a small videocam. At one point, a man getting into a parked car shouted "Children shouldn't have to see those pictures." He was holding two young boys as they stared up at a poster of an aborted fetus. "Maybe we need to see more of these pictures," a protester yelled back.

The troupe reached the large, orange Sunrise sculpture at the point where Wisconsin Ave. meets the lakefront. They marched around the sculpture, then stopped, forming a ragtag semi-circle. Their apparent leader, a bearded, mountain-man type named Drew Heiss, led the group in song and prayer. "There is power in the blood of the lamb," they sang. Then Drew officially concluded "The First Annual Paul Hill Days", and reminded everyone to walk to a nearby park for the Subway sandwiches they had ordered earlier.

During the walk, I met Andy Wilson, the son of George Wilson who organized Paul Hill Days. Wilson, Sr., a former Presbyterian Minister, died of a heart attack earlier that week at age 55. I expressed my condolences, then asked Andy if his group was discouraged by President Bush's inability to promote Wilson's religious agenda. "Bush's heart is in the right place, but there's not much he can do," he answered.

At the park, some of the children discovered a crabapple tree on top of the bluff that overlooks Lake Michigan. The boys shimmied up the trunk, and shook the branches until the fruit fell on the ground. "Yuck, they're sour," said a young girl. "They're crabapples," said a boy. A plump, blonde-haired woman walked over and scolded the children. "He told us to," said one of the boys, pointing at me. "I guess that makes me the serpent," I said. Mom did not seem amused, but remained pleasant.

Colin, a thin man with large glasses that gave him a lost expression said Paul Hill Days was about "making people see what was happening." I asked if he thought the protest was persuading people, and he said he didn't know. "Most people are apathetic, but you have to start somewhere. You have to show them what is happening."

The man said he traveled frequently with the Missionaries, disrupting clinics and "showing what is happening" by way of the group's lurid posters. I asked what he did for a living. "Oh, I do odd jobs here and there. Mostly I travel with the Missionaries to the Preborn." He pulled a small plastic fetus out of his pocket. "I take this with me everywhere I go," he said. I asked if promoting murder was a persuasive way to draw people to their cause. "Sometimes I wonder if there is a more effective way," he said, looking even more lost as he thought about the question.

The group said grace over their sub sandwiches, including a shout out to their hero, Paul Hill, a "Godly man" whom the state of Florida executed in 2003 for shooting down two men he didn't even know.

I later asked Drew Heiss if he was concerned about teaching children that it was acceptable to murder people you disagree with. He didn't appear that he had spent much time thinking about the question. "Well, we try to teach our kids the difference between right and wrong, and Biblical principles," he said, before entering more familiar territory - the "real meaning" of the sixth commandment, which he identified as "Thou Shalt Not Murder".

"If I fail to stop a murderer from murdering, then I am also guilty of murdering?" he seemed to wonder aloud. He said he invited some of his friends to march in Paul Hill days, but he's not sure how they feel about it. "Will they stop being my friends if they know what I am for?"

He was dead serious.

h/t Illusory Tenant

And on the seventh day, the Texas GOP rested

2007-07-27T12:29:00.000-05:00

I'm shocked, shocked I tell you, that the chairman of the Texas State Board of Education !http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

Don McLeroy, a dentist, was named chairman of the panel by Gov. Rick Perry, to please the religious bigots and cretins who run Texas.

(McLeroy) is one of the board members aligned with social conservative groups known for their strong stands on evolution, sexual abstinence and other heated topics covered in textbooks. One of four board members who voted against current high school biology books because of their failure to list weaknesses in the theory of evolution.

It's like a pre-literate society theme park down there, isn't it?

US Army unleashes Bat Boyon Shia, Sunni extremists!

2007-07-25T15:39:00.000-05:00

From our "Say It Ain't So" department - The Weekly World News is going under. And by under, we don't mean 500 miles beneath the Earth's crust where an ancient race of rock people plot their violent return to the surface. We mean shutting its doors:

American Media has decided to suspend publication of Weekly World News, both the print publication and the web site. No reason was given at press time, although reliable sources do tell us that management turned down at least one offer to buy the publication.

The weekly supermarket tabloid—known as the home of "Bat Boy" and other less-than-probable stories—has long had staffing connections with the science fiction, fantasy, and horror fields.

It seems counterintuitive, bothering to source a claim that a sleazy publication is going out of business. The only thing reliable about WWN is the date on the front page, and knowing that a new issue would be staring out from the checkout line every week.

Yet in some ways, the paper was a forerunner of the fake news genre favored today by millions. Before there was The Onion, or the Daily Show, or Fox News, there was WWN, with "Naked granny scares thieves!", or "Mars Observer Photographed Giant Fish in Space!". To be sure there was little redeeming quality about WWN's fakesness. It's hard to imagine forming a coherent opinion about anything when you read "Dead organ donor wakes up after surgeons remove his eyes, a kidney and his left lung!"

The war that dare not speak its name

2007-07-23T19:05:00.000-05:00

Apparently our President is such a bumbling fool that even Newt Gingrich realizes it, and he has some advice for Dubya: don't say anything about the war.

Newt Gingrich is offering President Bush some interesting advice about winning support for the Iraq war: The president, he says, should stop talking about it. “Simply be quiet, say nothing” is what the former Republican leader is urging. Mr. Bush instead should leave the war talk to General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, who have much more credibility with both Democrats and Republicans. […]

“Petraeus and Crocker will get a better deal on Iraq than Bush, and it will be much harder for the Democrats to oppose Petraeus and Crocker,” Mr. Gingrich said.

Now I know what you're thinking - why just keep quiet about the war? I mean, what about those other low points in his presidency, i.e. Katrina, habeus corpus, the US Attorneys, or Walter Reed Hospital.

In fact, given that everything this President touches turns to crap, maybe Bush shouldn't say anything at all, apart from an occassional "How are y'all doing?", or "Five polyps. Didn't see 'em. Felt 'em though. Ha ha ha. Cancer free. That's a good thing. Gotta go."

Personally, I like it when the George Bush speaks. When my grandkids ask me one day "Grandpa, what was it like living under the worst President in US History?", I'll need more material than a David Petraeus quote.

