Down the Hatch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rudy and the right

Digby says that the Right's apparent embrace of thrice married, cross-dressing, gay-friendly Rudolph Giuliani is evidence that the envangelicals' Kulturkampf is and always was bullshit.

Now Digby is a tremendous blogger, and a compelling political observer, but I'm not buying this time. Evangelicals believe in redemption, so their faith allows for Giuliani's switch from cross-dressing libertine to man of God. They just can't countenance somebody going in the other direction.

Evangelicals are as pragmatic as the rest of us, too. I loathe Hillary Clinton, but would support her if I thought she had a better chance if beating a Republican in 2008. Does that mean progressive political values are bullshit? Does it make me a hypocrite? Or just someone who wants to win?

Maybe I'm misreading Digby, but she seems to be saying 30 million Americans never cared that much about family values, gay marriage, prayer in schools, etc. Watch Jesus Camp and tell me that. So it's quite a leap Digby's making. The only thing the Christian right's Rudy support tells me is that many think he's the only viable candidate they've got. Eight years ago, the fundies would have followed Brownback over the cliff just to make a point. But the movement has matured, and that probably makes them all the more dangerous. Never underestimate these people.

Condi's continuum

During her Sunday morning pedicure/oatmeal mask on Fox News Sunday, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice defended the 2002 authorization of force against Iraq with an historical comparison so breathtakingly inane that it caused Chris Wallace to, well, he didn't say anything:

"…It would be like saying that after Adolf Hitler was overthrown, we needed to change then, the resolution that allowed the United States to do that, so that we could deal with creating a stable environment in Europe after he was overthrown."

Keith Olbermann does a better job of anybody picking this one apart, and it's worth watching.

Condi claimed that stabilizing Iraq is "part of a continuum" which flows organically, much like flowers and chocolates from a Sadr City mosque, and whose genesis, nay, immaculate conception is traced to the 2002 war resolution. Ipso facto the Democrats should just butt out and let the continuum do it's metaphysical thing.

Just like the Democrats did in 1945, after Nazi Germany was defeated and the President went back to Congress for a $12.5 billion resolution to rebuild Europe. I'm sure Congress told President Truman, "Resolution? Resolution? Sheeet Harry, you don't need no stinkin' resolution! You have continuum on your side!"

Continuum models explain variation as involving a gradual quantitative transition without abrupt changes or discontinuities, according to a definition I found at Wikipedia. So Condi is saying that the transition from fabricating evidence for war, to invading a country for no reason, to precipitating the violent deaths of 500,000 Iraqis, to taking more time to pacify Baghdad than it took FDR to defeat Imperial Japan, to fomenting Civil War between the Shiites an Sunni, to spending yet more blood and treasure on a war we already lost, is a continuum, a non-stop flight to Freedomville, without an annoying stopover in Rule-of-Law-istan.

Oh no, not Utah!

From cartoonist Pat Bagley at the Salt Lake Tribune.

h/t Josh

Press the meathead

"Vice President Cheney's credibility is close to zero."
- Michigan Sen. Carl Levin on Meet the Press 30 seconds ago.

Yes! Russert asked Levin about Cheney's remark that the Democrats' anti-surge resolution "would validate the al Qaeda strategy." Levin's answer was dead on. We need to see more of this. Spread the meme: Cheney is a joke, he's been wrong on everything for the last six years, and there's no reason to take him seriously anymore.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's response earlier this week doesn't cut it anymore: "I hope the president will repudiate and distance himself from the vice president's remarks." Pelosi reportedly tried to complain about Cheney to President Bush but could not reach him.

Stop complaining, Dems. You're in charge.

The Great Prevaricator

There's only one thing Republicans love more than dead Democratic Presidents - tax cuts for the wealthy. And after that comes fake Abraham Lincoln quotes.

Some ink-stained wantwit name Frank Gaffney manufactures Lincoln quotes for the Washington Times, which Lincoln once called "a bastion of shallow little cowards who need two hands to wipe their noses."* Last week, Gaffney quoted Lincoln as having once said "Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hanged." Lincoln never said that.

But that doesn't matter. Soon a Republican congressman was repeating the fake quote on the House floor during debate over the war. Numerous media poodles followed, and pretty soon reanimated Lincoln was zombie walking through Greenwich Village, feasting on the brains of liberal bloggers.

But truth caught up with Gaffney, and he apologized, sort of, in the Washington Times, which Lincoln also called "a scandalous rag not fit for John Wilkes Booth's privy"*. Gaffney tells his credulous Washington Times subscribers, whom Lincoln onced called "an addle-pated flock of libidinous roosters chasing their peckers"*, that he was merely paraphrasing the Great Emancipator. Then he cherry picked out-of-context Lincoln quotes to make the same point: that Jack Murtha should be hanged for treason.

"Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier-boy who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of a wily agitator who induces him to desert?” Lincoln wrote that the Vallandigham “arrest was made because he was laboring, with some effect, to prevent the raising of troops; to encourage desertions from the Army; and to leave the rebellion without an adequate military force to suppress it.”

Lincoln scholars know that Honest Abe took extraordinary, extra-legal steps only because the nation was at war with itself. He spoke often of the dangers his country faced from the "uprising" or "insurrection." He wrote, "I concede that the class of arrests complained of can be constitutional only when, in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require them."

It's hard to know what Lincoln, or even a Lincolnesque American President would do in the wake of 9/11. But one thing is certain - he would distinguish between civil insurrection at home, and a war of choice abroad. And he certainly wouldn't turn the nation's grief and anxiety into a power grab.

________________________________________

* Fake Lincoln quotes

Freedom on the March

From Time Magazine:

It has come to this: the hatred between Iraq's warring sects is now so toxic, it contaminates even the memory of a shining moment of goodwill. On Aug. 31, 2005, a stampede among Shi'ite pilgrims on a bridge over the Tigris River in Baghdad led to hundreds jumping into the water in panic. Several young men in Adhamiya, the Sunni neighborhood on the eastern bank, dived in to help. One of them, Othman al-Obeidi, 25, rescued six people before his limbs gave out from exhaustion and he himself drowned. Nearly 1,000 pilgrims died that afternoon, but community leaders in the Shi'ite district of Khadamiya, on the western bank, lauded the "martyrdom" of al-Obeidi and the bravery of his friends. Adhamiya residents, for their part, held up al-Obeidi's sacrifice as proof that Sunnis bore no ill will toward their Shi'ite neighbors across the river.