Après la guerre

2007-07-23T12:57:00.000-05:00

"I guess while I was there, the general attitude was, A dead Iraqi is just another dead Iraqi," said Spc. Jeff Englehart, 26, of Grand Junction, Colorado. Specialist Englehart served with the Third Brigade, First Infantry Division, in Baquba, about thirty-five miles northeast of Baghdad, for a year beginning in February 2004. "You know, so what?... The soldiers honestly thought we were trying to help the people and they were mad because it was almost like a betrayal. Like here we are trying to help you, here I am, you know, thousands of miles away from home and my family, and I have to be here for a year and work every day on these missions. Well, we're trying to help you and you just turn around and try to kill us."

from The Other War: Iraq Vets Bear Witness, in The Nation

Stigmata sold separately

2007-07-18T07:49:00.000-05:00

From Cliff Schechter, via C&L:

Wal-Mart said Tuesday it will test sales in some stores of biblical action figures whose makers say they are aimed at Christian parents who prefer their children play with Samson, David or Noah rather than with a comic book character or Bratz doll.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. spokeswoman Melissa O'Brien said the toys made by One2believe, a Valencia, California, company, will be offered in 425 of Wal-Mart's 3,376 discount stores...

One-believe Chief Executive David Socha said his products were part of a "battle for the toy box" with dolls and figures that he said carry negative messages.

"If you're very religious, it's a battle for your children's minds and what they're playing with and pretending. There are remakes out there of Satan and evil things," Socha said.

Playing and pretending are important to any child's develop,ent, and while I'm not crazy about the crap that passes for children' toys these days, I am certain that Biblical action toys have the same potential crapiness built in. The key to childhood development is imagination: through plays, children imagine ways to adapt to the real world in all its permutations.

Imaginative play teaches children the skills they will need to develop into functioning, productive adults, including literacy, mathematical reasoning, creativity and social skills. Those social skills include the ability to share, negotiate, compromise, make and revise rules, and adapt the perspective of others.

Biblical action figures by themselves are not bad, unless combined with a dogmatic interpretation of the owners manual, The Bible. In fact, dogma of any type is anathema to imagination. Let's face it - the real world is a non-dogmatic, random, imaginative, disheveled, scary place. If everybody did exactly what the Bible tells them to do, think about how much less frightening it would be. This is the dream of Biblical literalists - a return to a world that never existed, and most likely never will, where uncertainty is vanquished like the Philistines, and the rule of law is indistinguishable from the word of God.

Talk about imaginative play.

Photoblogging

2007-07-16T14:51:00.000-05:00

Photo by Heraldblog

Real journalist spotted in White House

2007-07-11T14:54:00.000-05:00

Administration urges calm.

Volunteer Sunday

2007-07-08T08:08:00.001-05:00

The metaphor defense

2007-07-07T12:50:00.000-05:00

How good to know that in our dumbed down world, literary analysis has clawed its way into the news cycle not once, but twice this past week. The metaphor, favored by poets, hopeless romantics, and slimy defense attorneys, has found new life as an excuse for saying stupid things. First there was neo-con apologist Fouad Ajami's non-metaphorical explanation that he was merely being metaphorical when he compared convicted felon Scooter Libby to a slain American soldier. CNBC's David Schuster tore Ajami a new one, with the help of a literal Iraqi-War vet who pointed out the obvious - that Libby is a metaphorical lying sac du merde, unlike the honorable men and women who risk their lives in combat.

The other metaphorical shoe hit the ground today when finance professor Don Chance explained he was merely being metaphorical when he blamed that libertine pleasure-seeking Mr. Rogers for an epidemic of youthful narcissism that is ruining America's future.

Signs of narcissism among college students have been rising for 25 years, according to a recent study led by a San Diego State University psychologist. Obviously, Mr. Rogers alone can't be blamed for this. But as Prof. Chance sees it, "he's representative of a culture of excessive doting."

Prof. Chance teaches many Asian-born students, and says they accept whatever grade they're given; they see B's and C's as an indication that they must work harder, and that their elders assessed them accurately. They didn't grow up with Mr. Rogers or anyone else telling them they were born special.

By contrast, American students often view lower grades as a reason to "hit you up for an A because they came to class and feel they worked hard," says Prof. Chance. He wishes more parents would offer kids this perspective: "The world owes you nothing. You have to work and compete. If you want to be special, you'll have to prove it."

Chance later explained that he doesn't know what he's talking about, and besides, he was just being metaphorical:

The reference to Mr. Rogers was just a metaphor. I have no professional qualifications to evaluate the real problems or propose solutions. Mr. Rogers was a great American. I watched him with my children and wouldn’t hesitate to do so again if I had young children.

The metaphor defense is obviously catching on, its application broadened to explain the numerous gaffes, malapropisms and dissembling that led America to an ill-advised war.
For instance, when George Tenet said the evidence for WMD was a "slam dunk", he wasn't speaking literally, unless there was backboard and hoop installed in the Oval Office. He was speaking metaphorically, comparing the case for WMDs to the actions of a 7-foot tall power forward on a court full of 6-footers.

President Bush was likewise waxing metaphorical when he told America that the smoking gun of terrorism would come in the shape of a mushroom cloud. I mean, c'mon, terrorists don't use guns anymore, and who cares if they smoke anyway? We have laws against smoking in public, remember?

Don't bother us with facts - we're Republicans

2007-07-06T16:32:00.000-05:00

Zachary at Internal Monologue links to Jeff Weintraub's post regarding immigration and crime. In case you've been listening to Fox News, it's not what you think.

[A]mong men age 18-39 (who comprise the vast majority of the prison population), the incarceration rate of the native-born is much higher than the incarceration rate of the foreign-born.

Immigrants in every ethnic group in the United States have lower rates of crime and imprisonment than do the native born. This is true for all immigrant groups - including the Mexicans, Salvadorans, and Guatemalans who comprise most of the undocumented immigrants in the country. Even though immigrants from these countries are far more likely than natives to have less than a high-school education and to live in poverty, they are far less likely to be behind bars or to commit crimes. Moreover, teenage immigrants are much less likely than native-born adolescents to engage in risk behaviors such as delinquency, violence, and substance abuse that often lead to imprisonment.

The problem of violent crime in the United States is not caused by immigrants, regardless of their legal status. [....]

There are real dangers inherent in the myth that immigrants are more prone to criminality than are the native-born. [....] We, as sociologists, criminologists, legal scholars and other social scientists, both academics and practitioners in the criminal justice system, including prosecutors, police officers, and criminal attorneys, strongly urge state and national policymakers who are drafting laws that affect immigrants to base these laws on demonstrated facts rather than on false assumptions.

Basing laws on demonstrated facts rather than false assumptions - now where I have heard that one before? Isn't that how the Iraq War started? When the facts don't line up just so for the lizard-brain right, false assumptions will just have to do.