Eighteen months on, one of the men who jumped into the river to help the Shi'ites says al-Obeidi "wasted his life for those animals." Hamza Muslawi refuses to talk about how many he himself saved, saying it fills him with shame. "If I see a Shi'ite child about to drown in the Tigris now," says the carpenter, "I will not reach my hand out to save him." In Khadamiya, too, the narrative about Aug. 31 has changed. Karrar Hussein, 28, was crossing the bridge when the stampede began. Ask him about al-Obeidi, and his cheerful demeanor quickly turns sour. "That is a myth," hisses the cell-phone salesman. "That person never existed at all. He was invented by the Sunnis to make them look good." Rather than jumping in to help, he claims, the people of Adhamiya laughed and cheered as Shi'ites drowned.

Who could have seen that one coming? I mean, besides the mideast experts that the Bush administration shut out of the war planning.

Wolcott on Hume

If Brit Hume gets any more vaccuous, he'll have Tony Snow's job.

Hume's lack of self-knowledge would be comic if it weren't so hateful. Like so many white conservative males, he's seething with anger and touchy superiority, yet has apparently convinced himself that it's everybody else who's being emotional. He--he sees things as they are, with rational proportion and worldly perspective; it's women and girly-men liberals and other moral weaklings who lets their sloppy feelings get the best of them. But challenge Brit's patriarchal authority and or contradict him once too often and he goes Aguirre, Wrath of God on you.

Sharks and Jets revisited

West Bank Story trailer

Soft in the head

In geopolitical terms, soft power is a combination of cultural, financial and moral influences that that one country holds over others. There was a time when no country wielded as much soft power as the US. America was the preferred destination for the world's tired and poor. Its music could be heard in the dustiest cantina on the planet. The American way of life was a promise that better days could be had.

And then President Bush happened. Today, America is more likely to stand for Abu Graib than Elvis. Where were were once a force for stability, the US now promises war without end. American leaders where once revered around the world - now we're led by the punchline to a bad joke. Sullivan has been particularly poignant on the consequences of America's draining reserve of soft power:

Soft power can be over-hyped. It's no substitute for military prowess. But soft power still matters. Once, for all the residual anti-Americanism out there, it was a significant plus for the U.S. Bush has somehow managed to give the U.S. a soft-power deficit - in a war against some of the most barbaric, evil enemies we have ever faced. That really is an achievement. And it will take another generation to fix it. It's one reason Obama is so appealing, I think. Electing him after Bush-Cheney would amount to the strongest signal that America is moving past the Bush-Cheney era. That's a message the world is desperate to hear, and it would make enlisting more allies in the war against Islamist terror much easier.

The term "soft power" was coined by Harvard University professor Joseph Nye, who explains the term this way:

The basic concept of power is the ability to influence others to get them to do what you want. There are three major ways to do that: one is to threaten them with sticks; the second is to pay them with carrots; the third is to attract them or co-opt them, so that they want what you want. If you can get others to be attracted, to want what you want, it costs you much less in carrots and sticks.

Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney and other unindicted war criminals saw only sticks. Or perhaps their macho sensibilities discounted the effectiveness of any influence that doesn't involve blowing stuff up. Could they really be that cynical?

Carpetbagger passes 10,000th post

Congrats to the Carpetbagger Report for its 10,000th post. CR is one of the sharpest political blogs in the blog o'sphere. Mr. and Mrs. CB are entering their fifth year of blogging, and the hard work shows.

Here's CB's post today on the curious exchanges between President Bush and some well-prepped citizens at a health care roundtable Q&A in Chattanooga.

Free ponies for everyone!

The British are starting to pull troops out of Iraq, and the Bush Administration is calling it a "sign of progress".

That might be true in normal circumstances, meaning one in which the war wasn't being run by incompentent buffoons. If all of Iraq was as tranquil as Basra, it would be reason to chisel President Bush's clueless mug alongside Jefferson's and Roosevelt's on Mount Rushmore.

In reality the country is in a death spiral, with no reason to believe things are getting better. There are reports that the Shiite death squads are lying low, but only President Bush thinks it's out of deference to American resolve. In truth, the militias are waiting for the US military to weaken the Sunni insurgency, so the ensuing ethnic cleaning will be easier.

Obviously, no matter how grim the news from Iraq, the administration will find a silver lining. Optimism is fine, but needs to be tempered by reality. Insurgents are now using chlorine gas bombs to exterminate civilians. Silver lining? They haven't figured out how to properly disperse the gas, since most of it burns up in the accompanying explosion. More good news? Iraq's technical schools are secure enough to train bright, innovative chemical engineering grads who will get it right.

Instapundit unleashes the poodles of war

I totally missed the decades long war with Iran.

In fact, nearly three decades. Instapundit Glenn tells us that the US has been at war with Iran since 1979, since the shameful US embassy takeover in Teheran.

Of course, Professor Glenn uses some ad hoc reasoning to arrive at this conclusion. He started by recently calling for the assassination of Iranian leaders in that right wing wank fest he calls a blog. Then another law professor, only one who knows a lot of stuff about, you know, law, took Instapundit to task for advocating violence against a country we're not at war with.

Instapundit shot back that his critic “hurts his credibility up front by saying that Iran is not at war with us — when, in fact, it has been since 1979, with the deaths of many Americans, soldiers and otherwise, on its hands.”

Basically, Glenn redefined war to win debating points. But that's OK, since lawyers are seldom specific in their language when they argue. What's that? They are specific?

Never mind.

But let's go with Instapundit's thesis for a moment. Let's say that a state of war has existed between Iran and the US since Jimmy Carter was in office. Then explain, as Anonymous Liberal asks, why Ronald Reagan sold arms to the Mullahs? Isn't that high treason?

And why did President George W. Bush reject Iran's request for dialogue in May, 2003, one month into the Iraq War? Didn't he know about the war?

Creationist logic

McCain recall drive underway

It's an uphill battle for recall supporters, but if the mood in Arizona is no different than the rest of the country, St. John could lose his Senate parking spot before his term is officially up. Wouldn't that be sweet?

A new recall drive targets Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a top contender for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination.

Organizers oppose McCain's continued support of the unpopular Iraq war and consider him complicit in what they perceive as the erosion of American civil liberties associated with the war on terror.

"For the most part, he's been all right, but he's supposed to be representing Arizona, and right now he seems to be just representing himself," said William Crum, treasurer of Americans for Integrity and Justice, the Glendale-based recall committee. "He's got tunnel-vision for the presidency."

The recall application filed Tuesday with the Arizona Secretary of State's Office accuses McCain of "shirking his duties as a senator from the great state of Arizona" and of having "acquiesced in his role as a member of the legislative branch to strongly check the power of the chief executive, who has for all intents and purposes become a king."

[..]The recall group faces long odds. It must collect 381,696 valid petition signatures by June 13 to force a statewide vote. That is 25 percent of all votes cast in the 2004 Senate election. Although McCain is a federal officeholder not bound by the Arizona Constitution's recall provisions, he has signed a voluntary pledge on file with the Secretary of State's Office agreeing to resign immediately if defeated in a recall election.