We see false assumptions every day. Fox News is telling us that socialized medicine will lead to more foreign born doctors, some of whom may be jihadists! So addition that hernia exam ("Turn your head and die, American devil!") you'll also be contributing to the downfall of Christianity when you pay your doctor.

Meanwhile, proto-fascist nativists are alienating more and more Hispanics, many of whom agree that our immigration laws need fixing. President Bush attracted 40 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2004 - these days, only 11 percent of Hispanics identify themselves as Republicans, while three times as many lean Democrat.

Even more telling: all the Democratic contenders accepted invitations to address NALEO, the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, held recently in Orlando.

All of the Republican candidates declined invitations to join a NALEO forum held a day earlier, citing scheduling conflicts.

Sickening

2007-07-03T23:00:00.000-05:00

Bill Kristol: Liar

Tony Snow: Liar

President George W. Bush: Liar

The only consolation to the Libby pardon is that Bush was acting out of fear. White knuckle, fill your pants, crawl into a closet and curl into a fetal position fear. It's the end of the republic as we know it.

Could be both

2007-07-02T07:46:00.001-05:00

From today's WaPo:

"You don't get any feeling of somebody crouching down in the bunker," said Irwin M. Stelzer, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute who was part of one group of scholars who met with Bush. "This is either extraordinary self-confidence or out of touch with reality. I can't tell you which."

Bush has self confidence in spades, but it doesn't come from a belief in his own competence. Dear Leader is a True Believer whose religiosity has created its own reality, far afield from the world he was elected to deal with.

Guantanamo, mon amour

2007-06-26T07:34:00.000-05:00

Who else would describe Gitmo as a clean, safe, and humane facility, other than the poor military prosecutor who drew the short straw? Col. Morris Davis, who would also torture kittens if ordered by a superior, tries his hand at packaged vacation brochure writing in today's New York Times:

Today, most of the detainees are housed in new buildings modeled after civilian prisons in Indiana and Michigan. Detainees receive three culturally appropriate meals a day. Each has a copy of the Koran. Guards maintain respectful silence during Islam’s five daily prayer periods, and medical care is provided by the same practitioners who treat American service members. Detainees are offered at least two hours of outdoor recreation each day, double that allowed inmates, including convicted terrorists, at the “supermax” federal penitentiary in Florence, Colo.

Davis omits the fact that the majority of Gitmo prisoners, I mean, guests, have been held for years on little or no evidence. Or that the Bush Administration claimed that the Geneva Conventions don't apply to The War Against Terror®. Or that the CIA own's operatives have reported the same tales of abuse as the detainees themselves.

Davis tells us that Australian David Hicks told his sentencing judge that he had been treated humanely - more evidence of the benign nature of indefinite detention without charges at Club Dread. But Davis knows the US agreed to a shorter sentence (nine months) if Hicks agreed to lie about his treatment. The only reason Hicks even received a "trial" was because the Australian prime minister pressured Dick Cheney on the issue.

If we doubled Guantanamo, as Mitt Romney suggested, does that mean the US has to lie twice as much about what is happening there?

Glenn Greenwald has more.

Immigration is hard work

2007-06-22T05:20:00.000-05:00

Expect to hear more about the 1965 Immigration Act in the weeks to come, as the right revs up to full indignation mode over the influx of non-white people crossing our borders. Lloyd Billingsley at the execrable Front Page is worried that brown people will demand to be treated fairly, and that just ain't right.

Why all the fuss? Here's a little background.

The Immigration Act of 1965 essentially repealed the immigration act of 1924. The '65 law had the support of Dems and Republicans.

The 1924 Immigration Act was a product of its time - namely, it was racist. It excluded certain ethnic groups, especially Chinese. America was all freaked out about communism in 1924, and KKK 2.0 had been recently rolled out as a user friendly Christian organization that attracted millions of white people. So naturally Congress gave America the immigration act it wanted.

But the issue today is illegal immigration. The 1965 act set quotas on legal immigration. But that's how the right argues. It conflates one thing with another. So Al Qaeda is the same as Shiites, and illegal border crossers are the same as foreigners with green cards.

As far as I can tell, critics of the 1965 act are upset because it lets in too many brown people. This is very upsetting to Republicans who think the US is meant to look like the cast of a Frank Capra movie. But the really cool part about America is that every nationality has contributed something to our culture. I challenge you to go one day without brushing against something that was brought to our shores by a non-white ethnic group. Jazz, margaritas, sushi, hummus, Pokemon, peanut butter, canoes, kung fu all vie for our time and dollars in the great American marketplace.

Immigrant fears and American xenophobia are nothing knew. Virtually every immigrant group suffered the wrath of ignoramuses at some point in the long American experience. Even the Swedes were abused at some point. How do you make fun of a Swede, for God sakes! "Hey Lars, we don't need your, uh, things that you do around here. Go back."

The Republican right talks a great game when it comes to staying the course in Iraq. The standard answer to every criticism of the war is "Don't be a quitter", and dissent is equated with treason. But the right's patriotic mettle turns to limp rigatoni when the issue is non-white people living here. Suddenly the knuckledragging wantwits who make up Bush's base turn white with fear, and dishonor 200 years of immigration history. "Oh no, immigration is hard work!"

We can't have that now, can we?

Goat fences make goat neighbors

2007-06-21T23:09:00.000-05:00

Trent Lott (R-There's a Nigra on Ma Roof!), hasn't quite figured out the immigration question, but he has rolled out an important analogy: brown people are like goats.

"Now people are at least as smart as goats," Lott continued. "Maybe not as agile. Build a fence. We should have a virtual fence. Now one of the ways I keep those goats in the fence is I electrified them. Once they got popped a couple of times they quit trying to jump it.

"I'm not proposing an electrified goat fence," Lott added quickly, "I'm just trying, there's an analogy there."

Asked for clarification as to what exactly the analogy was, Lott spokesman Lee Youngblood said that the senator supported a variety of measures in the immigration bill, including unmanned aerial surveillance vehicles, radar and more border patrol agents, as well as a fence to reduce the flow of illegal immigration.

"A fence in and of itself is not enough," said Youngblood. "You can have technology to support the fence and to supplement the fence."

Analogies sure are fun. I think I'll try one. OK, how about this: Trent Lott is to the US Senate, as a turd is to a swimming pool.

Museum of Bad Art

2007-06-20T12:00:00.001-05:00

In troubled times such as these, when a corrupt President subverts the constitution while his cronies line up for more lucre, it is comforting to know we have place to turn. I'm talking about bad art.