Let's face it, McCain doesn't stand a Sunni's chance in Sadr City of winning his party's nomination. But this has to have McCain scared, and if he tempers his stupid rhetoric even a little, or if his wingnut Senate pals see the same writing on the walls back home, then the effort will be worth it.

h/t Crooks and Liars

Child advocacy group dumps steaming O'Reilly

Congrats to John at Crooks and Liars for ruining Bill O'Reilly's day. The Center for Missing and Exploited Children withdrew a request to the Fox News wantwit speak at its Florida fundraising dinner next month. C&L and its readers were instrumental in exposing O'Reilly for the pathetic, twisted little man that he is.

O'Reilly said Shawn Hornbeck, the young man who was kidnapped, sodomized, and held for four years, was in fact having a great time of it. O'Reilly also cast doubt on Stockholm Syndrome, and said only he can call on the sum of human knowledge, which he keeps safe in his lower colon.

Just the fax, m'am

I think I've finally figured out the Bush Administration's strategy to avoid total collapse from scandal.

More scandal.

It's sort of like slamming a hammer on your big toe to take your mind off of the thumb that you pounded the moment before. Only in this case, it's the American public getting pounded.

In addition to 9/11, lying the US into war, ignoring the Iraqi insurgency, New Orleans, and a bunch of other crazy stuff, now it turns out that Bush told Iran that the US wasn't interested in a peaceful co-existence with Iraq's neighbor to the east, even if the Iranian government was willing to recognize Israel.

Some uppity Democratic senators just asked Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice about the Iranian overture, which was faxed to the US State Department through a Swiss intermediary, but she couldn't remember the details. In fact, she's not sure if the offer was ever made. Some things are so minor, so inconsequential, that they escape our memories in order to make room for the theme from Rawhide, or where Dubya keeps the keys to his pickup.

Rice was pressed Wednesday on whether the Bush administration missed an opportunity to improve relations with Iran in 2003, when Tehran issued a proposal calling for a broad dialogue with the United States, including cooperation on nuclear safeguards, action against terrorists and possible recognition of Israel.

Although former administration officials have said the proposal was discussed and ultimately rejected by top U.S. officials, Rice said she never saw it.

"I have read about this so-called proposal from Iran," Rice told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday, referring to reports in the Washington Post and other publications last year. "I think I would have noticed if the Iranians had said, 'We're ready to recognize Israel.' ... I just don't remember ever seeing any such thing."

Rice's comments add a new level of complexity to an issue that has generated debate among foreign-policy experts: Did the Bush administration forego a chance to pursue a dialogue with Iran shortly after the fall of Baghdad, when U.S. power seemed at its height?

The Iranian document, conveyed to Washington via the Swiss Embassy, listed a series of Iranian aims for potential talks, such as ending sanctions, full access to peaceful nuclear technology, and recognition of its "legitimate security interests," according to a copy that has circulated in Washington and was verified by Iranian and U.S. officials.

Iran agreed to put a series of U.S. aims on the agenda, including full cooperation on nuclear safeguards, "decisive action" against terrorists, coordination in Iraq, ending "material support" for Palestinian militias and accepting a two-state solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The document also laid out an agenda for negotiations, including possible steps to be achieved at a first meeting and the development of road maps on disarmament, terrorism and economic cooperation.

Flynt Leverett, Rice's former staff member, had publicly discussed seeing the proposal when he worked at the White House.

Leverett said Wednesday he became aware of the two-page offer, which came over a fax machine at the State Department, in his waning days in the U.S. government as a senior director at the National Security Council, but that it was not his responsibility to put it on Rice's desk because Rice had placed Elliott Abrams in charge of Middle East policy.

Abrams is currently deputy national security adviser in charge of the Middle East and democracy promotion. A security council spokeswoman, speaking on behalf of Abrams, said Wednesday that Abrams "has no memory of any such fax and never saw or heard of any such thing."

I'm probably making too big a thing of this. After all, if the Bush administration did follow up on Iran's offer, they would have dropped the ball.

Who would Jesus kick?

Chuck Norris (yes, that Chuck Norris) plays constitutional scholar at World Net Daily this week. To be resolved: Muslims have no place in elected office.

Rev. Daniel Fosters’ [sic] inspirational address [in 1790] to these magistrates is a must read for anyone concerned with the future of our country and criteria for properly appointed representatives…. The words he shared that day were not only stirring but reflective of a general consensus and credo of what citizens (not just clergy) expected of their legislative leaders. Its components still contain what I would call a primer for the election of the presidency or any other chosen representative. […]

For Foster and our Founders, government is a ‘’divine appointment,'’ an ordained institution of God, and ‘’an important mean of delivering us from the evils of the apostasy; and designed to prepare us for the more encouraging restraints the gospel enjoins.'’ As such, it too has Jesus Christ, not some nebulous and neutered god, as its head. […]

Unlike today, no politician then would have ever even thought of Foster’s words as religiously pejorative or prejudice, for Christianity was the only religion upon which our Republic was founded. It was clergy, not imams, who were called to speak before legislatures. Even Jefferson did not propose a separation between mosque and state, just as he could never have imagined a democracy in which its congressmen were sworn into government upon a Quran.

Barbara Streisand can never embarrass me again.

h/t Carpetbagger

Showdown at the Sterling Family Restaurant

It's official - President Bush's act won't play in Peoria.

During his stopover in that quintessential midwestern town last week, where he spoke to some Caterpillar plant workers and threatened to flatten the press corp with a big ass earthmoving machine, Bush visited a local diner for some coffee with a side order of adulation.

At least the coffee was warm.

In town to deliver remarks on the economy, the president walked into the diner, where he was greeted with what can only be described as a sedate reception. No one rushed to shake his hand. There were no audible gasps or yelps of excitement that usually accompany visits like this. Last summer, a woman nearly fainted when Bush made an unscheduled visit for some donut holes at the legendary Lou Mitchell’s Restaurant in Chicago. In Peoria this week, many patrons found their pancakes more interesting. Except for the click of news cameras and the clang of a dish from the kitchen, the quiet was deafening.

“Sorry to interrupt you,” Bush said to a group of women, who were sitting in a booth with their young kids. “How’s the service?” As Bush signed a few autographs and shook hands, a man sitting at the counter lit a cigarette and asked for more coffee. Another woman, eyeing Bush and his entourage, sighed heavily and went back to her paper. She was reading the obituaries. “Sorry to interrupt your breakfast,” a White House aide told her. “No problem,” she huffed, in a not-so-friendly way. “Life goes on, I guess.”

Heraldblog salutes the patrons of the Sterling Family Restaurant in Peoria, Illinois.

Half a league, half a league,half a league onward

Juan Cole thinks the combat between Iraqi security forces and the Army of Heaven in Najaf over the weekend is most likely a battle between Shiites. The Army of Heaven is a minor player in Iraqi sectarian violence, because even by Iraqi standards, the Army of Heaven followers are still crazier than the other religious zealots. Think Branch Davidians versus Jehovah's witnesses.Professor Cole notes:

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that on Saturday night into Sunday morning, a Shiite millenarian militia calling itself "The Army of Heaven" (Jund al-Sama') attempted to move south from the Zarqa orchards just north of Najaf to assassinate the four grand ayatollahs of Najaf-- Ali Sistani, Bashir Najafi, Muhammad Ishaq Fayyad and Muhammad Said al-Hakim. The holy city of Najaf, where Ali is buried, is the seat of Shiite religious authority in Iraq. The militiamen, devotees of an obscure religious leader named Ahmad Hassaani, are said to have infiltrated the area from Hillah, Kut and Amara. The well-armed, black-clad militiamen were heard to call upon the Mahdi, the awaited Promised One of the Muslims, to return on that night.

This group is not the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr, which bears no enmity toward the grand ayatollahs, but rather a separate and different sect altogether. Shiite clerics told the NYT that the sect is the Mahdawiya of Ahmad al-Basri (possibly Ahmad Hassaani al-Basri?). Although the NYT was told that this millenarian sect (it believes that the end of time is around the corner) was supported by Saddam, you can't pay any attention to that sort of allegation when it comes to Iraqi sectarianism.


It seems most likely that this was Shiite on Shiite violence, with millenarian cultists making an attempt to march on Najaf during the chaos of the ritual season of Muharram. But who knows? It is also possible that the orthodox Shiites in control of Najaf hate the heretic millenarians and the threat of the latter was exaggerated. Darned if I know. The reports of the Army of Heaven being so well armed make no sense if it was a ragtag millenarian band. But those reports could be exaggerations, too.

For those keeping score at home, the United States is supporting a middle east government beholden to Shiite extremists. The extremists have been successful so far in their campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Sunni majority, which the US wants to stop by lending military assistance to the security forces that have been instrumental in ethnic cleansing. This is because al Qaeda, a extremist Sunni idealogy, attacked us on 9/11, and the Iraqi Sunnis don't like al Qaeda, except when foreign fighters are attacking Americans and Shiites.

I think that covers most of it.

The race card

Sending Cheney out to pasture and naming Condi Rice as the new VP makes perfect sense for the GOP, and I'm not entirely surprised to be hearing the rumors. President Bush has a slim chance of turning Iraq around before the 2008 election, if by slim I mean practically no chance at all. In all fairness, I suppose the Iranian people could rise up and depose the homophobic, end-times loving head cases that run their government, and install a pro-western, secular parliamentary system that takes as its first order of business reconciliation with Iraqi Sunnis. But then Bush would have to recognize what an opportunity that would be for our national security, and screw it up.

But Shrub has a slightly greater chance of salvaging his party's chances in the 2008 election. Dumping Cheney, preferably in a plastic shredder, and naming Rice as the first African-American veep in our history, would be a good start. Sure, Rice was a terrible national security advisor, and she lacks the spine to stand up to her boss as Secretary of State. But she's cute and well spoken and did I mention that she's a black Repubican?

The Republican National Committee has to be worried about Obama, whose gravity is sucking up all campaign cash in its path. Obama has street cred among the anti-war crowd, currently numbered at two out of every three citizens. He's being called a rock star, but I think that's an understatement - his public appearances are drawing grey haired grannies who wouldn't know Bono from The Big Bopper.

I like Obama, but have deep reservations about an early run for the White House. We don't know enough about him, and he's even less experienced in national government than George Bush, the former two term governor of Texas was when he ran in 2000. I know - Lincoln was a one term senator when he ran in 1860, but the Great Emancipator didn't have Roger Ailes to deal with, the John Wilkes Booth of our day. Better that Obama finishes his senate term, maybe even take a turn as Governor of Illinois before he makes the leap. I'd hate to see a quality pol like Barack turn into this generation's Harold Stassen.

Thank you, God!

Kerry to bow out of '08 presidential race.

Trouble in River City

Here's the low point of last night's SOTU:

This is not the fight we entered in Iraq, but it is the fight we are in. Every one of us wishes that this war were over and won. Yet it would not be like us to leave our promises unkept, our friends abandoned, and our own security at risk. Ladies and gentlemen: On this day, at this hour, it is still within our power to shape the outcome of this battle. So let us find our resolve, and turn events toward victory.

Bush reminds me of Professor Harold Hill, the lead character in The Music Man. A fast-talking flim-flam artist too busy creating his own reality to take stock of his own weakness. Fortunately, the American people aren't buying any of it.

Rush's new racism

Orcinus posts that Rush Limbaugh's latest observation, that NFL play looks like a fight between the Blood and the Crips, is an attempt to win back audience share lost to other racist radio commentators.

This is, after all, the next logical step in the arc of his career as a right-wing demagogue anyway. His schtick has always been about "pushing the envelope," and the social envelope already has been pushed about as far as it can be without descending into overt fascism these part 10 years or more -- thanks to Limbaugh.

Maybe we can call this the New Racism: emerging from behind a mask of genteel conservatism, it openly calls for a revival of ole-time white supremacism, having found that the "liberal social experiment" with racial equality has failed.

The Neanderthal Right has always had bug up its butt over Left Wing group think.

Whether it's environmentalism, compassion for the poor, or civil rights, the far right has always chosen rugged individualism over anything that smacks of a shared ethic, unless the ethic originated on the right (abortion, homophobia, Christian values, etc.)

Limbaugh's racist jibes are just an extension of the right's "rugged invidualism" mantra, where persons are freed from the shackles of group think and free to make whatever observations they want, no matter how ill informed or shallow.

After all, it's just radio.

Sylvia Browne is despicable

People who believe in psychic powers are nearly as delusional as Bush supporters. People who believe Sylvia Browne is anything but a vulture are beyond help.

We report. You deride.

Basically, journalists do two things: they report, and they explain. It doesn't matter if you're reading the nightly news for a network, or doing the nightly crop report for Oogalala AM listerners. Report. Explain.

Unless of course you're Steve Scully, president of the White House Correspondents Association, and you don't want to ruffle Presidential feathers. Scully has asked 1970s legend and current D-list celebrity Rich Little to fill the Steven Colbert seat at this year's WHCA dinner, because, well, Heraldblog reports, and tries to explain:

"When I called Rich Little, I said 'I want your brand of humor,'" Scully told E&P. "It is a political audience, here are people who live and eat politics so someone who does George Bush, George Herbert Walker Bush, and Nixon, is someone we wanted."