UNSEEN FORCES #12
Think Again
Acrylic on canvas by Unknown
Acquired by Scott Wilson from trash

This disturbing work "makes an offer you can't refuse". The chilling, matter-of-fact manner in which the subject presents the severed head to us is a poignant reminder of just how numb we have become. The understated violence implicit in the scene speaks volumes on our own desensitization, our society's reflexive use of force, and the artist's inability to deal with the hindquarters of the animal.

Alas, one day reason and honor will return to our nation's capital, and the need for bad art will slip away. But until then, enjoy!

Clinton's war on terror

2007-06-13T21:38:00.000-05:00

The next time some right wing revisionist blames Clinton for Bush's War, tell him to STFU. A comment left at Carpetbagger Report tells us why:

CLINTON Developed the nation’s first anti-terrorism policy, and appointed first national coordinator of anti-terrorist efforts.

CLINTON Stopped cold the Al Qaeda millennium hijacking and bombing plots.

CLINTON Stopped cold the planned attack to kill the Pope

CLINTON Stopped cold the planned attack to blow up 12 U.S. jetliners simultaneously

CLINTON Stopped cold the planned attack to blow up UN Headquarters

CLINTON Stopped cold the planned attack to blow up FBI Headquarters

CLINTON Stopped cold the planned attack to blow up the Israeli Embassy in Washington

CLINTON Stopped cold the planned attack to blow up Boston airport

CLINTON Stopped cold the planned attack to blow up Lincoln and Holland Tunnels in NY

CLINTON Stopped cold the planned attack to blow up the George Washington Bridge

CLINTON Stopped cold the planned attack to blow up the US Embassy in Albania

– Tried to kill Osama bin Laden and disrupt Al Qaeda through preemptive strikes (efforts denounced by the G.O.P.).

– Brought perpetrators of first World Trade Center bombing and CIA killings to justice.

– Did not blame Bush I administration for first World Trade Center bombing even though it occurred 38 days after Bush left office. Instead, worked hard, even obsessively — and successfully — to stop future terrorist attacks.

–Named the Hart-Rudman commission to report on nature of terrorist threats and major steps to be taken to combat terrorism.

- Clinton sent legislation to Congress to TIGHTEN AIRPORT SECURITY. (Remember, this is before 9/11) The legislation was defeated by the Republicans because of opposition from the airlines.

- Clinton sent legislation to Congress to allow for BETTER TRACKING OF TERRORIST FUNDING. It was defeated by Republicans in the Senate because of opposition from banking interests.

- Clinton sent legislation to Congress to add tagents to explosives, to allow for BETTER TRACKING OF EXPLOSIVES USED BY TERRORISTS. It was defeated by the Republicans because of opposition from the NRA.

- Clinton increased the military budget by an average of 14 per cent, reversing the trend under Bush I.

- Clinton tripled the budget of the FBI for counterterrorism and doubled overall funding for counterterrorism

-Clinton detected and destroyed cells of Al Qaeda in over 20 countries

-Clinton created national stockpile of drugs and vaccines including 40 million doses of smallpox vaccine.

-Of Clinton’s efforts says Robert Oakley, Reagan Ambassador for Counterterrorism: “Overall, I give them very high marks” and “The only major criticism I have is the obsession with Osama”

-Paul Bremer, Bush’s appointed leader (Civilian Administrator) of Iraq disagreed slightly with Robert Oakley as he believed the Clinton Administration had “correctly focused on bin Laden.

-Barton Gellman in the Washington Post put it best, “By any measure available, Clinton left office having given greater priority to terrorism than any president before him” and was the “first administration to undertake a systematic anti-terrorist effort”

Cartoon physics

2007-06-03T11:23:00.000-05:00

The latest disrupted-in-the-nick-of-time terror attack, and the improbability of the mayhem that would allegedly ensue, reminds me of this news item from last summer:

WASHINGTON, July 7 (Reuters) - A plot to bomb New York's Holland Tunnel in an effort to flood the Wall Street financial district has been uncovered by the FBI, with a suspect arrested in Lebanon, New York's Daily News reported on Friday.

The newspaper, quoting unidentified counterterrorism sources, said the investigation involved what officials considered a "serious plot" to detonate enough explosives inside the landmark tunnel to destroy it and send devastating floodwaters through lower Manhattan.

The idea that puncturing an underwater tunnel would cause land the lies above sea level to flood is absurd, in the absence of a tremendous pressure that would force the water out of the tunnel and onto Manhattan.

Now comes word that an Islamist plot to blow up a jet fuel terminal at JFK airport would cause fuel lines buried underneath the Bronx to explode. A US Attorney who wants to keep her job says "“The devastation that would be caused had this plot succeeded is just unthinkable, one of the most chilling plots imaginable.”

Yes. Right up there with covering yourself with vanishing cream so you can sneak past a mean guard dog in order to kidnap Tweety Bird. The Bush Administration, in yet another desperate attempt to scare the bejeeezus out of us, is still resorting to cartoon physics.

MSNBC quotes Richard Kuprewicz, a pipeline expert and president of Accufacts Inc., an energy consulting firm that focuses on pipelines and tank farms, who said the force of the explosion would depend on the amount of fuel under pressure, but it would not travel up and down the line.

“That doesn’t mean wackos out there can’t do damage and cause a fire, but those explosions and fires are going to be fairly restricted,” he said.

What a torturing nation loses

2007-06-01T15:23:00.001-05:00

From a Spanish journalist, Gomez Carillo on the front lines with French troops in 1915:

One morning a Bavarian soldier who had come out of his hole in search of some beetroot left in a field by labourers, mistook his path and wandered into the enemy's lines. The troopers caught him by the feet and brought him into the dugout of the captain of the company, who asked him:

"What are you doing here?"

"I was looking for something to eat," said the German.

"It isn't the dinner hour."

"I know, but we have had nothing for two days."

The captain ordered a sumptuous meal for him: meat, eggs, sardines, cheese, coffee, cognac, and even a penny cigar. When the feast was finished, the captain cried:

"And now be off, we have had enough of you."

"Oh! " said the poor fellow, thinking of the abundant menu of the French trenches, "I consider myself your prisoner."

"No, no, we can't be bothered with one single Boche. Be off. Later on, if we catch you with all your companions, we will keep you. We have enough provisions here for a regiment. Good-bye!"