Scully has said that the choice of Little, who practices a milder former of humor than Colbert, had nothing to do with any controversy surrounding Colbert's performance last year. "Colbert had a couple of zingers toward President Bush, and a couple toward the press corps," Scully recalled. "Stephen Colbert is very sophisticated and if you've not seen his show you may not get it." With Little, he added, "you don't have to explain his humor."

Rich Little isn't the one with some splainin' to do, Mr. Scully. Your job, if you really are a journalist, is to stop fretting about how popular the press is with the public. You're not supposed to be liked, and it's not your job to protect the delicate sensibilities of our Commander in Chief. That's what Laura does.

You and your pals in the popular press have been Bush's enablers for the last six years. If you are trying to shelter poor George Bush, it's because you feel sorry for the wretched state of affairs that you have led us to, with your celebrity culture frame of references and a timidity that borders on treason. I understand that the correspondents dinner is a respite from Washington's adversarial culture, a chance to let your freak flag fly. But the dinner is a reward that you have to earn. You are no more entitled to be chums with the President than I am to be a White House correspondent.

Ditch Little. Bring in Stewart.

We won't make you explain afterwards.

Rush to judgement

From 50 Most Loathsome People in America

30. Rush Limbaugh

Charges: It’s hard to believe this repulsive shit fountain is even human, until you remember that we share 70% of our DNA with pigs. Then again, to be any more hypocritical Rush would actually have to be a member of another species. After the Democrats took congress in November, Limbaugh said he felt "liberated" because "I no longer am going to have to carry the water for people who I don’t think deserve having their water carried," essentially telling his listeners he’d been lying to them all year. The dittoheads didn’t mind; that’s why they listen.

Exhibit A: If someone had taken a shotgun and blown Rush’s head clean off while he was wobbling his bloated body back and forth in an inconceivably cruel mockery of Michael J. Fox, whom he accused of faking his Parkinson’s symptoms for political effect, it would have been the greatest viral video of them all.

Sentence: Parkinson’s disease, of course, triggered by oxycontin abuse.

h/t Josh

Great victory demands great sacrifice

President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki have a great deal in common: they both rely on religious zealots for their political lives. At least Maliki is trying to let go of the apron string:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. and Iraqi forces arrested one of Muqtada al-Sadr's top aides Friday in Baghdad, his office said, as pressure increased on the radical Shiite cleric's militia ahead of a planned security crackdown in the capital.

Al-Sadr said in an interview with an Italian newspaper published Friday that the crackdown had already begun and that 400 of his men had been arrested. La Repubblica also quoted him as saying he fears for his life and stays constantly on the move.

The raid came as Defense Secretary Robert Gates began his second trip to
Iraq in less than a month, arriving in the southern city of Basra to consult with British and other allied commanders.

Sheik Abdul-Hadi al-Darraji, al-Sadr's media director in Baghdad, was captured and his personal guard was killed, according to another senior al-Sadr aide.

"We strongly condemn this cowardly act," said Sheik Abdul-Zahra al-Suweiadi.

The U.S. military said special Iraqi army forces operating with coalition advisers captured a high-level, illegal armed group leader in Baladiyat, an eastern neighborhood near al-Sadr's stronghold. It did not identify the detainee, but said two other suspects were detained by Iraqi forces for further questioning.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has pledged to crack down on Shiite militias as well as Sunni insurgents in a planned security operation. His reluctance to confront the Mahdi Army of al-Sadr, his political backer, has led to the failure of previous efforts to stem sectarian violence in Baghdad.

It's hard work shooting, jailing, and torturing your friends, and at times like this Mr. Malaki can use all the encouragement he can get. So I proposed that President Bush crack down on some of his own extremist supporters. Round up James Dobson and his illiberal posse for a few hours of detention at an ActUp meeting house. Sentence Pat Robertson to 100 hours of community service excavating dinosaur bones in Montana.

The War Against Religious Extremism® demands nothing less.

h/t Blogenlust

Friday Emo blogging

John McCain Googlebomb

Following the 2000 election, I never believed that
John McCain had a shot at his party's nomination, but his staunch support of President Bush's escalation of the Iraq War seals his doom. That and Senator Straight Talk's pandering to James Dobson et. al.

The yolk of tyranny

"Grandpa, what was it like living under the worst President in American History?"

"Well, Sonny, it was a lot like this":

MR. LEHRER: Is there a little bit of a broken egg problem here, Mr. President, that there is instability and there is violence in Iraq - sectarian violence, Iraqis killing other Iraqis, and now the United States helped create the broken egg and now says, okay, Iraqis, it's your problem. You put the egg back together, and if you don't do it quickly and you don't do it well, then we'll get the hell out.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Yeah, you know, that's an interesting question. I don't quite view it as the broken egg; I view it as the cracked egg --

MR. LEHRER: Cracked egg?

PRESIDENT BUSH: -- that - where we still have a chance to move beyond the broken egg. And I thought long and hard about the decision, Jim. Obviously it's a big decision for this theater in the war on terror, and you know, if I didn't believe we could keep the egg from fully cracking, I wouldn't ask 21,000 kids - additional kids to go into Iraq to reinforce those troops that are there.

Honest to God, is there no end to this man embarrassing himself?

Here's a lively little number to get things going

Here's the US Army's 1947 manual on how to execute people. I like this part:

f. Upon pronouncement of the death of the prisoner by the medical officer, the execution party will proceed to the racks from which the rifles were originally obtained, and replace the rifles in the racks at random. The execution party will then be dismissed.

g. The escort, with the band playing a lively air, will return to their parade ground and be dismissed.

These things must be done delicately

Iraqi death squads hanged two more Baathists yesterday, including Saddam's twisted half-brother and former intelligence chief Barzan al-Tikriti. According to an eyewitness account by chief state prosecutor Jafar al-Musawi:

The two had black hoods placed over their heads by the executioner before the noose was looped around their necks.

At the appointed time, the trapdoors to the gallows fell open below both. Al-Bandahung limp and lifeless, al-Musawi told news channel al-Arabiya, but 'Barzan's body fell down' to the ground beneath.

'When an official went over to see what had happened, he saw that Barzan lay on his stomach, headless. The head was still in the black hood.'

Al-Mussawi, who had called for the death sentence for the two men as well as for the former dictator, additionally said he believed God had had a hand in the gruesome turn of events.