At nightfall twenty soldiers to whom the honest Bavarian had described his adventure, came over and gave themselves up in the trench of the sardines and cheese. As a recompense they were given a splendid dish of fried potatoes. "Fried potatoes," said Ch—, "are our favourite dish, and the cook is esteemed or detested according as he prepares them well or ill. When we see him coming along there from the south with his saucepans, the first thing we ask is whether he has brought us our favourite dish. The worst of it is that generally he won't take the trouble to cook them to a turn, and so when they get here they are uneatable. Only yesterday we held a court-martial on the cook of our trench, and we condemned him to be degraded for not doing potatoes properly. If they are not good to-day we will condemn him to death."

Another Bush flip flop

2007-05-31T21:19:00.000-05:00

President Bush thinks it's wrong to "rile up people’s emotions" with misinformation.

This startling admission follows six years of his pandering to the worst human instincts for the purpose of forcing one party rule on the world's oldest democracy.

The Extinguisher in Chief

2007-05-29T13:01:00.000-05:00

President Bush fights forest fires in Georgia so we don't have to fight them over here. This just in from the White House:

I’ve just had an extensive briefing on the fires here in Georgia and Florida. You can see on the map back here, the fire covers a lot of area; a lot of timberland is being burned down. A lot of people's livelihoods are being affected. A lot of good country is being destroyed. And a lot of good people are fighting the fires.

And a lot of Americans are getting a lot tired of the President when he sounds like a third grader doing show and tell.

Memorial Day

2007-05-27T20:37:00.001-05:00

I can't think of a major US holiday more drained of meaning than Memorial Day. As commercialized as Christmas has become, most Americans still know its origins. Meanwhile, Memorial Day has become a three-day weekend, with a whiff of military history thrown in that few Americans can tell you about.

Memorial Day grew out of the American Civil War, as was first recognized in 1868. By 1890, all the northern states recognized it as a day to remember and honor the Civil War war dead, north and south. The southern states stubbornly held their own remembrance day until after World War One, when the holiday officially honored all of America's war dead.

Originally, Memorial Day was always on May 30. It was changed to the last Monday of May when Congress passed the Uniform Holiday Act of 1971.

I would argue that Memorial Day is our most important federal holiday. Thanksgiving is a celebration of revisionist history. Christmas is a state-sponsored marketing tool. Labor Day is a redundancy - don't we already get days off from work?

But Memorial Day gives us pause to reflect on our species' worst instints, and that is important in times such as these. When our own government tries to ban photographs of flag-draped coffins, and media propagandists attack news outlets for reading the names of our war dead, we can at least turn to Memorial Day to remind ourselves about some awful truths.

And we can listen to men like Kenneth Rice, an 86-year-old Michigan man, who was held prisoner by the Japanese for three terrible years:

Over the weeks, Nichols Field's detail shrunk to 135 men as prisoners died or were transferred because of illness. That's how Rice escaped Pete's tyranny.

The Japanese sent the Marine, ailing with appendicitis, back to Cabanatuan after two months. There, doctors removed his appendix without giving him an anesthetic.

Six months later, the Japanese reinserted him into the labor force, sending him to his longest and last destination.

Nagasaki.

Read the whole story.

The best antidote to the sound of trumpets is a strong dose of reality. That's what Memorial Day is all about.

Hitch on Falwell

2007-05-16T16:37:00.000-05:00

And he says it so well. I take back everything I wrote yesterday:

The empty life of this ugly little charlatan proves only one thing: that you can get away with the most extraordinary offenses to morality and to truth in this country if you will just get yourself called Reverend.

Who would, even at your network, have invited on such a little toad to tell us that the attacks of September the 11th were the result of our sinfulness and were God's punishment if they hadn't got some kind of clerical qualification?

People like that should be out in the street, shouting and hollering with a cardboard sign and selling pencils from a cup.

OK, not everything. But there is a difference between churlish, ad hominem attack and valid criticism. Hitch's comments easily fall into the latter category.

Falwell

2007-05-15T18:39:00.000-05:00

Jerry Falwell is dead. The leader of the moral majority, the man who blamed 9/11 on homos and the ACLU. The clown prince of American Christiandom. Falwell was to reason and tolerance what Yogi Berra was to English syntax: "If you're not a born-again Christian, you're a failure as a human being." "AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals." "The idea that religion and politics don't mix was invented by the Devil to keep Christians from running their own country." Falwell failed to surpise years before his death.

But now he's dead, and I hope in a place where that kind of bigotry is not tolerated.

It's time for liberals and progressives to get past Falwell. His star was eclipsed last November, when the American public kicked the Republican theocrats out of power. He has been irrelevant ever since.

So why all the anger? The comments at various liberal blogs are lit up with the worst kind of bile. "While you're in hell, tell Hitler he's an asshole for me, ok Jerry?" says Jason at Crooks and Liars. "Hell for this guy should be having to tortured by everyone killed at the WTC as he explains how their deaths were brought about by homosexuals in the US," opines SupremeCommanderThor at Atrios. In all fairness, both blogs asked readers to be civil, but to little avail. The anger was just too great.

Let him go. Any psychologist will tell you that anger and fear are two sides of the same coin. Falwell can't hurt us anymore. He's gone.

It's time to stop being afraid. The grown ups are in charge now.

Hey look! News!

2007-05-11T09:54:00.000-05:00

I am sensitive to the suffering caused by California wildfires, and the terrible drought in south Florida, and so, apparently, is NBC News, by the significant airtime that Bryan Williams gave these events last night. But I don't understand the media silence on two recent developments that impact the whole country.

Exhibit A is an interview yesterday by Lawrence Wilkinson, a Retired Army Colonel, the former Chief of Staff at the State Department from 2002 to 2005 under then Secretary of State Colin Powell, a Vietnam War veteran, the former Acting Director of the Marine Corps War College at Quantico, and currently a teacher of national security at William and Mary College. He said what too many others are only thinking: that President Bush and Vice President Cheney need to be impeached.

This is significant, as Wilkinson is so far removed from the George Soros - Move On universe. Just because he runs the Marine Corps War College doesn't make him a clueless academic.

Speaking on National Public Radio (where else?), Wilkinson said:

"Thlanguage in (the constitution), the language in those two or three lines about impeachment is nice and precise – it's high crimes and misdemeanors. You compare Bill Clinton's peccadilloes for which he was impeached to George Bush's high crimes and misdemeanors or Dick Cheney's high crimes and misdemeanors, and I think they pale in significance.

"I think we went into this war for specious reasons. I think we went into this war not too much unlike the way we went into the Spanish American War with the Hearst press essentially goading the American people and the leadership into war. That was a different time in a different culture, in a different America. We're in a very different place today and I think we essentially got goaded into the war through some of the same means."

Ouch!

In even more hopeful news, the Iraqi Parliament is sounding more and more like the US Congress, proving that George Bush's war to make them just like us is working!

A majority of Iraq's parliament has signed a proposed bill that would require a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. soldiers from Iraq and freeze current troop levels, a sign of a growing division between Iraqi legislators and the prime minister that mirrors the widening gulf between the Bush administration and its critics in Congress.

The draft bill would create a timeline for a gradual departure, much like what some Democrats in the United States have demanded, and require the Iraqi government to secure parliament's approval before any further extensions of the U.N. mandate for foreign troops in Iraq, which expires at the end of 2007.

"We haven't asked for the immediate withdrawal of multinational forces, we asked that we should build our security forces and make them qualified and at that point there would be a withdrawal," said Baha al-Araji, a parliamentarian allied with the anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose supporters drafted the bill. "But no one can accept the occupation of his country."

And this isn't news, why?

This was inevitable

2007-05-09T10:37:00.000-05:00

Two in five Americans favor the I-word

2007-05-09T10:16:00.000-05:00

A few months ago, the Republican response to calls for impeachment was "bring it on". The GOP narrative was that the "I" word is such a nutty idea, that the Democrats would fatally wound themselves with the great majority of Americans, most of whom deep down really loved their bumbling President.

But that was then and this is now. A recent poll by conservative Human Events shows that 39% of Americans favor impeachment of both the President and Vice President.

Anti-war Congressman John Murtha of Pennsylvania is prominent among some Democrats in his use of the "I" word -- impeachment -- about President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Murtha made his comments on CBS's "Face the Nation" and elsewhere.

Few serious observers think things will ever get to actual impeachment. And yet the American public seems more open to the concept than many imagine, according to a new national poll. The implications of this public sentiment could be huge for the 2008 presidential elections.

There's much for Republicans to hate about this poll: independents, who are likely to decide the 2008 elections, favor impeachment by 42 percent.

Life of the party

2007-04-18T15:07:00.000-05:00

The Presidential candidates are starting to comment on SCOTUS' partial birth abortion ruling today, and responses are predictable. Recovering liberal Rudy Giuliani applauds the justices 5-4 decision to uphold a federal law that bans the procedure. So does Saint John McCain. Meanwhile, Obama and Edwards warned that Roe was next.

Republicans love to run as the "party of life", yet in recent years a majority of Americans favor safe, legal abortion with some restrictions. Republicans seized on partial birth abortion because, well, the name is so gruesome. The same people who have trouble feeling sympathy with a cluster of cells no bigger than the period at the end of this sentence are sure to have an emotional attachment to a late term fetus that could, theoretically, live on its own outside the womb.

Doctors call the procedure intact dilation and extraction, or IDX. Republicans tried to ban the procedure in 1995 and again later, but couldn't overcome President Clinton's veto. Congress passed another law in 2003, which was upheld today.

Politically speaking, the ruling is probably a good thing for Democrats. IDX is hard for politicians to defend to most people, and now they won't have to. It also takes away a potent wedge issue from the Republicans, who would much rather talk about collapsed fetal craniums than the President's collapsed foreign policy.

V Tech

2007-04-17T09:46:00.000-05:00

The full horror of the Virginia Tech massacre hasn't hit me yet. I'm sure it will when the breathless survivor stories are told, and we know more about the gunman. Right now I'm too busy being disgusted by the media coverage, which included custom graphics and theme music before the bodies were counted.

Brian Williams was particularly appalling on the NBC Nightly News last night, with his fawning interviews of students and paramedics. "Virgina Tech will always be known as the site of this horrible massacre" said Williams, thus making sure the Virginia Tech will always be knows as the site of this horrible massacre.

It also bothers me that violent death by crazed gunmen happens everyday in Baghdad, but doesn't warrant a tenth of the US media coverage. Thirty-two dead students is "Another bloody day in Baghdad" the talking heads will tell us, then quickly move on to more Panda videos, or a story about Prince Harry's jilted girlfriend.

Update
ABC News shows off its math skills.

The number of dead is almost twice as high as the previous record for a mass shooting on an American college campus. That took place at the University of Texas at Austin on Aug. 1, 1966, when a gunman named Charles Whitman opened fire from the 28th floor of a campus tower. Whitman killed 16 and injured 31.

Actually, 32 is exactly twice as many as 16. Is ABC hedging on whether to count the shooter among the dead? Strange.

Mother and daughter

2007-04-16T08:35:00.000-05:00

Mrs. Heraldblog and our daughter, Natalie, hamming it up.

Good riddance to Imus

2007-04-15T10:20:00.000-05:00

It wasn't the government or even political correctness that brought Imus to his knees. It was the advertisers who support the show. They, ultimately, have the say, and some really big names put NBC on notice that they would advertise elsewhere if the network didn't clean house. Plus, there are more African American decision makers in the nation's major corporations.

Yeah, Imus is gone. What's the problem? On the list of pressing free speech issues, I'd put Northshore Ned's right to act like Dr. Dre alongside the right to keep and bear sniper rifles.

Gwen Ifil was dead on this morning on Meet the Press. Politicians from both sides of the aisle have been quiet about the I Man's dismissal. Over the years, Imus has hosted free speech advocates, bigots, liberals, theocrats and independents, and from them the silence is deafening.

Down the Hatch

2007-04-05T12:53:00.000-05:00

In follow up to my Sunday Meet the Press post, I've learned that San Diego USA Carol Lam 1) never fundraised for President Clinton 2) was never a law professor and 3) has 15 years experience as a prosecutor.

On the other hand, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Confabulation) told Tim Russert last Sunday that Lam 1) was a Clinton fundraiser 2) was just a law professor and (3) had little or no prosecutorial experience.
I love a good mystery, and the mystery here is why a sitting US Senator would go before millions and tell back to back to back whoppers. I'm not talking about little white lies here, or highly questionable opinions stated as fact. Hatch's three assertions are not only false, they are demonstrably false. It's like saying Orrin Hatch quit the Klan last month to spend more time with his start-up porn business. Acutally, Hatch's lies were worse, because they don't involve proving a negative.

So why would Hatch subject himself to such exposure. Here are some explanations.

First, he thought the media would be too distracted by Britney's shiny, lumpy cranium to notice.