C'mon fellows, get it right. There are instructions for this kind of thing:

HANGING

Procedure: Prior to any execution, the gallows area trap door and release mechanisms are inspected for proper operation. The rope, which is of manila hemp of at least 3/4"and not more than 1 1/4"in diameter and approximately 30 feet in length, is soaked and then stretched while drying to eliminate any spring, stiffness, or tendency to coil. The hangman's knot, which is tied pursuant to military regulations, is treated with wax, soap, or clear oil, to ensure that the rope slides smoothly through the knot. The end of the rope which does not contain the noose is tied to a grommet in the ceiling and then is tied off to a metal T-shaped bracket, which takes the force delivered by the offender's drop.

Additionally, prior to an execution, the condemned offender's file is reviewed to determine if there are any unusual characteristics the offender possesses that might warrant deviation from field instructions on hanging. A physical examination and measuring process is conducted to assure almost instant death and a minimum of bruising. If careful measuring and planning is not done, strangulation, obstructed blood flow, or beheading could result. At the appropriate time on execution day, the inmate, in restraints, is escorted to the gallows area and is placed standing over a hinged trap door from which the offender will be dropped. Following the offender's last statement, a hood is placed over the offender's head. Restraints are also applied. If the offender refuses to stand or cannot stand, he is placed on a collapse board. A determination of the proper amount of the drop of the condemned offender through the trap door is calculated using a standard military execution chart for hanging. The "drop" must be based on the prisoner's weight, to deliver 1260 foot_pounds of force to the neck. The noose is then placed snugly around the convict's neck, behind his or her left ear, which will cause the neck to snap. The trap door then opens, and the convict drops. If properly done, death is caused by dislocation of the third and fourth cervical vertebrae, or by asphyxiation. A button mechanically releases the trap door and escorts then move to the lower floor location to assist in the removal of the offender's body.

History: Hanging is the oldest method of execution in the United States, but fell into disfavor in the 20th century after many botched attempts, and was replaced by electrocution as the most common method. There have been only 3 executions by hanging since 1977: Westley Dodd (WA 1993), Charles Campbell (WA 1994), and Billy Bailey (DE 1998).

It always looks so simple in the movies.

War? What do you mean "war"? Quick! Look over there!

Now this is plain pathetic. The Fighting Keyboarders who are propping up the President are desperately trying to divert our attention from the fiasco in Iraq to a comment by Sen. Barbara Boxer at yesterday's Senate hearings.

Boxer was grilling Condi Rice on a legitimate point that can't be made too much: who pays the human price of war?

“Who pays the price? I’m not going to pay a personal price,” Boxer said. “My kids are too old, and my grandchild is too young.” Then, to Rice: “You’re not going to pay a particular price, as I understand it, with an immediate family."

The White House organ, also known as Rupert Murdoch's New York Post, ran this exchange under the screaming headline "Boxer's Low Blow". Rice is the quintessential career gal - unmarried and childless. Boxer, with her strong feminist credentials, was not suggesting that Rice deep six career and find a man post haste. She was making the point that most Americans have been asked to sacrifice very little for a war that supposedly carries so much importance.

But right blogosphere smells blood. Not since Kerry's botched joke have the Fighting Keyboarders had such an opportunity to turn attention away from the worst military blunder in 40 years to a sitting US Senator pointing out that the secretary of state has no children.

A bleach blonde barking loon at Fox News was suddenly overcome with the PC vapors, declaring "That is offensive to somebody who doesn't have children." It's obvious the outrage is manufactured because there is no repeated theme. One reality-challenged blogger at Townhall declared "It was funny to hear Mrs. Boxer care so deeply about the life of a soldier when she cares so little for the lives of the unborn...but if you've chosen not to have a child you really haven't offered anything to society ...if you decide to abort the child, then you're ok.........there's that strange illogical liberal valueless position that they never seem to have to explain."

I'm sure that some lonely little wingnut is calling Boxer homophobic. How rich is that?

Are you ready for a miracle!

President Bush is looking for a miracle. That's all that can save him, and the country now.

Any connection between his rhetoric in tonight's address and reality is purely coincidental. He spoke of a Democratic government of Iraq that needs protection from crazed Jihadists. Maybe on another Earth, in a parallel universe far far away. But not here. Malaki's government is wholly owned by radical Shiites, primarily the Mahdi Army. It's like saying the governor of California is a Crip.

As a born-again, evangelical and dry drunk, George W.Bush is no stranger to miracles. He will he the first to tell you that a miracle drew him to Christ, and sobriety, and the Repubican butt-sniffers who sought him out in 1999 to run against Al Gore. And a miracle will rescue his Presidency, and, oh yes, the country, from the ignomy of two lost wars in 39 years.

But what kind of miracle could reasonably rescue Dear Leader from this mess? I mean, short of a 600-foot Christ returning to Earth to smite the Mahdi Army?

There's a small chance that Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt and other Sunni governments could broker a deal to prevent Iraqi sunnis from being exterminated. The Saudi government has already sent a strong signal that it would not allow the Sunnis to be destroyed by Shiites in a civil war. The Sunni governments could come up with a package of incentives to make the radical shiites put down their carving knives in exchange for jobs and oil revenue sharing. The deal could be enforced by magical unicorns and shape shifting jinni.

The other possibility is that Bush's clear and hold strategy of pacifying Baghdad will work. Moderate Iraqis will tolerate having their houses searched without probable cause, and will later be grateful that the US military actions in their neighborhood has decreased the car bombings to only five or ten a week. Maliki will welcome Sunnis into the government who will quickly forgive the Shiite death squads for torturing Sunnis with power tools and dumping their corpses in landfills. That Moqtada Sadr is such a goof!

There was a third facetious miracle but I kind of lost track. Maybe I'll think of it later.

Coming next: Sean's Final Solution!

From Heraldblog's "WTF Is He Thinking?" desk, Sean Hannity is now labelling those he disagrees with as "Enemies of the State". Sean kicks off his little laugh fest with low hanging fruit, tagging Sean Penn with an epitaph first used by Roman despots to disappear their enemies. Book learnin' types (not you, Sean), will pick of the Orwellian overtures.

Hannity is trying to upstage Keith Olbermann's Worst Person in the World awards, which are based on a shared sense of right and wrong. Hannity is arrogating powers only found in the worst totatlitarian states, in order to threaten those he disagrees with.

Prediction: I give Hannity's schtick no more than six weeks before Fox pulls the plug. Not on Hannity, just the reveal.

A note on usage

Attention all bloggers: Pictures are hung, Iraqi dictators are hanged.

We now resume our normally scheduled blogging.

Take Five

The Democratic mandate

Presidential mouthpiece Tony Snow told reporters today that voters weren't that concerned about Iraq when they booted Republicans out of office Nov. 7. The evidence? Exit interviews!

The president believes that — if you take a look at the elections, you can read any number of messages. I mean, when people were asked in exit interviews what was their top concern, Iraq was number four; corruption was number one.

So there you have it. Americans don't think Bush is incompetent. They think his party has been taken over by crooks.