Second, he was just repeating the talking points that his chief of staff heard at the last GOP We-Don't-Have-A-Prayer breakfast with Karl Rove.

Three, he's advocating for Gonzales, which means he has no business sitting on the Senate Judiciary Committee. And he's a liar.

h/t Josh

Update: Josh sheds more light on Hatch's prevarications. The Senator has issued an explanation for his MTP moment: Everything he said was true, except that he wasn't really talking about Carol Lam. He meant to say Alan Bersin, the previous San Diego USA under Clinton.

Bersin was a law professor with little prosecutorial experience who was appointed in 1993 because he was friends with Clinton at Yale and raised money for the Clinton campaign. So take out "Bersin" and insert "Lam" and voila, a senior-sleaze moment.

This is about what we could expect from Orrin Hatch, a former drifter/drug addict who entices young men into his apartment for sexual perversion, murder, necrophilia and cannibalism. He is an embarrassment to the country, and deserves to be clubbed to death in the prison weightroom.

Update: The above paragraph is factually accurate, except that I accidentally used Hatch's name instead of Jeffrey Dahmer's. But I still stand behind everything I wrote.

April is Poetry Month

2007-04-02T10:17:00.000-05:00

To An Athlete Dying Young
by A. E. Housman

The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay,
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.

Smell the fear

2007-04-01T09:17:00.000-05:00

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Lickspittle) is losing it on Meet the Press over the attorney general scandal, while Judiciary Chair Patrick Leahy looks on.

Hatch is calling the Democratic investigation a tempest in a teapot. He admits the White House didn't handle the situation well, but insists there isn't a shred of evidence that anything untoward has happened.

Did Russert just say "Horrin Hatch"? OMG.

Hatch said Carol Lam, the former USA from San Diego, should have been fired three years ago. Other USAs weren't aggressively prosecuting pornography, or illegal aliens, or tearing the tags off mattresses. Funny that none of these issues were brought up in private emails prior to the firings.

Now Hatch says he likes AG Alberto Gonzales because he's Hispanic, and a nice guy. He is "incapable of lying."

Judiciary Chair Patrick Leahy is masterful: "Sen. Hatch says Gonzales has always been truthful. Unfortunately, he was not truthful to the US Senate, and that is why he is coming back."

Stay tuned.

Time for national health care

2007-03-30T20:30:00.000-05:00

Republicans hate the very idea of publicly-funded national health care, but the fact is, we already have it. Dr. Edwin Leap explains the inconvenient truth:

The system is set up so that those who pay, cover their own bill and the bills of others. Fair or not, it’s the way it works. But it’s not unheard of. It’s similar to the way the costs of shoplifting are passed on to other consumers in retail stores. Someone is going to pay, because the store can’t absorb all of the cost of stolen items. Not that I’m equating non-payment with theft; it’s just a financial analogy. But there’s a parallel. When someone says to me that they wanted to see their doctor, but owe them money, and the same person drinks alcohol every weekend and smokes two to four packs per day, has a camera phone and a fresh tattoo, it’s hard to believe they simply can’t pay a bill. In that sense, the theft analogy may hold some water. But in the end, two facts remain; health care is expensive, and someone has to pay or else the system will not survive.

Read the whole thing.

Drowning in the mainstream

2007-03-29T16:12:00.000-05:00

Republicans used to get away with calling Democrats "out of the mainstream". It worked when the mainstream was stocked with plump social issues like abortion, gay marriage, and school prayer.

There may have been a time when Democrats weren't mainstream for opposing the Iraq War. But those days are gone. Today, 59 percent of Americans say they support the August, 2008, Democratic withdrawal date for Bush's War. And while 33 percent oppose the bill, I can't help but wonder if some of those folks simple want the withdrawal date to be set even earlier.

But facts rarely get in the way of the Bush Administration's fantasies. Today, White House spokesblonde Dana Perino called Congress "out of the mainstream" for passing a spending bill that sets time limits on a troop withdrawal from Iraq.

“Now, their proposal is well outside of the mainstream. This is not a moderate bill. It is contrary to the Baker-Hamilton report. It’s contrary to the judgment of the President’s military advisors, and it’s contrary to the unanimous judgment of our intelligence community.”

There is so much wrong with these four sentences. First, since when does Bush care about the Iraq Study Group recommendations? The Democrats are more inline with the ISG than Bush. Second, two out of three Americans want Congress to set a withdrawal date from Iraq. Bush stamps his tiny feet and says "no", then calls Congress out of the mainstream.

Which means that a majority of Americans are also "out of the mainstream."

Let's get real. Bush doesn't care about the mainstream, whatever that means. He's said over and over he doesn't care about polls, or what the newspapers say. No, our President is playing to future generations of historians, and the grateful crowds who line George W. Bush Memorial Parkway on Uniter Not a Divider Day, to cheer the passing Christian-themed floats and military bands. They stand in awe of the President who brought Western-style freedoms to the heathen Muslims, thus vanquishing the terrorists who brought bedlam to our shores.

He knows this will happen, in the same way a chronic gambler knows the next roll will be lucky sevens.

A show about nothing

2007-03-22T10:55:00.000-05:00

Here's Senator Leahy's response to President Bush's lame offer to let Rove and the rest dissemble off the record about the USA firings.

Kudos to the Senator from Vermont for not taking the bait.

DeLay on Meet the Press

2007-03-18T09:23:00.000-05:00

Tom DeLay (R-Prison Bound) just said we are fighting the 9/11 terrorists in Iraq.

Richard Perle hopes the surge will win the war in Iraq.

Now Delay says it's better to fight the terrorists in Iraq than "over here".

Democratiic Rep. Joe Sestak, who actually fought in Iraq, is being much to nice to DeLay. "Shouldn't you be in prison or something?" He didn't really say that, but he should.

300 ways to hate 300

2007-03-12T22:33:00.000-05:00

This guy really, really doesn't like 300.

The Persian army is depicted as an army of monsters. They are all less than human: they're all horribly mutated in one way or another, hunchbacked and grotesque. They're not white. They're sexual perverts! (And while we get jokes about boy-loving men [this from Spartans, mind you—Spartans who are all dressed in very manly and heterosexual giant leather jockstraps], of course what we see is women engaging in some form of pantomime lesbianism—because why not titillate while also casting moral judgment?) Obviously, they deserve to be brutally slaughtered. It must be the will of God.

Never has a film made me feel so physically ill to be in the theater watching it. And it wasn't all the beheadings, although those were copious. I felt like I was being made to watch a Leni Riefenstahl movie, or the very worst bits of Birth of a Nation. And then there was even more to feel sick about, like the fact that the sole female character's only role seemed to be to allow herself to get raped by her husband's rival—and this was presented as heroic. What a vile, vile piece of trash.

I don't get out to the movies a much as I'd like, so the next time I do go, it probably won't be 300.

Update: The classical scholars at Obsidian Wings and their readers are all about ancient Sparta and triremes.

Bob Novak - a cautionary tale

2007-03-12T16:06:00.000-05:00

I'm shock - shocked, I tell you - that Robert Novak would lie in an opinion column just so he could smear Hillary Clinton. The 76-year-old paleoconservative claims Hillary recently made up a story about growing up in Chicago and attending a Martin Luther King rally because she's scared of Barak Obama's candidacy. This spake Novak:

Hillary Clinton's road to the White House is not going as planned. Instead of a steady procession to coronation at the Denver convention, she is involved in a real struggle against credible opponents, led by Obama. No wonder she and her handlers were tempted to imply the existence long ago of a teenager in Chicago's suburbs who never really existed.

But Hillary had written about her Chicago childhood, and seeing MLK, in her 2003 book Why Robert Novak is a Lying Weasel. Nobody outside of Illinois had even heard of Obama four years ago.

To cut Novak a little slack here, it's worth noting his unusual childhood in Joliet, not far downriver from Hillary's hometown. Robert grew up Jewish, and his father, an itinerant organ grinder, coerced young Bobby to play the monkey as the two wandered up and down Canal Street in the Windy City, charming out of town businessmen and street pimps with their motley collection of fauz-Italian ballads. When Robert was a teenager, he fled his family to join a traveling carnival, where he was billed as Ho-Jo the Monkey Boy - 37 Flavors of Eye Scream! It was a horrible pun, but Novak had never spent a day in school and never noticed, or so he wrote in his 1972 autobiography Why I Am Such a Douchebag.

Sure, making up stories about political figures to score political points in a column that only really stupid people like to read is wrong, and I'm not excusing Novak, but a little background is in order.

I love it when Republicans eat their young

2007-03-10T09:51:00.000-06:00

That sound you hear is the GOP coalition splitting:

The political equivalent of Britney Spears shaving the hair off her head, Ann Coulter made headlines at this year's Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) by calling Democrat John Edwards a faggot. Wearing a leather dress and a Christian cross around her neck, Coulter must be a liberal infiltrator whose purpose is to give conservatism a bad name.

Yes folks, that was written by a typing troglodyte at GOP USA.

300 big dumb guys

2007-03-09T06:20:00.000-06:00

Check out A.O. Scott's inspired review of 300, which opened today.

The Persians, pioneers in the art of facial piercing, have vastly greater numbers — including ninjas, dervishes, elephants, a charging rhino and an angry bald giant — but the Spartans clearly have superior health clubs and electrolysis facilities.

Libby guilty

2007-03-06T11:08:00.000-06:00

Jury found Scooter guilty on four our of five counts of perjury. He's a felon now. Can't vote or own a gun. But the Vice President will always return his calls.

Heraldblog v. prior restraint

2007-03-04T21:30:00.000-06:00

A Kansas judge doesn't want you you to read this:

Breaking News: BPU Could Face Thousands in Fines
A confidential report reveals the utility didn't follow federal pollution regulations when upgrading its plants.
Justin Kendall
Published: March 1, 2007
The Board of Public Utilities in Kansas City, Kansas, may be liable for thousands of dollars in fines for failing to comply with anti-pollution regulations, according to a confidential document obtained by the Pitch.

Subject(s): Mary Gonzales, EPA, Board of Public Utilities, Susan Allen, Marc Conklin
The document was prepared November 16, 2004, by lawyer Stanley A. Reigel. It weighs the pros and cons of admitting to the Environmental Protection Agency that upgrades at BPU power plants did not comply with the federal Clean Air Act.

The report was hand-delivered to Marc Conklin, BPU general counsel and human resources director. The report is stamped “CONFIDENTIAL” and warns against duplication without Conklin’s approval. Conklin did not return a call from the Pitch.

BPU spokeswoman Susan Allen also declined to comment and instead sent an e-mail that read: “BPU cannot comment on a BPU confidential report. The Pitch should be aware that it possesses a confidential, legally protected document. The document should be returned to BPU.”

Mary Gonzales, president of the board of directors that oversees the utility, said Thursday that she was unaware of the report. Reigel did not immediately return a phone call on Friday to his office at the law firm of Stinson Morrison Hecker in Kansas City, Missouri.

When Reigel’s report was written, the EPA was auditing utility companies to see whether upgrades and repairs made after 1980 at coal-powered power plants followed federal guidelines. The letter indicates that the BPU was preparing to respond if audited by the EPA. However, it’s unclear what action, if any, the BPU took after Reigel delivered his letter.

Kim Olson, an EPA spokeswoman in Kansas City, tells the Pitch that the BPU has not contacted the agency to disclose its failure to seek repair permits and follow regulations when making upgrades.

According to Reigel’s letter, his report was spurred by a November 14, 2003, analysis of BPU’s coal-fired power plants by Burns & McDonnell Engineers. The engineering firm estimated that upgrades to the plants to make them comply with federal regulations would cost the utility nearly $160 million.

Reigel’s 15-page document identifies 73 repairs or upgrades that may not have followed EPA rules. The work was done at the utility’s three power plants: Nearman Creek Power Station, Quindaro Power Station and the now-closed Kaw Power Station. The work was completed between January 1980 and November 2004. Reigel determined that 15 of those repairs and upgrades were “questionable” and another 15 projects would be “probably not defensible” if the EPA conducted an audit.

Any one of those projects “puts BPU at risk” for an audit by the EPA, Reigel warned. Fines for utility companies in similar cases amounted to $1,000 for each megawatt of energy produced by the plant. Together, the Nearman and Quindaro plants produce 631 megawatts.

The audits Reigel refers to in his letter fall under an EPA initiative called New Source Review. The program was established by Congress in 1977 as part of the Clean Air act. It requires permits before construction on new power plants. It also calls for modifications at plants to be “as clean as possible,” according to the EPA’s Web site.

Reigel’s report indicates that the BPU did not get the permits “for any of the projects.”

“Thus, failure to conduct pre-project NSR and failure to monitor post-project emission constitutes a violation itself, unless the project is exempt, even if the project does not increase actual emissions above the allowable increment,” the report says.

h/t Josh