Two thought jumps out at me here. First, is that gobs of voters have connected Republican corruption with the Iraq quagmire. More governmental transparency, honesty, and accountability would have gove a long way in assuring the American victory that Bush so craves, and the voters were led to expect. Second, if corruption tops voters' lists of concerns, as Snow admits, then Congressional Democracts clearly have a mandate to investigate.

Tony Snow should probably just stop talking altogether, although it's probably too late for that.

?itnnudohW

Saddam 2.0

From a TPM reader comes more evidence of President Bush's tone-deaf foreign policy:

I would like to refer to the note about Saddam’s changing image in the Arab world. I have lived in the United Arab Emirates for 8 years. The other night I was taking a little run into Dubai for a bad burrito (for some strange reason the cooks in Dubai do appalling things to Mexican food) and a beer. My taxi driver, Amjed, a Pakistani who has been driving taxi in Sharjah and Dubai for 25 years, was unusually quiet on this trip. Finally, after we got going on the freeway, he asked me, “So, Saddam gone, eh?”

“Yes,” I answered. “He is dead. He was a bad man. But it won’t change the troubles in Iraq.”

“He was bad man,” Amjed agreed. “You see?”

“No. I didn’t see it.”

“I see on television. He was brave.”

“I heard that.”

“He was bad man. In end, he was brave. He was not afraid. In end he was brave man. Was good.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say to that. We drove on in silence. When we got to the bar, I thanked him, tipped him, walked in, and ordered a cold pint of Stella.

What we are seeing here my friends is the power of redemption. Some find it in Christ, others in good deeds. Saddam found his, posthumously, in a camera phone.

Appearing on Meet the Press this morning, Senator Lindsey Graham, (R-Butt Plug), brushed aside criticism of the Saddam snuff film, suggesting that a little "taunting" was called for, given that Hussein was such a brutal fellow. But what would a Christianist like Graham know about redemption?

Disney promotes hate speech

Pass it on.

Chutzpah, Islamist style

"This is a failure of capitalism, of democracy and the freedom of speech."
- Anjem Choudary, a former spokesman for the now banned Al-Muhajiroun organisation. He was complaining after a fellow Islamist was found guilty of calling for the murders of Danes and Americans who practice free speech.

The man who never wasn't

I wrote a while back about Jumil Hussein, and the right wing blogosphere's skepticism that he even existed. Hussein was quote last fall in an AP story about a hideous death squad attack at a Sunni mosque in Baghdad. Now we know that Shiite death squads are torturing and executing Sunnis, and that Iraq's rivers, garbage dumps and sewers have been turned in dead Sunni depositories, to paraphrase a line from one of my favorite movies.* So why is it so hard to believe that six Sunni men were grabbed in a mosque during prayer services and burned alive?

Because the bad news flowing out of Iraq every day is an inconvenience to assorted media whores that make up President Bush's amen choir. Brave Little Michelle Malkin questioned the authenticity of the Sunni immolation, and asked the simple question "Who is this Jumil Hussein character that the UP keeps quoting?" An exhaustive search of Google in English didn't help, thereby proving Malkin's suspicions: Jumil Hussein doesn't exist! He's a sock puppet for AP reporters who hate the United States of America, President Bush, and Jesus. Only two days ago, Malkin reaffirmed her belief that Jalil Hussein does not exist.

But wait, hold the presses. This just in from the AP:

BAGHDAD (AP) -- The Interior Ministry acknowledged Thursday that an Iraqi police officer whose existence had been denied by the Iraqis and the U.S. military is in fact an active member of the force, and said he now faces arrest for speaking to the media.

Ministry spokesman Brig. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, who had previously denied there was any such police employee as Capt. Jamil Hussein, said in an interview that Hussein is an officer assigned to the Khadra police station, as had been reported by The Associated Press.

The captain, whose full name is Jamil Gholaiem Hussein, was sourced for an AP story in late November about the burning and shooting of six people during a sectarian attack at a Sunni mosque.

This nasty bit of reality has sent the right wing bloggers padding into their studies for a shot of Jack and some quiet reflection. Malkin says she's looking for a new way forward, and will seek out Jamil Hussein if she leaves the Green Zone during her embed adventure this summer. Cap'n Ed scrunches his pointy brow and wonders why the Iraqi authorities would want to arrest Jumil if he told the truth to the AP? And my very favorite quote of all comes from Hee Haw reject Confederate Yankee who reckons "As far as the AP's story goes, it does raise some very interesting questions, and I think I'll have a very entertaining weekend trying to make sense of it all." Take your time, Jeb - you've had four years to think about the underlying issues here.

What exactly did the AP do wrong? Jumil Hussein is a Baghdad police captain. He reported acts of violence to a wire reporter, and had been since 2004. The AP identified Mr. Hussein by his full name and job title. But that's not good enough for the Fighting Keyboarders. Mr. Hussein shared bad news, and that's unforgiveable.

What if Mr. Hussein was spreading imaginary success stories? Would Malkin even care?

BAHGDAD (AP) - Sunnis and Shiites joined hands in a human chain around the al Harama neighborhood of Baghdad today as part of a "Coalition Forces Appreciation Day Celebration". Children flew kites and young men competed in pick up softball games, which are becoming increasingly popular in this America-crazy neighborhood.

"Donald Rumsfeld is number one!" said Aisha al Tikriti, a comely teenage girl dressed in a halter top and cut off jeans. Nearby, members of the Mahdi Army, an Islamic service organization, nodded in agreement, then showed off their hip hop moves for a reporter.

Celebrants partied late into the night under the glow of street lights, installed and maintained by American contractors, many of whom danced with jubilant Iraqis.

___________________________________________

* Pulp Fiction

Iraq War for Dummies

So this is where we are now.

George Bush has hailed the verdict in Saddam Hussein's trial as a triumph of justice.

The sentence, death by hanging, was carried out by the Mahdi Army.

The Mahdi Army is a gang of thugs and Islamic fundamentalist nutjobs that control Baghdad.

President Bush wants to insert an additional 30,000 or so American troops into Iraq to do battle with the Mahdi Army.

Nuri-al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister, needs the Mahdi Army's support. More specifically he's scared to death of Muqtada Sadr, the 13th century whackjob who orchestrates the beheadings, torture and summary executions of Sunnis and women who show too much ankle.

Bush speaks glowingly of Maliki, and has repeatedly expressed his confidence in the man.

Malaki says he wasn't thinking clearly when he took the job, and wants out.

That about covers it.

I can see where this is going

From President Bush's op-ed in yesterday's Opinion Journal:

If democracy fails and the extremists prevail in Iraq, America's enemies will be stronger, more lethal, and emboldened by our defeat. Leaders in both parties understand the stakes in this struggle. We now have the opportunity to build a bipartisan consensus to fight and win the war.

Because you see what has been missing the past four years is a bi-partisan approach to national security. It's always those darned, obstructive Democrats, blocking Dear Leader at every move, and comforting the enemy with talk of Democracy and due process.

Don't fall for it, guys.

Update: Publius catches another Bush lie in the same op-ed, where the Great Decider claims his tax cuts have led to record revenues. Record if you don't adjust for inflation, it turns out. In constant dollar terms, revenues are lower today than they were five years ago. Publius adds:

I've made this point before, but it’s just another example of how the conservative defense of tax cuts — at least the political defense of them — relies on disingenuousness and a presumption of ignorance. If you want to argue for tax cuts on the basis of fairness or efficiency, fine. But the primary defense you hear from elected officials — that tax cuts increase revenue — is just, well, a lie.

Justice for pod people

Who hung the monkey?

The trial and execution Saddam Hussein for crimes against humanity reminds me of a story I heard years ago from a Brit living in the north of England.

The Brit lived in County Durham, and he was having fun with a lad from Hartlepool, also in the north. The story is apocryphal, but instructive. It seems that during the Napoleanic Wars, a French man-of-war floundered and sank in the North Sea. The only survivor was the ship's mascot, a monkey dressed in a smaller sailor's uniform. The hapless primate floated to Hartlepool's beaches, where it was seized by vigilant fishermen.

Now the good people of Hartlepool had never seen a Frenchman, much less had any insight to French culture or language. But they were, above all, loyal to the crown, so they tried the monkey as a spy, found him guilty, and sentence it to hang. "Who hung the monkey?" has become, I'm guessing, a good natured dig at anyone from Hartlepool.

I can't draw any direct lines from this story to the hanging of Saddam without wondering "Who is the monkey?" Is it Saddam, caught up in the frenzy of war? Or are Americans "the monkey", surrounded by captors unschooled in Western ways of justice and order? But one thing is certain: bringing Saddam to justice in the way it happened created more problems than it solved.

In the administration's defense, there probably wasn't a better way for US occupational authorities to have handled Saddam's trial and execution. We have no business being involved, and as long as we are, it's foolish to apply Western standards of decorum and fairness to Iraq's judicial system. We should feel lucky that Saddam wasn't buried inside a pig carcass, or wearing a frilly burka when the trap door fell. That's the difference between the West and Iraq, where memories are as old as the ruins of old Mesopotamia, and reconciliation is another word for suicide pact.

Compare Saddam's trial to Adolph Eichmann's, the Nazi monster brought to justice in 1960 by Israeli Mossad agents. Israel is also a mideast country, albeit one settled by Europeans. Eichmann was arguably more evil than Saddam, but his trial was marked more by its healing qualities than outbursts. The Eichmann Trial, which was televised, helped both Holocaust survivors and a shaken Europe come to terms with the Holocaust. That's no small accomplishment. Iraqis would have benefitted in the same way by keeping Saddam alive long enough to recount more of his crimes, and hopefully bring Sunni, Shia and Kurd closer to a shared understanding of the last 30 years. Should the US have had a role in making that happen? Tough call.

It's easy to talk about foreign policy realism, and the futility of the neo-con approach. But realism carries a rather ugly price - writing off huge swathes of humanity as "too tribal" or "too shame-based" to conform to the modern world. An honest rejection of neo-con bufoonery will also recognize the futility of bringing order and justice to countries like Iraq, and the millions of people stuck there who truly want a better life.

Ideally, bringing freedom and enlightenment to the world would involve modeling good behavior, but without the residue of resentment that comes with military conquest and occupation. Ask the monkey, whoever it is.

Goode intentions

From Rep. Virgile Goode's Op-Ed in today's USA Today (via Kevin Drum):

Let us remember that we were not attacked by a nation on 9/11; we were attacked by extremists who acted in the name of the Islamic religion. I believe that if we do not stop illegal immigration totally, reduce legal immigration and end diversity visas, we are leaving ourselves vulnerable to infiltration by those who want to mold the United States into the image of their religion, rather than working within the Judeo-Christian principles that have made us a beacon for freedom-loving persons around the world.

I know the Democrats have a fair number of nimcompoops in their ranks, but Goode, a Virginia Republican, has raised brainless blather to a new level. Last week, Goode attacked a Democratic congressman for using the Koran during his swearing in ceremony. Nevermind that the Constitution specifically prohibits religious tests for office holders. Nevermind that Congressman are free to use a Bible, Koran, or the phonebook during their swearing in. Goode refused to apologize, then dressed up his bigotry in a Homeland Security jumpsuit, insisting his concern is really about fighting terrorists. Right.

Goode biggest mistake, and he's made so many, is assuming a one-size-fits-all religious ethic for America. Unspecified "others" want to force their religion on Americans, rather submit their will to Goode's religious vision.

Did I mention that Goode is a Repubican?

Extreme unicycling

Monocycle extremeBecause you're never two tired to unicyle.

Sorry.

Heraldblog predictions for 2007

In which your fearless blogger dusts off the crystal ball and peers fearlessly into the future.

Iraq. Bush's urge to surge will not materialize, due to opposition from both parties. Violence in Iraq will continue to escalate, but Dubya will stubbornly refuse to withdraw troops.

Presidential hopefuls. McCain will emerge as the frontrunner at the end of 2007, but threats of a Christianist revolt will force the GOP to reconsider its nominee. Eventually, the party will nominate Jeb Bush as a compromise candidate. John Edwards will emerge as the Democratic favorite by year's end.

Democrats. Bush will attempt to blame Democrats for the deteriorating conditions in Iraq, but the public won't buy it as long as the number of troops in-country remain the same.

Republicans. Major split between centrists and Christianists will erupt in floor fight over immigration. Centrists will win with backing of Democrats, resulting in 25 percent approval rating for Bush, despite the fact Bush also backs centrist approach.

US economy. Iran briefly shuts down oil production in protest against US sabre rattling. Oil hits $5 a gallon, major recession looms. Bush backs down, and looks even weaker and dumber, as if that is even possible.

Best. Protest. Ever.

Those wacky French say non to 2007.

Parodying the French readiness to say "non", the demonstrators in the western city of Nantes waved banners reading: "No to 2007" and "Now is better!"

The marchers called on governments and the UN to stop time's "mad race" and declare a moratorium on the future.

The protest was held in the rain and organisers joked that even the weather was against the New Year.

The tension mounted as the minutes ticked away towards midnight - but the arrival of 2007 did nothing to dampen their enthusiasm.

The protesters began to chant: "No to 2008!"

They vowed to stage a similar protest on 31 December 2007 on the Champs-Elysees avenue in Paris.

Plus c'est la meme chose, plus ça change.